Coney Island

Duration: 68

Year Published: 1990

Creator: Direct Cinema

Format: 16mm

Color: Color & B&W

Sound: sound

Description: Variously called Sodom by the sea and The Electric Eden, Coney Island was a vast playground of light and color that delighted, and sometimes appalled, its throngs of visitors. In 1895, a spit of land at the foot of Brooklyn was miraculously metamorphosed into an extravagant world of amusement - a safety valve for the teeming metropolis and an experiment in egalitarian enjoyment that would transport America from the Victorian Age into the modern world. The hot dog and the roller coaster were invented here. Three extraordinary amusement parks (Luna Park, Steeplechase Park and Dreamland) featured mechanical horses, an Infant Incubator for premature babies, a Trip to the Moon, the largest herd of show elephants in the world, and Liliputia, a miniature town inhabited by three hundred little people. This comprehensive documentary tells Coney Island's story from its emergence in the mid-1800's as America's premiere recreation area through the glorious heyday of the parks to its demise after World War II. Incorporating rare archival photographs and newsreel footage, the film includes re-enactments of the Boer War, the burning of Dreamland in 1907, and the electrocution of an elephant. It captures the invention and spirit of a new age with Coney Island as the unofficial capital of the new mass culture.