Nothing but Time

Alberto Cavalcanti, 1926, Rien que les heures. Paris from before dawn to night: a woman of the streets, a newspaper, meat, a rich couple, the Seine. The first city symphony at length, a year before Ruttmann's Berlin; Strand and Sheeler's Manhatta had done it in one reel in 1921. Cavalcanti, a Brazilian in the French avant-garde, cuts classes and clocks together without a hero. Cinémathèque and CNC hold the prints that tour: a day, not a plot, and a city that does not tidy itself for the camera.