Modern architecture through the lens of film
Enrique Lรณpez Oropeza
Modern architecture through the lens of film Enrique LĂłpez Oropeza
Abstract The Industrial revolution brought us new techniques and materials in the manufacturing sector. Architecture took the most advantage by using these new inventions to create a new style with characteristics that couldn’t have even being imagined by the wildest mind of the time. The modern way of living and all of its philosophy brought a new conundrum, how to communicate and spread this new way of thinking to the masses? Fortunately, at same time a new invention by the Lumiere Brothers appeared: film. In 30 years after its inception it had become not only an industry as a whole but it also found a way to sneak into what we now consider art. Films naturally began expressing ideas that range from the most conservative to radical groundbreaking ways of thinking to also propaganda products. Architecture with the needed to communicate its new ideology, films needed to amaze and intrigue audiences and what better way than to show something never seen before. It is a perfect match. The architectural practice rejoiced with this new effective way of communicating, a marriage of image and sound proved to be very. Politicians and governments would also use film as a tool to keep or even gain more followers and control, in fact also architecture was used as a mean to communicate their ideals. Propaganda is a term that was widely extended during this time though it is mostly referred in a sociopolitical sense, but in a way it can be applied to this marriage between film and architecture. Then the question arises, is film criticizing architecture or is architecture selling its ideals through film?
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Introduction The birth of film and film sets The rise of the metropolis: towards a new architecture The communion: a critique of modern ideas WWII: Film and architecture as a propaganda machine Film follows function: the role of the architect on film It’s a match!
1. Introduction In the movie industry there are roles highly regarded and respected such as the actors, the director, writers, producers and composers. There is however a crucial person on films that without him even the story couldn’t unfold properly: the person in charge of the sets. Depending on the film this person can be called a production designer, art director, or film architect1. There’s a reason why in screenplays the first thing described in a scene is the location; without it, it would be impossible to determine the genre or intention of a film. Whether is night or day, interior or exterior, or a medieval castle or a contemporary museum, set design is essential for the narrative of a film. Design, of course, has its own history. Just in the last hundred years, architects and designers have gone from brutalism to futurism and back. New breakthrough technologies, techniques of construction and styles have appeared and became topic of study and experimentation for many. But while architects like to think that their sense of beauty is admired and shared by anyone who beholds, the reality is that it takes some time for the general population to arrive at a consensus related to their work. There’s no better example than the time when the Eiffel Tower was unveiled at the World’s Fair in 1889. There are reports of Parisians loathing the structure, calling it a “metal monstrosity” and demanding it to be taken down2. Now it seems impossible not to think of the tower when we hear anything related to France or even Europe. That’s the iconographical power that a building can have on people’s subconscious and the relationship to its place. So, in that same manner modern architecture struggled to be recognized and appreciated during its first years. Yet there was a tool that preceding styles didn’t take advantage on: the power of communication of the new invention called film. Film would be both the tool for spreading modern ideas as also the voice of critique of the general masses towards it. In this text, those elements will be explored chronologically through case studies for both film and architecture.
