Sadly Over-hyped

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

This was another rarity that I just discovered on YouTube. A collaboration of painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand with poem verses in text form from Walt Whitman and a compellingly added music score after the sound era came into being, Manhatta provides a great view of New York City from the arrival of a ferry to the sights of factories billowing smoke to the aerial views of people walking to the sunset view at the end. It's just such a marvel to watch even today that no wonder the Library of Congress considered this "culturaly significant" and the United States National Film Registry put it in its preservation list. So on that note, I highly recommend Manhatta for anyone curious about films like these.

Make no mistake--the Industrial Revolution's impact of cinema is so profound that it's hardly an impact, as cinema simply wouldn't exist without it. As such, many early films took their subject with the world that had spawned around them, skyscrapers and their creation, factories and their workers, trains and their operation, cars and machinery and smoke. It was as if the world built itself to be photographed in motion, then invented motion pictures.This film is one of those interstitial documents that exist between important texts. It is far removed from the early actualities, but focuses on many of the same subjects with a clearer image. By the time this film came out, editing had come to its own as an art form and this movie didn't particularly add anything to montage that wasn't already recognized. Intertitles were expected. However, this movie did come before Berlin: Symphony of a City and was very inspirational to various filmmakers in the idea of documenting the modern world with an eye towards frame-by-frame meaning and abstract structuralism, which directly links it to the great and famous Man with a Movie Camera.--PolarisDiB

This wonderful documentary offers a glimpse of New York City from a bygone era, when the city had factories, and steam ships we docked in the harbor and when steam and smoke was bellowing into the sky, a time of industry, of power, and economic might. The documentary suggests an industrious people, a mass of humanity inhabiting a great metropolis, uniquely American, bristling with unbounded energy. The great ocean liner entering the harbor, the impressive buildings, some of which still exist today but back then glistening structures, the epitome of modern design, all suggesting a society in which the sky's the limit. This is a great documentary.

This short film by Sheeler and Strand is the father of American avant-garde cinema. It contains beautiful shots of Manhattan shown intertwined with excerpts of a Walt Whitman poem. All of the shots are thought out, and very photographic in nature. But that is expected with Paul Strand behind the camera. This film is probably the first American avant-garde film, and if it isn't, it is definitely the first influential avant-garde film. A guideline for future American avant-garde filmmakers to follow.A true visual treat, even for today's standard.