It is summer in glorious mid-twentieth century Manhattan and there is a lot of picture-taking going on, starting with a man and a little girl at the Bronx Zoo.
Rather than a ‘moving picture’, this second of three feature films made in the 1950s by photographers Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin, his wife and collaborator, has the look and feel of well made still photographs in continuous motion.
Engel is known for his pioneering use of nonprofessional actors, but what make the magic in this picture are carefully cast and expertly coached photographer’s models at home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in classic New York City locations.
Engel and Orkin balance and embellish their story with details of New York street life through the eyes of photographers who love the city and know it well: hearts with lovers’ names in Chinese and English inscribed in chalk on a Chinatown sidewalk, two small children running along the outline of the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, and interactions with bystanders, among other things. Peggy has a great city accent.
The story opens with Peter (William Ward), a professional photographer and friend of Ann’s who is making a children’s picture book, photographing Peggy as she explores the zoo. Peter and Peggy visit both the Bronx and Central Park Zoos. Peter, who gave Peggy the Slinky toy that she plays with throughout the movie, also gives Peggy her first camera.
Larry has a month off in New York to think about his professional—and emotional—future. Ann, a professional model, has a flexible schedule that allows her to spend time sightseeing New York with Larry and Peggy. Peggy will go to summer camp when Peter finishes shooting her for his book.
Larry snaps pictures of the photogenic Ann; a tourist on the Observation Roof of Rockefeller Center asks Larry to use the tourist’s camera to take a picture of him and his wife with Central Park in the background. They switch places and the tourist snaps Ann and Larry using Larry’s camera. And Peggy takes pictures of her mother and Larry.
Among the best scenes is a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. Larry has just given Peggy a large toy sailboat that she takes with her because she wants to sail it in Central Park after they go to the museum. Peggy dawdles at the entrance, and then slips past the guard with her boat, skipping blithely ahead through a Jacques Lipchitz exhibit.
No one seems to pay any attention to the small child with a boat; Ann and Larry are engrossed in each other. And then Peggy spots the reflecting pool in the museum’s sculpture garden, an ideal place for her sailboat’s maiden voyage…
After he and Ann are engaged, Larry buys Peggy a doll, but she tells him she doesn’t like it. He suggests to Ann that he take Peggy to a toy store and let her pick something out. This would be a good way for him to spend some time alone with Peggy, Larry says.
‘You don’t know what it’s like taking a kid to a toy store,’ Ann says—and anyone with kids knows. ‘They don’t know what they want, and you can’t get them out of the place.’
‘I don’t see why it would be such a job to take a kid to a store,’ the bachelor says.
‘Try it,’ Ann says.
The next scene cuts to Peggy in the toy department at Macy’s at a time when it was a true child’s world of wonder filled with marvelous and inventive toys, larger than life and mercifully free of ‘brands’ and ‘tie-ins’ as we now know them. Peggy is lost in wonderland to Larry’s pique in a porkpie.
These are just two of many such scenes and adventures these characters share in and around the city through the naturalistic lenses of Engel and Orkin.
Kino International issued this film on DVD in 2008 paired with Engel’s 1958 classic Weddings and Babies, two of three films Engels made in that decade.
For those in the New York metropolitan area, from now through March 25 [2012] the Jewish Museum is featuring A Radical Camera, a large exhibit of the photographs of the Photo League (1936-1951) which includes the work of Engel and Orkin as well as many other New York photographers of the time.
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