The Ballad Of Greenwich Village

Filmmaker Karen Kramer only skims the surface of New York City's Greenwich Village, a storied tangle of twisty, cobblestoned streets on Manhattan's Lower West Side, but her serviceable survey offers a few insightful interviews and some great archival footage. Opening with a quote from literary critic Alfred Kazin that asks where but Greenwich Village could a rebellious freethinker settle, Kramer traces the neighborhood's antiauthoritarian roots back to 1811, when Village residents insisted on maintaining the borders formed by streams and Indian paths rather than conform to the grid pattern of streets and avenues that would soon demarcate the rest of Manhattan. That s...