2. The birth of film and film sets When the Lumiere brothers set out to invent the cinematographer little did they know they were inventing not only a new industry but a new form of art. What began as an experiment of putting picture after picture to give the impression of movement quickly inspired and turned on the imagination of fellow creative minds to explore the possibilities of this technology; more specifically to tell a story. Which are the basic elements of a story? Characters, their action and a setting. The latter is the one that through the years has changed and evolved the most, and the one that is the subject of our study. 1 Such differences have been described in the book “Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination” 2 Remarked in Jonnes, Jill (2009). Eiffel's Tower: The Thrilling Story Behind Paris's Beloved Monument
If we go back to one of the first films ever recorded “L’arrivée d’un rain à La Ciotat (A train arriving at the station)” we can easily find these three elements. The characters being the train and the people, the action being the train arriving and the people waiting for it and of course the train station as a setting. By today standards it may seem as the least outstanding thing in the world, however it was reported that during its initial showings people watching the film would run out in terror as the train approached; apparently they were so immersed on the experience of being transported to a train station that they really thought they were there and that this moving object would run over them. Basically, this is still why we still watch films. If we fast-forward 110 years we can take Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” as a good example of how the work of the production designer can transport us to space from the very first shot or in Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” where instead of being 100% accurate about the ways and forms of the time, a deliberate decision is made to update it so that we as an audience can see and feel what this young queen was experiencing in XVIII century France. Going back to the end of the XIX century, the filmic product of the time can be labeled in the best sense possible as experimental. There is one name, whose work produced at this time can give him the title of the very first master of cinema: George Méliès. What he did for film history is remarkable, not only he achieved close to 10 films per year but also the care, thought and passion he put into each project3. His fascination of transporting audiences to new places is still palpable even today. He built a studio in Paris, a box of glass and metal that was miles ahead of its time compared to any structure built in those years. Yet it’s quite curious that one of the first truly modern designs in history is belonging to a building erected exclusively for the making of film4.
From the gothic mansion in 1896 “La Manoir du Diable” to a futuristic space station before space exploration was even conceived in “Le Voyage dans la Lune” his magnus opus, the sets he designed in 3 Most of Mèliés’s films are lost, yet at least exist a record of every production. They are listed on his Internet Movie Data Base biography page. 4 The details of this structure for both film an architecture are described in “The ‘imponderable fluidity’ of modernity: Georges Méliès and the architectural origins of cinema” by Brian R. Jacobson
his studio were something related more of a theatre in the sense of being one dimensional planes but the essence of that desire to transport us to new worlds is still there. It is in an architectural sense that his work doesn’t really do anything directly to push forward modernism. Which is why we would need to skip the next 20 years in the history of film. Again, it’s doesn’t mean that there isn’t any innovation in this time, it just means that it would take some time for filmmakers to take notice on the the way modernism was beginning to change the way people lived their daily lives. Or it is perhaps that architects needed to have their intentions clearer and take modernism to the next step.
3. The rise of the metropolis: towards a new architecture Let us go back a little bit in time to the mid XIX century. Architecture was going through a crisis of sorts, stuck in design movements ranging from the neoclassical to the neogothic and all the way to some dubious results of eclecticism. This trend of looking back to some centuries ago and to redo dated styles can be claimed to be a bit of a desperate solution and an alternative when architects of that time ran out of ideas. Luckily, the industrial revolution brought with its advancements and techniques a new philosophy and manner of doing and living that wasn’t even conceived before. Without the necessity of materials being handmade, a slow shift in the thinking of the structure of buildings arrived in the minds of engineers, architects and designers. Naturally, these scientific discoveries were first combined with the classical and traditional form and style of the time. A good example of this first attempts is Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace at the London world exposition in 1851 constructed basically with prefabricated iron and glass with results that weren’t seen for several decades later. One of this being the before mentioned George Mèliés ‘s studio. Gustave Eiffel set out to outdo this construction for the exhibition in 1889 having as a result the tallest building at the time. Though not without some initial detractors5, it can be claimed that these structures sparked the imagination of some young architects and gave them a new standard to aim for. And so a new exciting phase of experimentation arrived, one which gave us buildings with results we could divide into two blocks: the ones testing the limits of new materials in a structural manner and the ones interested in the way ornamentation could be applied with new techniques. Since transportation also had leaps forward, now an architect could easily travel and admire his colleague’s 5 It has been reported that the artists of the time established that: “We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection … of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower”
