City Under Glass

Only One New York is a safari through the urban jungle. It was written and faultlessly photographed by Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau, the French explorer who led a 1959 expedition to the head-hunting wilderness of Dutch New Guinea and returned with the remarkable documentary, The Sky Above--The Mud Below. His new film attempts to explore New York City in much the same way. "Never has there been a city in the world like this," glows Gaisseau, as his camera ogles the sheer canyons of lower Manhattan. "It occurs to me that people who expect a bomb to fall don't build their walls of glass. A city of glass is like a declaration of peace."

What follows are views of life among such ethnic fringe groups as Brooklyn's Hasidic Jews, a band of Rumanian gypsies at Coney Island, a voodoo cult in Harlem, Japanese Buddhists on Riverside Drive, New Year revelers in Chinatown. Paradoxically, while poking through the city's sociological byways, Gaisseau misses the singular flavor of New York almost entirely. Like many other well-meaning tourists, he makes a superficial tour of the melting pot but overlooks the fire that keeps it going--the fast, fierce, savvy modernity of a great metropolis.

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