Introduction: An architecture of social being -- The spatial constitution of 1930s documentary -- Rene Clair's city views: realism and Studio Paris -- Intertext and political margins in Jean Renoir's Boudu Sauve des Eaux -- Traversing built history in architectural documentaries -- Flaneuses and the unmaking of place -- The crowd as new monumentality during the popular front -- Epilogue: Poetic realism as spatial fable.