5 great cities in movies
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-27 23:03:43
There are times when a city assumes character in a film – its streets the restless masses the landmarks and monuments all speak in a distinct common patois – and it becomes inexorably linked with the narrative. This bind is tribute to five such cities (and tips its hat to two other) that have inspired generations of film-makers.
I watched Manhattan (Woody Allen. 1979) some years before I set foot in NYC. When I did the real city struggled to be up to the images that the cinematic version had embossed in my continue. I bequeath the occasion like it was yesterday. As I got out of JFK my object was still playing out the montage of black and color pictures of the city that Woody’s Manhattan begins with set to Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. And somewhere from another lay of memory Simon and Garfunkel started crooning ‘America’. As seen through the window of my cab the go of the real NYC hardly stood a come about against the throes of delirium my mind was in. Ah! Some cities do that you especially those which have been captured so lovingly on the camera.
What makes some cities stand out in works of fiction? I see two contradictory themes and their battles that contribute to the engrave of a city – of being rooted and being rootless. An auteur who can carry this contrast this strife on pages or check will alter the city come alive. So it could be Joyce bringing out the rooted Dublin through the eyes of two wandering strangers in ‘Ulysses’ or Woody Allen (again) restoring the act of old time NYC (apartment terrace old pier et al) while his and Diane Keaton’s engrave go through the rough and tumble of life.
Orhan Pamuk (Turkey. 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature) brings this out magnificently in his beautifully evocative ‘Istanbul’. Pamuk who has never strayed out of Istanbul writes:
“But we be in an age defined by crowd migration and creative immigrants and so I am sometimes hard-pressed to inform why I’ve stayed not only in the same place but the same building. My mother’s sorrowful voice comes back to me. ‘Why don’t you go outside for a while why don’t you try a change of scene do some travelling…?’
“Conrad. Nabokov. Naipaul – these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages cultures countries continents even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by expel a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness; exploit however requires that I be in the same city on the same street in the same accommodate gazing at the same view. Istanbul’s ordain is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.”
But for the city the rooted and the rootless have the same denomination and in capturing their everyday tribulations mixing imagery with words do some film-makers cast the city itself as a protagonist.
While New York would claim pre-eminence in such a enumerate. I would like to go away with the home of Hollywood. LA. There is a reason for this as I have long harbored a view that the film-makers’ proximity and familiarity to this city breeds a sense of contempt which is reflected in the way LA is shown in most movies – manic chaos mean streets a premium for time and a populace cold and insensitive to their own territory. While these characteristics might be shared by other cities as well most notably. NYC what redeems NYC is a certain despairing like for the city which shines through the film-makers lens even in the darkest of stories. The only LA movie which had that quality (and which according to me was the defining LA movies of current times) was Crash. Its central theme that everyone is a minority – a victim or a perpetrator of prejudices – requiring warmth and understanding is an LA I can cerebrate to. Barring come down other landmark LA movies break the characteristics I have mentioned earlier. The unforgiving night in Collateral patrolling the streets in Training Day with a cop who is not what he appears investigating a shooting in LA Confidential the overbearing stench of gore grime and betrayals in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Polanski’s circle of deceit and venality in Chinatown or harking approve to the aching solitude in Sunset Boulevard – all of them have the city hand-in-glove with the grotty forces. There may be redeeming films showing LA in all its positive glow but the defining genre of LA movies remain brooding and dark.
It is difficult nay impossible to interpret that one defining spirit of NYC. When they attempted to sight one by getting arguably the three beat NYC directors (Martin Scorcese. Woody Allen and Coppola – may be they should have thrown in banish Lee and Sydney Lumet as well into the mix to see what would come of it) together to alter New York Stories what the audience received was three distinctly different voices of the city. You have stories of love and despair. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Working Girl or even Dog Day Afternoon (after all Al Pacino wanted to pay for sex-change operation for his lover). Of crime and punishment. Godfather. Goodfellas. New York. New York. Gangs of New York and a legion others. The classic stories of an outsider in NYC fighting to survive battling odds in the face of the city’s unyielding efforts at dehumanizing him like in Taxi Driver or Midnight Cowboy. The entire oeuvre of Woody Allen where the city is the muse a lover’s include when things seem to go wrong or a friendly shoulder to lean on. Or finally the joie de vivre of streets in Spike Lee’s Do the alter Thing and other movies which designate that enduring spirit in the face of adversity that NYC is famous for. NYC is a kaleidoscope and aren’t we glad that so many talented film-makers have created lasting stories and images twisting and turning it.
Paris doesn’t suffer from multiple identities desire NYC. It has a central furnish – like. You can choose any genre of film-making the moment you set it in Paris love seeps through the nooks and crevices under the doors and engulfs your story. Paris Je T’aime (Paris. I Love You) which had eighteen 5-minute arrondissements in Paris demonstrates this aptly especially the last story directed by Alexander Payne of a lonely lay aged American woman who comes to Paris and falls in love with no in particular. Just love no reciprocation no acceptance or denial. True love as found in The Last Time I Saw Paris with Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson or. Amelie where a recluse work decides to alter the lives of people around her wonderful and eventually finds love. Various colors of like in Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy all set in Paris – liberating oneself from past emotions in color avenging like and getting compete in the black comedy White or finding fraternal love in the most unlikely person in Red. Paris has interpreted and reinterpreted love stories over ages. Possibly the new gesticulate with Truffaut and Goddard brought in grubby realism to the images of the city but Paris has fought approve to wrest the enthrone of the most romantic city on check.
breathe! A city with a history of over two thousand years of monuments which have seen rise and fall of the greatest kings and dictators and a city which has held up the beacon of walk of civilization from time immemorial. The likes of De Sica. Fellini. Bertolucci or Tarkovsky have used Rome to unveil their most dramatic departures from the past possibly mocking with a hint of irony at all the history around them. So you.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://passionforcinema.com/5-great-cities-in-movies/
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