The Pruitt-igoe Myth: An Urban History Reviews

The personal stories told by former residents add a poignancy to the broad trends the film examines.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

Urban decay finds home in Pruitt-Igoe

Full Review | Original Score: B

Myth convinces that St. Louis failed Pruitt-Igoe, and not the other way around.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Using archival footage and interviews with former residents, Freidrichs adds human dimension and historical context to what is often viewed in simple terms as a misguided blip.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Captivating, engrossing and enraging.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.15/10

A thought-provoking, cinematic picking of the bones of the scattered exoskeleton of a once-promising 'poor man's penthouse.'

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

The drugs, fear and violence cannot be shown but are palpable in the speakers' memories.

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I quibble about facts emphasized or omitted, [but] the memorable images, valuable personal testimonies and... huge empty lot should help frame a discussion [on] urban policy.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10

"The Pruitt-Igoe Myth" doesn't offer easy conclusions.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

In some ways, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is more elegy than analysis.

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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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Deeply impressive and disturbing exposé of what went terribly wrong with one hopeful post-War American housing experience.

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The film ends on a note of courage, and a call-to-action that we "remember," naturally, but we can't completely buy it: What Freidrichs has accomplished is a portrait of unknowability.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Given the ongoing shredding of the social safety net in America, the film's greatest service might be to remind us that programs and services for the poor have always had hostile enemies.

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It's a heartbreaking alarm call for a society that desperately needs to learn from its worst mistakes.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

An engulfing real-life horror story as well as a testimony to the dominance of the image in American public discourse.

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...moving and revelatory.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Pruitt-Igoe was the first, and most famous, example of the failure of that sort of public housing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

St. Louis housing project is immortalized as a symbol of failure

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