City of Hope
(Ciudad de Esperanza)
(EEUU, 1991) [Color, 129 min.].
Ficha técnica:DIRECTOR John Sayles
GUIÓN John Sayles
MÚSICA Mason Daring
FOTOGRAFÍA Robert Richardson
REPARTO Vincent Spano, Chris Cooper, Joe Morton, David Strathairn, Tony Lo Bianco, Lawrence Tierney, Todd Graff, Jace Alexander, Kevin Tighe, Barbara Williams, Anthony Denison
Sinopsis:
Un antiguo edificio de pisos se encuentra en una zona que experimenta un gran auge comercial por lo que Joe Rinaldi, un contratista de obras que es el propietario del edificio, recibe presiones para derribarlo. Su hijo, con el que no tiene una buena relación, comienza a fijarse en la política municipal, controlada por un alcalde corrupto que tiene prisa por construir una zona comercial.
Comentario:
City of Hope is the seventh and most invigorating achievement to date by John Sayles, the godfather of independent film makers in this country. Here is a tumultuous evocation of urban America in the final decade of the 20th century, when old systems don't work, reason is in short supply, money is running out and opportunism draws more votes than equal opportunities.
City of Hope is as contemporary as slumlords and cut-rate appliance stores, but classic in its methods. Mr. Sayles shares Ibsen's appreciation for the ways in which the past makes a hostage of the present, as well as Arthur Miller's crazy fearlessness in writing the big melodramatic scene that often pays off.
The cast is huge, nearly three dozen featured players. Virtually every role is vividly characterized in both the writing and the performance: politicians, policemen, hoods, fixers, contractors, hard hats, muggers, do-gooders, teachers, the homeless, the overhoused. Some of them are actually trying to do the right thing.
The setting is the fictional Hudson City, N.J., whose unofficial motto is Quid Pro Quo. Hudson City is a place big enough to share the problems that face virtually every major American population center, but small enough so that each life manages in some fashion to be linked to all of the others. The degrees of separation in Hudson City are no more than two or three.
Mr. Sayles's skills as both writer and director have never been more evident than they are in City of Hope, which is shapely, theatrical and enormously skillful. It's not easy telling what initially appears to be at least five different stories at the same time.
The performances are so uniformly good that only a paid advertisement could possibly list everyone who deserves credit. In addition to those already mentioned, add the names of David Strathairn (as Hudson City's most conspicuous homeless person), Rose Gregorio as Nick's mother, Joe Grifasi as a City Hall wheeler-dealer, Gloria Foster as the mother of one of the two young muggers, Gina Gershon as Nick's sister, and Kevin Tighe as a detective on his way into politics.
Robert Richardson was the excellent cinematographer. It should also be noted that Mr. Sayles is himself fine as the Hudson City lowlife who more or less triggers all the action, and that he served as the editor of the film he wrote and directed.
City of Hope is a very big job well done and, I suspect, well done for a fraction of the cost of most major-company Hollywood movies. – Vincent Canby, The New York Times October 11, 1991, Friday
City of Hope (1991) is regarded as one of the most successful of Sayles' attempts to bring sociopolitical density to a screen entertainment. This account of the political and ethical landscape of a New Jersey city in the wake of rampant property development picks over the tribal allegiances of whites, African-Americans, police and the unions as each struggle for "juice", or municipal influence. When an aging apartment block is threatened with "development", a series of confrontations take place on multiple social levels over three days. Critic Walter Chaw described City of Hope as "a closed circle of aspiration and compromise, simple hopes impossibly complicated by the stark realities of life in a kind of wartime". Featuring performances from Sayles regulars David Strathairn — he and Sayles had known each other since Williams College — Chris Cooper, Angela Bassett, Vincent Spano, and the director's partner Maggie Renzi, co-produced by Renzi, scored by Mason Daring, City of Hope remains quintessential Sayles. In Time Out, Geoff Andrew wrote of a "genuinely epic, politically astute, profoundly humanist and dramatically gripping study of the conflicts, compromises and power plays that define life in any community on the verge of economic breakdown."
-- Richard Armstrong, Senses of Cinema
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Versión DVDRip --.
Publicada por kegir en KG.
Enlace:
John Sayles - City of Hope (1991).avi 
Subtítulos (descarga directa): inglés
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File Name .........................................: City of Hope.avi
File Size (in bytes) ............................: 1,618,987,008 bytes
Runtime ............................................: 2:09:52
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