Maybe you've been watching some post-apocalyptic films here and there, but there are few like this one that make you feel like you've travelled through time without moving an inch: 23 Skidoo, a 1964 black-and-white short film from the Canadian filmmaker Julian Biggs, is like standing on today's Montreal's street corners. This time, however, you've been transported 50 years into the past.
Much like today, this film's streets show a Montreal that's completely empty and silent. As the camera passes through the suburbs of Montreal into the city core, we see places that are still recognizable, from Place Ville Marie, the historic Old Montreal borough and the Gare Centrale train station downtown to alleyways in the Plateau, scenes in the Metro and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport. The one thing these shots don't have in common with the present is the reason they're empty. We hate spoilers, so just watch the 8-minute film for yourself:
23 Skidoo, Julian Biggs, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
The similarities of this film's empty streets feel all too real when we see what Montreal looks like right now. When Julian Biggs made this film in the 1960s, it was in response to the Cold War era following World War II, when the Earth lived in a perpetual fear of nuclear annihilation. The enemy then felt real and physical, even if it might have been a missile silo 1,000 miles away; these days, Montreal's empty streets and the global lockdown felt everywhere is caused by something we can't see with the naked eye, but it doesn't mean watching this film feels any less real and eerily similar—especially with the film's sci-fi reason for abandoned streets every which way you look.
We can’t help but want to see what our cities look like without anyone in them. Photographers have been taking to the streets of Montreal, Miami, Chicago, New York and drone footage of the biggest shutdown we've ever seen in recent memory is coming out of many more cities across North America.
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