Multimedia Collection
Cosmopolis (1919 - 1931)
(New York series)
VHS
120 minutes
F128.3 .N5631 1999 v.5
Nearly a century and a half of capitalist growth and astonishing demographic and physical transformation comes to an extraordinary climax during the roaring twenties, as New York finishes assembling the components of a mass consumer society, and becomes the cultural capital of the world. Themes of democracy and capitalism are brought to a moving zenith during the period, as New York's hybrid cultural style mixes high culture and low, black culture and white, in a new and distinctively American form that is manufactured in New York and distributed to the rest of the world. As new media and new "clean" industries like radio, magazine publishing, advertising and public relations make their home in a new area of town - midtown - New York embarks on its most frenzied bout of speculative capitalism yet. The film concludes with the skyscraper war; the stock market rise, the Crash, and - in the deafening silence that followed - the building of the Empire State Building, the greatest icon on the New York skyline.
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