ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the film A Bronx Morning directed by Jay Leyda. As its title suggests, A Bronx Morning is an ode to morning activities in the South Bronx neighborhood that Leyda lived in at the time. Robert Haller has commented that Leyda's film amounts to "a city symphony on an intimate scale," and, sure enough, the film begins with a standard city symphony motif—the arrival into the city—but instead of a ferryboat or a speeding locomotive, Leyda ushers us into the Bronx via elevated railway. Instead of the monumentalism typical of the New York city symphonies, the film provides us with a study of the patterns—both physical and social—of the Bronx's street life. Leyda's A Bronx Morning is a very personal and impressionistic depiction of an Outer Borough neighborhood, and, as such, it stands as a particularly anti-iconic North American city film.