work. Periodical publications also thrived giving another tool for architects where they could find photographs or plans of architecture located in the other side of the world. Considering that world’s fairs became also spectacles for the masses, it turned out that designing a building came with enormous expectations for the general public. For some time, the practice was taking hold the idea that every building should be a “total work of art” meaning that it should be treated more as a sculptural object. Few were able to succeed in this extreme Art Nouveau way of thinking, Gaudi or Victor Horta being two of them. However, if all of this technological marvels were in favor of this limited manner of thought then architecture would’ve entered into another crisis. Luckily it didn’t go that way and so a handful took a different route, especially an architect working in Chicago. Louis Sullivan began his career in a situation already stated before. He took a decadent style and gradually injected new life in it. After the 1871 fire, Chicago became a sort of playground for architects and works such as the Monadock building by Burnham & Root or the Home Insurance building by William Le Baron Jenney would later inspire Sullivan’s work and help him establish what we have get to known as the modern skyscraper6. Sullivan’s Guaranty building or the Monadnock are the perfect example of a contradiction, although not evident yet, of the time. While the main volume began to reach impossible heights, facades themselves relied on details that were clearly based upon neoclassic or neogothic styles. Sullivan had already laid the ground for new architects to come and take his ideas to a new level, a notable one that was coincidentally Sullivan’s apprentice was Frank Lloyd Wright. After working for Sullivan, Wright took some of his mentor’s ideas as a starting point. His work from then evolved immensely through the years, and is perhaps one of the best examples of whose body of work reflects almost perfectly the evolution of modern architecture. During the first two decades of the XX century his designs mark a transition and experimentation of the form, trying to shy away from the established, yet the results can hardly be fully labeled as modern buildings.In Europe though, there were three other names that would help to establish what we know now as modern architecture: Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. When the First World War arrived, our two main subjects suffered the consequences though in almost opposite ways. Film considered as just a form of entertainment of course went to bottom of priorities especially in European countries. Important figures like Mèliés went bankrupt, turned off their film productions and turned to do something else for a living. But while film industry suffered 6 There’s some debate as to whom can be considered “the father of the skyscraper”. Louis Sullivan or William Le Baron Jenney.
in Europe, in the United States gradually but surely transformed into a great business. Unfortunately, neither place produced work of significant value that could directly advance the art. Architecture however, with the destruction of cities and buildings saw the rise of new opportunities for the architect to reconstruct and rethink the city. During 1919 in Germany, Walter Gropius was appointed as the new head of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, which he eventually transformed it into the now famous Bauhaus. Its main goal was to prepare future artists and architects for the now industrial needs of the public and shy away from individual craftsmanship7. The school established in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin respectively, and it’s in here where we can remark that the true modern architectural style was forged. We just need a glance into the Dessau facilities to comprehend that the “form follows function”8 concept that Louis Sullivan first introduced, had been fully comprehended and applied in a revolutionary way.
Quickly two more voices would add to this seemingly extreme notion in architecture. Also in Germany, Mies van der Rohe began experimenting in the hope of finding a new style that would be suitable for the modern industrial age. Culminating masterfully in the temporary German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition (also known as the Barcelona Pavilion) in 1929. Meanwhile in France and Switzerland Le Corbusier designed a series of villas that gave him the means to arrive in 1929 at the Villa Savoye which sums up what he called the Five Points of Architecture. The modern landscape in architecture had arguably arrived at a significant point where it could have the luxury of being called a new style. Architects and designers were thrilled with the endless possibilities this meant for them. However most of this projects tended to be private commissions and thus they would be experienced by a small amount of the population. And for them this new architecture represents different things that stray quite a bit from thrilling.
7 As shown in the preface of the Director of the Museum of Modern Art (1938) Alfred Barr’s book “Bauhaus” (edited by Gropius and Bayer), 8 Wrote by Louis Sullivan in "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (March 1896)
4. The communion: a critique of modern ideas During the first two decades of the XX century, set design focused mainly in telling stories from the past, creating fantastical worlds or grounding simple stories in the present. In America, the economy boosted for at least 10 years after the war. More money was put into films transforming it into the big industry and the rise of Hollywood that we know of today9. Bigger productions meant more freedom to explore new subjects and with it more impressive and never before seen sets designs. Films were know divided by genres, comedies, dramas, horror and few examples of science fiction. Comedian and director Buster Keaton had been working in the industry for some years now but there is one of his work that should be of interest to anyone who is familiar with some of the criticism of post modernism. “One Week” is a 1920 short film criticizing the “do it yourself” process that was rising in the products of the time. In it, Keaton’s character builds by himself a house for him and his new bride, however it doesn’t turn according to plan and the result is a building that could very well be designed by Frank Ghery now in the XXI century. When doing this comparison, it’s fascinating the sad and comic tone in which Keaton treats the scene. Does this mean that if general audiences of the 1920’s were treated to experience something like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao would they have rejected it completely? Would they have laughed at it? Of course we can only speculate their reaction, but if even today Ghery’s work is divisive and controversial at least we can be certain that the majority of the public wouldn’t have gotten what Ghery is going for. Here lies the point of it all, while “One Week” functions as a comic/tragic film showing the way industrialization has changed the way production works at the same time it criticizes it, all while telling a simple story.
