The Man and The Crowd (1928): Photography, Film, and Fate

By Gideon Leek

“Make films about the people, they said”, Jean-Luc Godard once quipped, “but The Crowd had already been made, so why remake it?” Gideon Leek rewatches King Vidor’s classic, in which a young man with big dreams moves to New York City and becomes an identical cog who learns to love the machine of modernity. more

The Blinkered Flâneur: Walking with Franz Hessel in 1920s Berlin

By Paul Sullivan

Does the flâneur, that curiously modern figure who wanders metropolitan streets, have a political consciousness? For Franz Hessel — author of Spazieren in Berlin, “a memorization while strolling” that Walter Benjamin called “thoroughly epic” — the answer seemed to be no. Paul Sullivan explores Hessel’s perambulations through Berlin and the achievements and limitations of his vision. more