Amazon.co.uk Review
It may be the catalogue for an exhibit mounted first at Brown University, but in the way it explores the set designs of films produced in Weimar, Germany, and later,
Film Architecture doesn't read like scaffolding to an event long past. Beginning with oddball stuff like
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari whose tilting, dream-curved sets would appeal equally to Virginia Woolf (who praised its visual shorthand for the nervous metropolis) and the Viennese architect Adolf Loos (who saw the possibilities in its plastic city), the book devotes sections to big-look movies like Fritz Lang's
Metropolis, King Vidor's
The Fountainhead and Jacques Tati's
Playtime. Each film, the authors argue, further explores the psychologically charged spaces that
Dr. Caligari first created, and each eventually incorporates the look of actual cities within its urban visions. As much a collection of photographs of film sets as an examination of Expressionist influences on filmic cityscapes from the 1920s to the near-present,
Film Architecture is full of information--for example, that the abiding strangeness of Tati's work in Mon Oncle "elicited furious responses from members of the architectural profession". (Does this happen outside France?) And that Playtime's singular vision of modernity also, in some respects, shapes a film about building developments in Paris, including the glassy Gare Montparnasse and the "infamous Sarcelles" in the 'burbs. With reproductions of sketches for sets and glossy images of darkling cities, the book shows over and over that our love of cities is inseparable from the way movies regularly shade them into our unconscious. --
Lyall Bush
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Synopsis
Through a series of contributions from major scholars, this book examines visionary architecture in films by focusing on original set designs from filmmakers across Europe and the United States. The book begins with medievalizing, expressionistic and psychological sets for films, such as "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari" and "Algol", and moves on to experimental depictions of the anticipated modern city in such films as "Asphalt and Sunrise" and the dark view of the future in "Metropolis". The cinema of the Weimar Republic is taken as a case study, as both architecture and film played an important role in the social and cultural self-definition of the young state, which found itself searching for its own brand of modernity between neo-medievalism and Americanism. The text traces later responses to the early, far-reaching discussions about the relationship between film, architecture and the city by presenting original visionary designs for American films. "The Fountainhead" is shown as an example of how the ideology of modern architecture was presented to a mass audience in the United States.
"Blade Runner" and "Batman" present a post-modern, dystopian view of the city following the earlier cinematic discussions of "Metropolis". "Dick Tracy" and "The Hudsucker Proxy" represent yet another approach, in their nostalgic reflections on an imaginary New York of the past. The book is illustrated with many familiar backdrops to famous movies. It combines original set designs with publicity stills and prints from actual footage. It elucidates the role of the set designer in the creation of a movie, documents the process from the initial sketch to the final product, and places set design in relation to contemporary architectural debates, illustrating its position relative to painting, stage design and architecture. The volume is published to coincide with an exhibition of the same name at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, at the Academy of Motion Pictures Exhibition Gallery in Los Angeles and at another key venue in the United States, before being shown at the Film and Architecture Museums in Frankfurt.
