Lecture Notes 5: Cities and Film

This lecture will look into the city in terms of Modernism and Postmodernism, the possibility of an urban sociology, the city as public and private space, and the relation of the individual to the crowd in the city.

Industrialisation

• The first known urban sociologist is Georg Simmel (1958-1918) who wrote "Metropolis" and "Mental Life" in 1903
• For the Dresden Exhibition , Simmel was asked to lecture on the role of intellectual life in the city but instead reverses the idea and writes about the effect of the city on the individual
• "the resistance of the individual to being levelled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism." ~ Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life", 1903
• It was believe that architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) coined the term modernism, creator of the modern skyscraper, an influential architect and critic of the Chicago school. he was a mentor to Frank Lloyd
• "form ever follows function" ~ Louis Sullivan
• The Guaranty Building was built in 1894 by Adler and him in Buffalo NY

•  The Guaranty Building was divided into 4 zones, different styles of blocks distinguish the three visible zones of the building from one another: 

1. The basement being the mechanical and utility area with no decorative elements since it was below ground
2. The next zone was the ground floor zone, namely the public area for shops, entrances and lobbies 
3. The third zone was the office floors done in a practical (Expectedly mundane) design with identical office cells clustered together around the central elevator shafts
4. And the final zone was the terminating zone, consisting of elevator equipment, utilities and a few offices

Carson Pirie Scott store (1904)

• Skyscrapers represent the upwardly mobile city of business opportunity
• Fire cleared buildings in Chicago in 1871 and made way for Louis Sullivan new aspirational buildings

• "Manhatta" (1921) was a short documentary film by Paul Strand and Charles Scheeler while revels in the has rising from city smoke stacks, pieces of texts from Whalt Whitman's poetry were used for part of the title cards, the film being an obvious reference to the city of Manhattan (Hehe…). The objective was to explore the relationship between photography and film, with camera movements being kept a minimum, and the relationship of people with buildings, transport, etc. It was an attempt to show the filmmakers' love for the city of New York.
• Charles Scheeler was an advertising photographer for Ford Moto Company, his works reflecting industrialism and modernism

A production line created for maximum productivity with minimum effort
through repetitive mechanical action

• The term Fordism was coined by Antonio Gramsci in his essay "Americanism and Fordism", it is a notion of a modern economic and social system based on an industrialised and standardised form of mass production
• This subject has been brought up numerous times in classic cartoons, such as Looney Tunes (Acme anyone?), I couldn't find a particular example (I mean there definitely a lot of them around it's just a lot harder to find them than I thought) so have the music that normally goes with those scenes of Fordism and Taylorism instead:

• "the eponymous manufacturing system designed to spew out standardised, low cost goods and afford its workers decent enough wages to buy them" ~ De Grazia: 2005:4

• Charlie Chaplin parodied this in "Modern Times" (1936), portraying an industrial worker employed on an assembly line, who is driven mad after being subjected to several awful mishaps involving machinery, and causes chaos in the factory he works, he gets accused of being a communist, goes to jail, meets a girl, works as a waited, before ending up becoming a performer
• Charlie was investigated into later on because of this film, being placed under suspicion for actually being a communist
• "In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him" ~ Marx cited in "Adamson" 2010, Pg75
• During the stock market crash of 1929, factories closed and unemployment rates went up dramatically, leading to the Great Depression

• "The Man with a Movie Camera" (1929) by Dziga Vertov, was a Russian silent documentary film with no story and no actors, a revolutionary film at the time for using various cinematic techniques that Vertov himself invented, deployed and developed (Such as double exposure, fast and slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, extreme close ups, tracking shots, etc.). Vertov's film strove to awaken the Soviet citizen through truth and ultimately bring about understanding and action. It celebrates industrialisation, mechanisation, transport and communication. It explores locations where bodies come together in masses, much like Manhatta and the celebration of machinery.

Noir

• Weegee (Arthur Fellig) worked in the Lower East Side of New York City as a press photographer during the 30s and 40s, developing his signature style of stark black and white shots of unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injury and death by following the city's emergency services and documenting their activity
• The nickname Weegee is phonetic rendering of Ouija (Spirit board), because of his frequent, seemingly prescient arrivals at scenes only minutes after crimes, fires or other emergencies were repotted to authorities

• "The Naked City" (1984) is a black and white film noir based on a story by Malvin Wald, depicting a police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives to find the girl's killer. The movie is shot partially in a documentary style
• The film was selected for preservation in the USNFR by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historical, or aesthetically significant"
• "There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them." ~ Tag line in the "Naked City"

• Team Bondi's "L.A Noire" (2011) is the first video game to be shown at the Tribecca Film, the game incorporates "MotionScan" where actors are recorded by 32 surrounding cameras to capture facial expressions from every angle
• This technology is central to the game's interrogation mechanics as players must ust the suspects' reaction to questioning to judge whether they are lying or not

• As the title suggests, the game draws heavily from both plot and aesthetic elements of film noir (There are even several cases named after well known noir films, such as "The Naked City"), the game uses a distinctive colouring style in homage to the visual style of film noir, including an option to play the game in black and white (If your eyesight is good enough that is). The post war setting is the backdrop for plot elements that reference the detective films of the 40s (Especially from "L.A Confidential"), such as corruption and drugs, with a jazz soundtrack
• More information can be found in this write up I did in the past

Flaneur

• The term flaneur comes from the French masculine noun flaneur - which as the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer" - which itself comes from the French verb flamer, which means "to stroll"
• Charles Baudelaire propose a version of the flaneur that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it"
• Art should capture this
• Simultaneously apart from and a part for the crowd

• The flaneur version of a photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitring, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flaneur finds the world 'picturesque'
• The female version is the invisible Flaneuse, with the flaneur almost always being male
• Janet Wolff refers to the idea that it wasn't common at the time for women to be outside on the streets at the time (1985)
• Susan Buck-Morss suggests that the only figure a woman on the street can be is either a prostitute or a bag lady
• "The Detective" (1980), a woman named Calle gets her mother to employ a detective to follow her, proceeding to lead the unknowing detective around parts of Paris that were particularly important to her, thereby reversing the expected position of the observed subject
• Such projects, with their suggestions of intimacy, also questioned the role of the spectator, with viewers often feeling a sense of unease as they became unwitting collaborators in these violations of privacy
• The deliberately constructed and artificial nature of the documentary 'evidence' used in Calle's work questioned the nature of all truths
• Calle wanted to proved photographic evidence of her existence, his photos and notes on her are later on displayed next to her photos and notes of him
• Documentation of 9/11 where images from many different people were taken of the incident, these images were then all put together and remained anonymous, a democracy of photographs

• Lorca di Corcia "Heads" (2001), is able to capture these dramatic, thoughtful scenes of his subjects, with accidental poses, unintended movements and insignificant expressions, almost looks staged even
• In 2006, a NY trial court issued a ruling in a case involving one of his photographs, a photo subject of his argued that his privacy and religious rights had been violated by both the taking and publishing of the photograph of him. The judge dismissed this lawsuit, finding the photograph taken on street is art- not commerce- and therefore protected by the First Amendment
• The judge ruled that NY courts have "recognised that art can be sold, at least in limited editions, and still retain its artistic character"
• "First Amendment of art is not limited to only starving artists. A profit motive in itself does not necessarily compel a conclusion that art has been used for trade purposes"