The City

Directed by Maurice Bailen

An experimental silent film made in the early 1960s providing an intimate look at the citizens of Chicago. The film combines tongue-in-cheek footage of street advertisements, movie theatres, and other signifiers of city life, with scenes depicting the daily goings on of Chicagoans. The City borrows from traditional documentary film aesthetics, yet the narrative is complicated towards the end by fictional flourishes in what can be best described as a post-modernist take on the stressors and violence inherent to city life. Major thoroughfares and landmarks are heavily featured, such as Maxwell Street and Lincoln Park.