How can we analyze the films we watch regarding urban representation? Are the images represented authentically? Are they a bit overrated? Or too dramatic?
The level of complexity concerning the relationship between the most important cultural forms in the modern era - cinema - and the most important aspect of social organization in the 21st century - the city - is indeed an endless loop, since both fields pay respect and correspondence to each other.
Since the early days of representation of Paris through the lens of the Lumiere Brothers all the way to the inception of dynamic metropolitan images of Hong Kong in John Woo's pictures, cinema has always been captivated by the idiosyncratic cityscapes, where human conditions make up the socio-spatial dynamism of the city. Cinema has turned cities into visual spectacles composed of symbolic signs and images that led to an increasingly "cinematized" society.
As an architect/urban planner, researcher and a cinephile, I started exploring this cultural blend during my Master studies where I just grabbed my small video camera and went on documenting every feature of what surrounds me. Whether it maybe abstract or concrete, there is no doubt that the mise-en-scène aspects altered some of the personal perceptions I held regarding modern society, with all its ingredients, as well as my spatial existence within its boundaries.
One of the [many] reasons I'm writing this article is to - hopefully - spotlight our current understanding of the city we're dwelling within. Is it actually what we think it is? Who are the people we're dealing with? What are these features we keep bumping into everyday? How can we step outside the daily routine loop for a while and wander around for no specific reason....just for the sake of observation? How can we analyze the films we watch regarding urban representation? Are the images represented authentically? Are they a bit overrated? Or too dramatic? And the list of questions just keeps going on and on.
This article is divided into two parts: the first part will explore cinema as a socio-spatial influence and its impact on our perceptions, and the second part will go deeper into the methodological techniques of understanding cities through cinematic images, i.e. a theory I call "Cine-Spatial Representation".
From Visuality to the Lens
Although his book 'America' (1988) was mostly concerned with his voyage to American Southwest deserts, Jean Baudrillard's description of crowded cities unfolded visual snapshots of cinema's influential role in creating a gazed society, highly fascinated by moving images, calling them "a system of luxury prefabrication, brilliant synthesis of the stereotypes of life and love".
This is one of several points at which theories concerning cinematic images collided with the physical settings of the city, where our senses, when utilized, allow us to discover more about ourselves and our vivid reflections upon a vast empty space rendered with a transitory landscape. The new ruins - the postmodern city - have rendered a series of speculative images that have isolated individuals' participation within the the city's transformation processes leaving them as mere observers. Hence, the new ruins are the modern forms of advanced capitalism. Being within a metropolitan context, i.e. the rapid changes of images, the stark discontinuity of normal gazes, and the emergence of a series notion of unexpectedness, all create emotional imbalance and disturbance.
Therefore, individuals come fact-to-face with a transformation process of space into place, i.e. giving value and meaning to space, with the exception of the virtual nature within which the transformation occurs. Several theorists have highlighted the socio-spatial ontology of film, hence its position within society, embedded in spatial structures. Cinema has given the city a new spatial definition and scope of existence - it completely revolutionized the notions of time and space. A camera moving within the city is a symbolic reflection of ourselves sauntering around observing everything encircling our vicinity - since cinema is projected all over the city, it cannot be restricted within the standard dimensions of a screen.
Film: A Socio-Spatial Influence
In almost every book addressing the relationship between cinema and the city, two movies usually pop up within the authors' minds, 'Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis' (1927) by Walter Ruttmann, and 'Man with a Movie Camera' (1929) by Dziga Vertov. Both films elevated our senses and excitement of modernity and the city, alongside the feeling of being within a fast-paced abstract chaotic spatial thrill-ride independent of any plot or characters. Furthermore, these two films have engaged narrative space with cinematic images (in-depth discussion in Part 2) to create a new form of spatial avant-garde, where reality is manifested into a modernistic type of spectacle laying basic grounds for urban cinema to evolve. The camera in both pictures is referred to as the third person - the flâneur - the contemporary city stroller who happened to be critical subject of several authors considering the importance of his/her/its existence within the built settings.
The flâneur in David Clarke's book 'The Cinematic City' (1997) is spotlighted as modernity's newly-born that combined the potential of both the camera - which documented the labyrinth nature of urban experiences, and the editor - who structured these experiences into a harmonious narrative manner. In this sense, a theory suggests that cinematic representation was born within the audience's perceptions in association with certain aesthetic significance, an approach that developed itself along the historical timeline of the film industry. A couple of examples would be, the Hollywood sign would refer to the glamorous show business that glitters the city of Los Angeles, and Wall Street symbolizing the accumulation of capitalism and power casting their shadows over New York.
"IT IS THE SAME FEELING YOU GET WHEN YOU STEP OUT OF AN ITALIAN OR A DUTCH GALLERY INTO A CITY THAT SEEMS THE REFLECTION OF THE PAINTINGS YOU HAVE JUST SEEN, AS IF THE CITY HAD COME OUT OF THE PAINTINGS AND NOT THE OTHER WAY ABOUT" - JEAN BAUDRILLARD
So, here comes the end of Part 1. As previously mentioned, the second part of the article will explore the theory of cine-spatial representation, i.e. how space encompasses cinematic features that reflect its core identity. Please share your comments, ideas, thoughts, criticism, and/or any sort of information and/or interesting facts.