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Abstract: This essay considers issues of the cinema, architecture, women, and the city by focusing on several production numbers directed by Busby Berkeley that are set within an urban environment: "Lullaby of Broadway" (1935), "42nd Street" (1933), and "I Only Have Eyes for You" (1934). Beyond reading the city's space and architecture as a gendered topos, the essay gestures toward connections between Berkeley's Hollywood productions and the history of French, Soviet, and German avant-garde cinemas.
The American city seems to have stepped right out of the movies. To grasp its secret, you should not, then, begin with the city and move inwards towards the screen; you should begin with the screen and move outwards towards the city. Jean Baudrillard1
Historically, there has been a strong link between the cinema and urban space. One need only think of the famous "city symphonies" of the 1920s, of King Vidor's The Crowd (1928), of John Huston's Asphalt Jungle (1950), of JeanLuc Godard1» Alphaville ( 1 965), of Robert Altman's Nashville ( 1 975), of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), or of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner ( 1 982). Though, as the list makes clear, the metropolis is most often associated with drama, it has also been tied to die musical - as in On the Town (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1949) or An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951). In this latter category fall many films featuring production numbers by Busby Berkeley, wherein framing stories are often tales of novice entertainers performing on the New York stage. In this essay I will consider the case of three Berkeley routines which tlumselves feature the city: "Lullaby of Broadway" (from Gold Diggers of 1935 [Busby Berkeley]), "42nd Street" (from Lloyd Bacon's 1 933 film of the same name), and "I Only Have Eyes for You" (from Dames [Ray Enright and Berkeley, 1 934]). Because I highlight Berkeley's urban mise-en-scène, the issue of architecture will be central; for as Giuliana Bruno has observed, "architecture meets film on the grounds of the shifting metropolitan space."2 In particular, I will foreground the Art Deco mode which was so popular and novel in the 1 930s. Finally, as with all Berkeley creations, the question of gender and the image will demand...