Skyline Dance (1928) - A 90-second trip that feels like a caffeine buzz

So, is this worth your time today? Honestly, it's like one minute long, so even if you hate it, you only lost the time it takes to microwave a burrito.

People who love old-school art or just want to see what New York looked like when it was mostly bricks and ambition will dig this. If you need a plot or people talking to each other, you’ll probably find it totally pointless. 🏙️

Its basically a fever dream about architecture.

Slavko Vorkapich was this guy who really loved the 'montage' style, and here he just lets loose on the city skyline.

The camera doesn't stay still for a single second. It’s tilting and zooming and everything is layered on top of each other until the buildings look like they are actually shivering.

I noticed this one shot where a bridge just kind of slices through the screen at a weird angle. It made me feel a little bit dizzy, which I think was the whole point.

There is no story here, just vibes.

It feels very modern in a weird way, like those fast-cut edits you see on social media now, but it was made almost a hundred years ago.

I think I seen a bird fly across one of the frames, but it might just be a piece of dust on the old film reel.

The film is pretty grainy and scratched up.

I actually like the scratches though. They make the whole thing feel more physical, like you can touch the history.

It’s way more energetic than something like Naked Hearts, which is much slower and more traditional.

In this one, the skyscrapers look like they’re breathing.

Sometimes the way the windows line up makes them look like teeth. It’s a bit creepy if you stare too long.

I love how there’s no music, or at least the version I found was silent.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Skyline Dance (1928) through its definitive frames.

You can almost hear the jackhammers and the car horns just by looking at the rhythm of the cuts.

The shadows are really deep and dark.

It’s much more about the feeling of being in a big city than showing you what it actually looks like.

It reminds me a bit of the chaos in How I Became Krazy, but without the jokes.

There’s this moment where three different builldings are all on screen at once, overlapping like a deck of cards being shuffled.

I wonder how they even did that back then without computers.

It must have taken forever to line up the film just right.

Vorkapich really knew how to make concrete look like it was made of liquid.

One shot of a clock tower is so fast you almost miss it.

It’s not trying to be smart or tell you a big message about how cities are lonely or whatever.

It just thinks skyscrapers are cool to look at.

The whole thing is over before you can even adjust your seat.

I watched it twice because the first time I blinked and missed half of it.

It’s a nice little break from movies that try too hard to be deep.

Just some old footage of a city that doesn't sleep, literally. 🎥