A Capital Plan
1949 · 11m · Canada
Directed by Bernard Devlin
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative
Planner Jacques Gréber redesigns a congested, polluted Ottawa into an orderly capital of distinct neighbourhoods.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1949 NFB doc about urban planning sounds like the opposite of subversive—it's literally state-sanctioned vision—but that's precisely why it interests me: the film probably unintentionally exposes the authoritarian dreams baked into mid-century modernism, which makes it accidentally more radical than most intentional provocations.
Gréber's redesign of Ottawa positions this as a key document in the lineage of modernist urbanism cinema, and Devlin's contemplative approach to mapping the transformation suggests a film acutely aware of its place in the documentary canon—the kind of period artifact that rewards close formal reading alongside its historical substance.
What likely elevates this from civic boilerplate is the editing choice in how the film spatializes Gréber's vision—whether through montage, transition, or the rhythm of revealing before-and-after—that specific structural decision probably makes the abstract concept of 'orderly capital' feel tactile and immediate rather than just bureaucratic.