Significance

A Bronx Morning is a 1931 American Pre-Code avant-garde film by American filmmaker Jay Leyda (1910–1988).

In 2004, A Bronx Morning was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[1][2]

Synopsis

Described as "city symphony", the eleven-minute European style film recorded a Bronx street in New York City before it is crowded with traffic. As opposed to the other films classified under the “city symphony” tradition, A Bronx Morning focuses on one borough in New York City at one specific time of day, rather than the entire city throughout all times of day. Captured only during the morning, the film makes an effort to track specific visual motifs that crop up as these average citizens begin to go about their days. The repetition of these visuals is organized and spliced together—such as the movement of shadows projected against the concrete streets.

Production

In 1931, Leyda purchased an Eyemo camera, on which he shot A Bronx Morning.^[3] The film was funded with the proceeds of a sale of a wooden figurine of Henry Ward Beecher, which Leyda had originally found in a junk shop, to a representative of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.^[4]

Historical Context

The choice to create a silent film that privileges the visual over the aural came at a period in film history where the excitement surrounding the recent invention of sound had nearly overshadowed the previous decades which had emphasized visual storytelling as the cornerstone of the medium. After the premiere of Warner Brothers’ The Jazz Singer in 1927, the film industry saw a boom of what was termed “talkies”—early sound films that were limited in their capabilities due to the rudimentary recording technology of the time.^[5] Shot solely on sound stages with cameras confined to a tripod, many film theorists of the time criticized talkies, citing that they regressed the medium’s propensity for visual storytelling.^[5] Given this context, Leyda’s 1931 film uses all the techniques that talkie films had sacrificed, as A Bronx Morning takes place entirely on location and heavily incorporates the use of camera movement into its visual style.^[5]

Impact on Leyda's Career

A Bronx Morning was Jay Leyda's first ever film. The director moved to New York City in 1930 in pursuit of a career in photography. He first worked as a darkroom assistant, as well as an assistant on Ralph Steiner’s experimental films.^[6] As his career progressed, he began publishing photographic portraits in New York’s Arts Weekly magazine^[6] and exhibiting some portraits at the Julien Levy Gallery.^[7] Largely unnoticed in the United States, strength of A Bronx Morning led to Leyda's acceptance into the Moscow State Film School where he studied under Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Leyda was the only American to ever receive such an invitation. In Moskow, Leyda also worked alongside Dziga Vertov, as well as Joris Ivens.^[7] While Leyda’s work in film began with A Bronx Morning, his film career continued as he went on to work as both an editor and an advisor on the production of People of the Cumberland as well as China Strikes Back.^[7] Remaining well within the arts and film realm for the remaining duration of his career, in 1974 Leyda worked as the Gottesman Professor of Cinema Studies at the New York University School of the Arts, and he died in New York, New York on February 15, 1988.^[6]

References

External links

• A Bronx Morning essay by Scott Simmon on the National Film Registry site.
• A Bronx Morning essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN 0826429777, pages 189-190
• A Bronx Morning at IMDb