Nothing But Time

A day in the life of a great city, Paris, from dawn through to the small hours. Alberto Cavalcanti turns his camera on the beautiful and the ragged, the rich and the poor, and builds the city out of rhythm rather than story. He plays with montage, double exposure and slow motion, dropping sharp notes along the way that mock the postcard version of Paris and dwell on material want. The film is counted as cinema’s first city symphony and opened up a whole strain that came after it: Ruttmann’s Berlin, Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera and Ivens’ Rain all continued the form. The forty-five-minute silent is regarded as one of the most experimental and finest works of the French avant-garde. What the Brazilian-born Cavalcanti did for Paris resembles what had been done for Manhattan a few years earlier.