NFR Project: 'A Bronx Morning' (1931)

NFR Project: ‘A Bronx Morning’

Dir: Jay Leyda

Scr: Jay Leyda

Pho: Jay Leyda

Ed: Jay Leyda

1931

11 min.

This is a remarkable first film, made by an adept student of European film. Having only read descriptions of great “city symphonies” such as Berlin (1927), 21-year-old Jay Leyda decided to create one of his own.

The result is a silent short that is half documentary, half avant-garde film. Leyda focuses on shadows, fragments of movement, quickly observed still lifes. Together, they create aa portrait of an urban landscape waking up to the day. Kids play. Housewives lean out of apartment windows. The subway rushes past. The produce man sets up his cart. ]

Leyda cuts off faces, gestures. We see only parts of actions and attitudes, leaving us with an architectural rather than an emotional portrait.

Leyda went on to work as a cameraman with Eisenstein, and he became quite a cinema scholar. This fresh and nuanced collection of shots looks to the past, in that it is silent; to the future, in terms of kickstarting an American avant-garde cinema.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: City Lights.