Nothing but Time

Alberto Cavalcanti's poetic city symphony — a film that captures Paris from dawn to dusk through the eyes of its working people and street life. Beginning in the pre-dawn darkness of Les Halles market and ending at nightfall, the film observes the rhythms of the city with a warmth and democratic curiosity that sets it apart from the more formalist city symphonies of the period. Cavalcanti isn't interested in machines and motion for their own sake; he watches a woman peeling potatoes, children playing in gutters, old men on park benches, and finds in these ordinary moments a beauty as valid as any cathedral. The film uses some of the same techniques as Walter Ruttmann's Berlin or Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera but with a gentler, more humanistic eye. An enchanting, deeply affectionate portrait of a city and its people.