This is superbly vivid, revealing, anthropological stuff. Absent plot, these collaborators have assembled in this concise film a comprehensive, irrefutable catalogue of urban, immigrant experience. Youth (kids! that irrepressible little boy in what appears to be a dress!) and age, recreation and work, and, very movingly, an ethnic range that hasn’t even close to melted. The Naked City (contemporaneous, probably coincidental) is a fine film, and the two are apples and oranges. But really, here are the actual million stories, no less indelible for their glancing partiality. Toward the end a possibility dawns on me: is this an American Pather Panchali? We haven’t necessarily noticed, because it’s not appropriate to objectify, and there’s so much more to people. But is this a film about poverty? Down dismissive discourse about welfare mothers, yes to safety nets!