ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the film De Steeg directed by Jan Koelinga. Koelinga's debut film De Steeg portrays daily life in a poor neighborhood in the center of inter-war Rotterdam. It opens with shots of buildings representing the modern city—modernist housing, the luxury department store De Bijenkorf—and a rapid montage of fast-paced city life with motorized traffic and hurrying people, before entering an alley—the Schoorsteenvegerssteeg. Koelinga shows the bad conditions in this poor quarter, but also portrays a humane atmosphere and sense of community, which particularly becomes explicit in a scene of a young man playing his accordion, thereby creating a collective experience. With its social realism, De Steeg also recalls Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's city films Impressionen vom alten Marseiller Hafen and Großstadt-Zigeuner. Yet throughout the film, Koelinga's city symphonietta continues alternating the poor life in the slums with the rapid, modern, and rich city life that lies beyond the end of the alley.
