Music of Manhattan (1950)

This one-reel short, from the Movietone newsreel division of 20th Century-Fox, delivers exactly what the title promises - the music of Manhattan. There are no actors, no dialogue and, unheard of for a short in this genre, there is no narration. It opens with and closes with the musical sounds of New York as a way of pointing out the melting-pot characteristics found there as the camera goes on an intriguing sight-sound tour of the city, with the sound track providing its own narration from...the hurdy-gurdy man in the Italian section to the bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral ringing to a street carousel; a fiddler playing for pennies outside Carnegie Hall fading into a concert pianist on the stage inside to the doves in Herald Square to a jive joint in Harlem.