Skyscraper Symphony is an avant-garde 1929 short film by French-American filmmaker Robert Florey. The film was shot in the early morning hours in New York City. It captured skyscrapers which, by the late 1920s had become a global trademark of the city and became a representation of the ever-developing technologies in America, as well as the rapid growth of capitalism. Florey’s focus on the booming metropolitan in the post-World War I era has solidified this film as a “city symphony,” and he draws upon his own experience as a tourist in America to capture the excitement and uncertainty of being in New York City.

Synopsis

The film consists of a sequence of low-angle shots of skyscrapers. The beginning and end of the film’s shots are primarily static, with one shot fading slowly into the next. The middle portion of the film has abrupt and rapid cuts between shots, with the camera capturing the buildings in shaky, canted movements.^[1]

Reception

The film circulated in avant-garde theaters^[2] during the late 1920s before the print of the film was lost for over seventy years. It was eventually recovered in Moscow’s state film archive— Gosfilmofond (Posner).

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