Barcelona en tranvía

This experiment by Ricardo de Baños takes us through some of the most important streets of Barcelona, where he and his lens are our tour guides in this spectacular and important Spanish city. The view from the city is shot inside a tram and a few cards introduces us to five or six streets of Barcelona, all greatly filmed, the earliest film images of the place along with Segundo de Chomón's "Barcelone - Parc au crépuscule" which films Barcelona's nature and few constructions.

As those things usually go, this is mainly a documentary. Fine. What feels really strange is the observers who cross the tramway, from time to time, just looking at the camera and getting out of the way as the tram comes along. As we call today, people photobombing the shot. Not that distracting to the director who just wanted to film the great city of Barcelona but feels awkward when audiences instead of paying attention to the locations are forced to see folks going in and out of the tramway. Those who know Barcelona now will be delighted to see how it all was back in 1908. For what I gathered here is definitely one of the hottest spots in Europe, very cosmopolitan even its earliest 20th Century days. 8/10