Hutton's latest urban film, NEW YORK PORTRAIT III, takes on aunique tone in relation to Hutton's ongoing exploration of rural landscape. The veryfact that Hutton is dealing with older footage, with archives of memory more thanimmediacy, gives it a different texture than his earlier New York films, in spite ofmany continuities with them. Hutton always found the presence of nature in the city,not only in his many shots of sky and vegetation, but also in the geometry andtexture of the city itself, which seemed to project an independence from the human.This film seems to bathe itself in a nostalgia for things human, as if Hutton werelooking at a vanishing race. Again humor rather than lamentation prevails, but neverhas it seemed that people were so contingent in Hutton's films. The high angle ofobservation, frequent in Hutton's previous New York films (and an invocation oftheir diaristic observer quality), here seems to carry a sense of withdrawal, adistance matched by compassion. ... The final image in which a small shape againstthe scale of skyscraper and sky suddenly reveals itself as human by its motion seemsemblematic, as does Hutton's observations of the accidents and rescue of peoplebelow on the street.