- Actors: Jane Jacobs, Marisa Tomei
- Director: Matt Tyrnauer
- Format: Anamorphic, Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
- Language: English
- Subtitles: English, Spanish
- Region: Region 1
- Rated: Not Rated
- Studio: MPI Home Video
- DVD Release Date: September 12, 2017
- Run Time: 93 minutes
Citizen Jane
attempts to be a history lesson, a biography of Jane Jacobs, and adaptation of
her essential book on city design, while still finding time to point out the
relevance of her beliefs in times of modern urban renewal. This may feel like a
lot for a documentary to cover in just over 90-minutes, and for fans of the
book or those interested in the topic of city planning, this may be the case.
For the casual viewer, however, even this breadth of material and short running
time is not enough to save the film from occasionally feeling redundant in its
opinion that cities should be less organized and contained.
Building off of
the opinions from Jacobs’ book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,”
while simultaneously serving up historical background of its creation and
success, Citizen Jane sets out to argue that cities need the chaotic sprawl
that makes up communities. More importantly, it argues against the type of city
planning that looks for the most efficient way of housing large groups of
people, typically by creating communities that are simply high-rise apartment
buildings. If Jacobs was something of a defender of the small communities found
in the chaos of cities, she was primarily fighting against politician Robert
Moses, the head of the New York Committees of Slums Clearance and an advocate
for the urbanization of cities.
The film is
filled with archival footage tracing the battle of ideas between Moses and
Jacobs, while also showing the ways in which urbanization has failed major
cities. But even with the experiment proved a failure by the rise and crime and
creation of “projects” where these apartment buildings stand, the film also
warns viewers that the dangers are still present in today’s city planning. As
most documentaries often rely on cautionary tales and the anxieties of viewers,
Citizen Jane is no exception. By the end of the film it is China that is used
as an example, after having adopted Moses’ model for city building. Whether or
not this will also eventually fail, or whether American cities will continue to
be plagued with this ideology, is left open-ended. Those who are interested in
the subject will likely see this documentary as little more than an
introduction to the complicated topic.
Entertainment Value:
6.5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 6/10
Historical
Significance: 6/10
Special Features: 6.5/10
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