Here's Chicago! The City of Dreams
Ted Hearne, 1983, 13 min, 70mm with DTS sound

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“A lot of Chicagoans we interviewed were first shy about expressing their true feelings for the city,” said Hearne. “They’re so used to being put down. But when we prodded them, they displayed pride and a developing consciousness that Chicago really is a world class city.”

Hearne’s crew exposed 32,000 feet of 65mm negative for The City of Dreams, with ample aerial footage from around the city. Chicago’s architecture receives pride of place. A voiceover breezily acknowledges the wonders of Rome and Paris, only to aver, “If you want to see the 20th century, you come to Chicago, because these are the monuments of our time.” (The film cheats a little by including the striking Bahá'í House of Worship in suburban Wilmette in its architectural honor roll.) The film closes with a photomontage that recounts the city’s history.

The City of Dreams takes ample advantage of the 65mm frame, capturing the hustle and bustle of the Loop, the elevated trains, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and more in crisp, detailed widescreen compositions that provide a vivid sense of urban life in the early ’80s. A brash and sprawling entry in a genre more often geared towards delivering facts from the local Chamber of Commerce in made-to-order, small-gauge recitations, The City of Dreams reminds us that 70mm exhibition in its heyday encompassed more than Hollywood road show presentations. The format was also used in theme parks, trade shows, and other non-theatrical contexts, leaning on highly-resolved cinematography and multi-channel magnetic sound to provide the deluxe treatment to engines of American commerce. (As if to emphasize that lineage, The City of Dreams was projected in an auditorium with no seats, “as viewers stand against railings à la Disneyworld” according to one contemporary observer.)
 

“an abundance of junk made in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan without any relevance at all to Chicago.”

Of Heartbeat Chicago and The City of Dreams, Borcover observed:

Both presentations, accompanied by quadraphonic sound, are visually exciting. But when the whole world knows about Chicago’s warts - Al Capone, the violence during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the depressing slums of the South and West Sides, and the comic/sad politics—why pretend they don’t exist?

In fact, the content and fortunes of Here’s Chicago! were shaped by political considerations, comic, sad, or otherwise. As a provision of the lease, the Byrne administration had veto power over sensitive subjects and invoked it during the planning of the initial exhibits. (Far from a campaign tool for Bryne, Here’s Chicago! did not open to the public until several months after Bryne had lost the mayoralty to Harold Washington.) Subsequent administrations took a lighter approach: Mayor Eugene Sawyer raised no objections to an Al Capone-themed exhibit, and called Here’s Chicago! “a crown jewel in our city” upon proclaiming 10 August 1988 to be William F. Harnett Day.
 

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“We opened in 1983 and nobody came. It’s picked up every year since …. Our customers fill out a form so we have a pretty good idea of where they’re from: 7 percent Chicago, 26 percent suburbs, 53 percent out-of-state, 14 percent overseas.”

It wasn’t enough. In 1993, the City moved to revoke the 20-year lease, citing $400,000 in accumulated real estate taxes and interest penalties. Here’s Chicago! claimed breach of contract and sued the City for $3 million. After a Cook County judge threw out the claim and awarded petitioners $31,626, Here’s Chicago! closed in March 1996. On 18 May 1996, Here’s Chicago! auctioned off its remaining assets, including a fog machine, an Audiotronic Abraham Lincoln robot, a popcorn popper, the 100 Years After the Fire mural, and the 35mm/70mm Kinoton projectors that once ran The City of Dreams twenty-five times a day.

Nearly a quarter century after its closure, Here’s Chicago! is scarcely remembered by locals or tourists. With the partnership that developed The City of Dreams long dissolved, the film is an ungainly orphan -an oddball among 70mm productions but an epic outlier among city travelogues.
 

"The City of Dreams" Credits

About the Restoration and new 70mm Print