Jazz was so potent in the 1950s that young experimental filmmakers in New York were inspired to express the music's improvisational feel in their avant-garde work. In researching the subject recently, I came across four filmmakers who used used the city as a backdrop for their emotional, abstract cinema. Here are four short films, with a fifth clip added as a bonus [photo above of director Shirley Clarke courtesy of Wikipedia]...
Here's D.A. Pennebaker's Daybreak Express, inspired by Duke Ellington's recording. The five-minute film, from 1953, captured New York's Third Ave. elevated train two years before it was torn down, with Ellington's music as a backdrop...
Here's Francis Thompson's N.Y., N.Y. from 1957, a collection of New York scenes that he filmed with a special kaleidoscopic lens...
Here's Shirley Clarke's Bridges-Go-Round from 1958, featuring a montage of New York's bridges with superimposition. (In 1961, Clarke would film The Connection, with pianist Freddie Redd and alto saxophonist Jackie McLean)...
And here's William Klein's Broadway by Light, from 1958, which gives you a sense of Martin Scorsese's tonal inspiration for the nocturnal Times Square scenes in Taxi Driver (1976)...
Bonus: Here are the glorious musical selections from Shirley Clarke's The Connection. Clarke died in 1997...
