The Cinematic City

ISBN-13: 9780415127455 / Angielski / Twarda / 1997 / 264 str.

David Clarke

Opis

The city plays a central role in a multitude of films. Yet the relationship between city and cinema has been neglected in both film and urban studies. How has cinema shaped our view of the city? What is the role of the city in film? This text offers an insight into cityscape and screenscape and their inter-connection. Illustrated throughout with movie stills, a diverse selection of films (from Bladerunner to Little Caesar), genres, cities and historical periods are examined. The key dimensions of film and urban theory are introduced before detailed analysis of the various cinematic forms which relate most significantly to the city. From early cinema and documentary film, to film noir, New Wave and postmodern cinema, the book considers a wide range of material and illustration, drawing on the theoretical insights of contemporary feminism, Benjamin, Baudrillard, Foucault, Lacan, and others.

Recenzje

'This innovative and thought-provoking study, utilising examples from 'Blade Runner' to Little Caesar', demonstrates how the city has undeniably shaped by the cinematic form, and how cinema owes much of its nature to the historical development of urban space.' - The Art Book Review Quarterly Issue 31

Spis treści

List of Plates, List of Contributors, Introduction: Previewing the Cinematic City, 1. Chinese Boxes and Russian Dolls: Tracking the Elusive Cinematic City, 2. City Views: The Voyage of Film Images, 3. Of Plans and Planners: Documentary Film and the Challenge of the Urban Future, 1935–52, 4. Something More than Night: Tales of the Noir City, 5. Urban Confidential: The Lurid City of the 1950s, 6. Cinécities in the Sixties, 7. From Ramble City to the Screening of the Eye: Blade Runner, Death and Symbolic Exchange, 8. ‘The People in Parentheses’: Space Under Pressure in the Postmodern City, 9. Mainly in Cities and at Night: Some Notes on Cities and Film, 10. Piecing Together What Remains of the Cinematic City, 11. Maps, Movies, Musics and Memory, Index

O autorze

David Clarke is a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leeds.