‘Broadway by Light’: William Klein’s New York
New York City and cinema have always maintained a dynamic relationship, resulting in some of the most memorable creations in film history. Ranging from Woody Allen to Martin Scorsese, some of the greatest filmmakers have captured the city’s elusive and infinite mysteries on celluloid. However, none of those masterpieces is quite like William Klein’s pioneering 1958 short Broadway by Light – a seminal exploration of New York‘s neon nights.
Mostly known for his invaluable contributions to photography, Klein was born in New York City, but he eventually moved to Europe during the Second World War. After studying there and learning about the innovations in European art, Klein briefly returned to his birthplace and published a collection of photographs titled New York, which captured the attention of the art world. Going against the rigidity of the contemporary world of photography, Klein’s techniques had a unique rawness to them.
Following the success of New York, Klein was urged by none other than the great Alain Resnais to make a film about New York City as well. That’s how Broadway by Light came about, a dazzling investigation of Times Square and its incessant bombardment of advertisements. While the short documents the landscape of Times Square from sunset to sunrise, it exposes how the unforgivingly bright lights function like a second sun.
During a conversation with BFI, Klein recalled: “It was Resnais who said to me, ‘Now you’ve done a book, you must do films.’ There were people in my family who were very hot lawyers, and United Artists was their client; they were smart enough to take over United Artists. I did this first film, and I wanted my cousin at UA to run it as a short before the feature, and they said, ‘If we show it, people will leave, and they won’t see the feature!’ The film was very far from the book, but it was the same subject, more or less. I rented a camera and just filmed what I saw. The idea was to use these commercials in Times Square as readymades, like Marcel Duchamp.”
Broadway by Light is an incisive critique of the exploitative American advertisement industry and its impact on human psychology. When those lights confront you, it’s almost impossible to think about anything else. Klein explained: “It’s about fashion and television and media – it’s about brainwashing too. I decided I wanted to do a fiction film and a film about things I knew – which were the fashion world, television, filmmaking and so on.”
Klein’s important 1958 achievement earned praise from many, including Orson Welles – who said that it was “the first film I’ve seen in which colour was absolutely necessary”. The colours in Broadway by Light aren’t just chromatic elements. They are part of a specific semiotic framework within which the human mind is seduced into consumerist amnesia. The pulsating lights gain momentum in Klein’s film as they bleed out of the structures that govern their physical reality, transporting us to another plane of existence until the sunrise shakes us awake again.
Watch the film below.