Viewing New York's Past But Seeing the Present

TV WEEKEND; Viewing New York's Past But Seeing the Present

By CARYN JAMES
Published: September 28, 2001
In 1945 a plane crashed into the Empire State Building. As told in ''New York: An Illustrated History,'' the companion book to Ric Burns's colossal PBS series, a B-25 Army bomber lost its way in the fog, then flew into the building and burned. Fourteen people died, but the building stood so firm that tenants returned two days later.

Because it came a few weeks before the end of World War II, ''For New Yorkers the nightmarish accident was a reminder of just how lucky their city had been,'' Mr. Burns and his co-author, James Sanders, write. ''Overseas, virtually every other major world capital had been humbled or destroyed,'' but New York ''had emerged from the world's greatest conflict virtually unscathed, richer than ever, its great walls of stone and steel untouched by the horrors of war.''

Like the book, the concluding episodes of the series, ''New York: A Documentary Film,'' are loaded with details that resonate differently now that New York is no longer so lucky or untouched. It is fair to wonder if these chapters should have been postponed. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, it is impossible to see them the way they were intended, as a history of the city from 1929 through the 1990's. (They are Episodes 6 and 7, picking up where the previous 10 hours, shown in 1999, left off.)

Now their very first words vibrate with unintended meaning. Over a close-up of lights on a black, rainy street, an ominous voice warns, ''The contemporary city is profoundly menaced.'' Philip Bosco is reading what the architectural historian Siegfried Giedion called the evil potential of the automobile; he feared in the 1930's and 40's that machines were becoming more important than people. But with the events of Sept. 11 still so fresh, the film becomes a catalog of accidental significance and observations that have become touchingly out-of-date.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani says here that during the Depression and World War II, Fiorello La Guardia was exactly the leader the city needed to get through those dark years. ''He was the mayor of New York City during the most difficult time ever to be mayor of New York City,'' says the man who can now claim that role.

Every distant view of the skyline leads a viewer to search for the World Trade Center, which at times appears as a central image. The towers loom against a bright blue sky while speeded-up film propels clouds toward them and a voice says, ''The world is in chaos.'' (In the Burns style, we find out whose words are being read only after the speaker is finished; this comment is from the secretary of the 1939 World's Fair.)

Like the World Trade Center itself, the series now carries a symbolic weight it never had before. As several commentators have noted, the twin towers were not beloved buildings and are understandably not even mentioned in the film, but you don't need a New Yorker's perspective to feel how they haunt it.

While the program is constantly touching raw nerves, though, it is also timely in a more precise way than anyone could have imagined. As it happens, these episodes are not about New York's glory days, but about its plummet to the depths during the Depression and again during the financial crisis of the 70's, which brought the city social unrest, near-bankruptcy and the enmity of the rest of the country. The theme of these episodes, now intensified, had always been there: this is a story of resilience, a lucid reminder of how often New York City has rebuilt itself.

The films were not altered, except to replace the final credits (there is now a glimpse of construction workers raising the World Trade Center) and to add a title card explaining that the documentary was produced before the tragedy, adding: ''For nearly 400 years, the people of New York have faced adversity and prevailed. This film is dedicated to them.''

Taken on their own, these episodes are better than the sometimes plodding ones that preceded them. They are more focused, and at four and a half hours less of an endurance test. Stylistically they match, though, with period film and photographs, off-screen actors reading contemporary accounts, and on-screen commentators. These include the lively historian Mike Wallace, the biographer Robert A. Caro (whose subject, Robert Moses, is the film's most crucial figure) and Ray Suarez, familiar as a reporter for ''The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,'' but also an astute, no-nonsense observer of the city's history. Yet accidental meanings come to bear on the style, too. The narrator's prose, read by David Ogden Stiers, is as purple as ever, but today such a flaw seems trivial next to the series' reassuring insights about the city's hard times. Brian Keane's music, which had always seemed lovely though sentimental, takes on a mournful cast.

Episode 6, ''The City of Tomorrow,'' focuses on the Depression and the war years, showing long lines for food and Hoovervilles in Central Park. Federal aid was siphoned off by Tammany Hall and the corrupt mayor, Jimmy Walker.

The reform-minded La Guardia held the city together for three terms, but it was Moses who planned and shaped it for nearly 50 years. He channeled money onto gargantuan road-building projects like the Triborough Bridge, though he never drove a car; he connected parts of the city while remaining troublingly disconnected from its life. He is heard here saying, ''Cities are created by and for traffic,'' and his projects callously displaced entire neighborhoods.

In the 40's New York had everything, Mr. Suarez says near the start of Episode 7, ''The City and The World.'' He adds, ''New York sort of looked down on the rest of America from Olympus, and the seeds of its downfall might have been in that.'' After the war, manufacturing moved out, the middle class left for the suburbs, and the city's economic base was destroyed.

A sharp attitude emerges from this episode, creating a picture of urban blight brought about by federal programs that were wrongheaded or ineptly executed or both. High-rise housing projects were created, but they were inhospitable slabs of stone. By the 70's the South Bronx was a burned-out shell and a national symbol of urban decline. The low point came in 1975, when President Gerald Ford refused to guarantee loans to save New York from bankruptcy, and a now classic Daily News headline read: ''Ford to City: Drop Dead.'' (He later changed his mind, fearing the ripple effects if New York defaulted.) This may not be the best time to hear it, but it is good to be reminded that New York was not always perfect; take it as a sign of normalcy.

More meaningfully at the moment, the film charts how fast the city returned to glory after its steep decline. The demolition of the old Penn Station (seen in black-and-white film, which must only hint at the architectural gem it was) in 1963 led to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. And Moses finally went too far when he tried to cut a great swath of highway through downtown neighborhoods, from the Lower East Side through what is now SoHo to Greenwich Village, and was thwarted by community resistance.

More piercing and more bracing than they would have been before, these final episodes also have an eloquence that is now enhanced. We see the ocean liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth coming to New York after World War II, their decks crammed with hundreds of soldiers returning home. ''That may have been the greatest time in New York,'' the historian David McCullough says.

As the ships head toward land, the Statue of Liberty comes into view but -- then as now -- no World Trade Center rises nearby. The filmmakers could not have known how poignant their words would come to seem. When the ships entered the bay, the narrator says, ''A gigantic cheer went up at the sight of the ravishing skyline of New York, which had never seemed more precious or more filled with promise for the future.''