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. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Rachel Saltz
    Feb 7, 2012
    80
    This history is too recent to seem dry, and the film gets an added emotional punch from interviews with former tenants, whose memories mix fondness with anger and loss.
  4. 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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