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The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth Image
Metascore
70 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 8 Critics What's this?

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  • Summary: It began as a housing marvel. Built in 1956, Pruitt-Igoe was heralded as the model public housing project of the future, "the poor man's penthouse." Two decades later, it ended in rubble - its razing an iconic event that the architectural theorist Charles Jencks famously called the death of modernism. The footage and images of its implosion have helped to perpetuate a myth of failure, a failure that has been used to critique Modernist architecture, attack public assistance programs, and stigmatize public housing residents. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth seeks to set the historical record straight. To examine the interests involved in Pruitt-Igoe's creation. To re-evaluate the rumors and the stigma. To implode the myth. (First Run Features)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Variety
    Reviewed by: Robert Koehler
    Feb 7, 2012
    80
    Detailing the birth, life and death of America's first major urban housing project in St. Louis, Chad Freidrichs' The Pruitt-Igoe Myth combines concise but thoroughgoing sociological-historical analysis and elegant cinematic resources in service of an uncommonly artful example of film journalism.
  2. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Eric Hynes
    Feb 7, 2012
    80
    Armed with archival footage and wrenching interviews, filmmaker Chad Freidrichs revisits one of our nation's darkest hours - and emerges with a scrupulous, revelatory consideration of the varied factors that turned a worthy plan into a horrific, state-sanctioned nightmare for a generation of working-class African-Americans.
  3. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Mark Feeney
    Apr 5, 2012
    50
    Under a different set of circumstances - in a different society - the development might have flourished. But The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a documentary, not fantasy.

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