John O'Hagan
United States | 1997 | 80 min
Language : English
Subtitle : French
The planned city of Levittown, established by a property developer after the war to house veterans, has all the makings of a model American suburb. John O’Hagan paints a gently satirical portrait of the founding members of this community, underscoring the particular eccentricities and aspirations of the postwar middle class.
In 1951, Levitt & Sons buys up a stretch of Pennsylvanian land with a plan to build a whole neighbourhood from scratch, a feat achieved by lining up multitudes of “little boxes”, as folk musician Malvina Reynolds would famously nickname the copy-pasted suburban homes proliferating throughout the United States. Almost half a century later, John O’Hagan sets out to interview the original members of this artificially designed community, the bourgeois veneer of which the filmmaker chips away at with welcome humour, as the ageing characters readily share the unexpected weirdness of their otherwise extraordinarily ordinary environment. Occurrences of wife-swapping, spectral presences, former beauty queens and grey-haired war veterans all coalesce in this gently satirical take on one of the United States’ most recognizable creations: middle-class suburban ennui. Premiering at Sundance in 1997, the film went on to collect a number of North American awards, including the Gotham Award for Best Independent Documentary.
James Berclaz-Lewis
James Berclaz-Lewis
Wonderland, 1997
Photography
John O'Hagan
Sound
Stephen Altobello
Editing
John O'Hagan
Music
John Hill
Production
John O'Hagan
