In 1896, Louis Sullivan made the following observation regarding the majesty of the skyscraper: "What is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? It is lofty. It must be tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line." Director Robert Florey must have felt similarly about those grandiose towers of contemporary Manhattan; for him, they represented the apex of human achievement, such that each structure positively pulsates with personality. It's with some regret that I confess to not being able to fully share Florey's passion for buildings, though I can admire what he was attempting. 'Skyscraper Symphony (1929)' is an interesting nine-minute entry into a documentary subgenre, very popular in the 1920s, that celebrated the working-class mechanics of a specific city, beginning with 'Manhatta (1921)' and extending into 'Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)' and 'The Man With a Movie Camera (1929).'
Director Robert Florey is a name I recognised, but for the wrong reason. His 'Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)' is, to put it kindly, not my favourite Universal horror, though I hear that 'The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1928)' is impressive, and 'The Cocoanuts (1929)' is sure to be worthwhile viewing. Even while directing mainstream Hollywood fare, Florey always had the avante-garde at the back of his mind. 'Skyscraper Symphony' was shot over three days using a 35mm DeVry camera. For his ode to tall buildings, Florey frequently uses shaky hand-held footage, always looking up and often having the camera make somewhat arbitrary casual movements that gave me a bit of a headache. Considered lost for nearly seventy years, a copy of the film was eventually unearthed in the 1990s in the former Soviet Archives in Moscow; these sort of Lazarus tales are always a relief for film buffs. For all interested parties, 'Skyscraper Symphony' can now be found on the National Film Preservation Foundation's "More Treasures from American Film Archives" DVD.