9 As explained by Tim Dirks in The History of Film: The 1920s “The Pre-Talkies and the Silent Era”
“Safety Last!” was released in 1923 to very positive reviews from audiences. The image of Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock tower became iconic and above all tell us about the sort of things that made audiences gasp of fear or excitement. Before the high rise buildings that became prominent in Chicago and New York, very few had access to a tall structure from where they could stand, admire that surroundings or in this case have a strong sense of vertigo. Arguably, “Safety Last!” is the first film to explore this fear in a motion picture which is so closely linked to the kind of structures that Louis Sullivan had developed some years prior. The concept of a film set varied greatly from America to Europe. While the industry blossomed and forged the big production companies in the former, the latter was suffering a shortage in budget to build sets for every picture. Therefore, the solution taken by most european filmmakers was to use their own cities as a backdrop. Very few pictures were made that required a large set, luckily there are few productions using them that had a profound impact in both film and the visual design in them. For a while, nonexistent were the ambitious science fiction stories ala Méliè’s “Le Voyage dans la Lune”. Yet in soviet Russia of the time a science fiction film called “Aelita” incorporated designs for their Mars sets that are based on a combination of straight and curved lines blending in a very natural manner. However, as we delve into the story and the characters inhabiting these sets we realize that this balance in forms and shapes are merely a façade for a decadent society which the story implies should be abolished. Here the futuristic designs are not shown in the best of way, not referring to the way they are shot but more in the meaning they have in the story. Besides there’s a reason those sets belong to the alien race and not to the humans. This is a good example of the way a film is probably unconsciously, rejecting an idea or agenda that is being forced on a society. Let us remember that is in this decade when Mies Van der Rohe produced his very first masterpieces or when Frank Lloyd Wright’s experiments in textile block houses led him to design the Ennis House. Or in France for instance, Le Corbusier would finish his masterpiece Villa Savoye. All in all, architects were now taking architecture to a new place, and the people invited to experience them were no other than the particular owners of the buildings yet for the rest of the general public modern architecture was related more towards the industrial sector meaning factories or warehouses where they were used to spend long working days. This architecture made widespread use of reinforced concrete on a scale that was never before seen in Europe.10 10 As expressed by Anthony Sutcliffe in Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination
A notion of modern architecture being grey, cold and insipid would of course be reflected in films of the time. Let us take 1931’s “A Nous La Liberté”, a film that begins on a prison and eventually arrives at a factory. The factory is modern in its visual and spatial aspects, in fact it uses the same structural principles and geometric lines of contemporary structures such as the Bauhaus building in Dessau. Yet here the set is shown in a gigantic proportion that dwarf the characters in the scene; it is a space where people have numbers instead of names and where automated voices command instructions to a dehumanized workforce11. By the beginning of the 1930’s the great depression was in its most critical point, but New York’s skyline was already determined to have in its urban grid a building that could have the honor of being the tallest building of the world. And surprisingly in this time of economic need the record was broken three times. First by the Trump Building in May of 1930, preceded one month later by the Chrysler Building and then one year later by the Empire State. Man has used architecture to indicate power, and to build such structures in this time of recession can easily be interpreted as a message to the world that everything’s all right in the new continent. Coincidently, the following year a film called “King Kong” would use in its climatic scene the tallest building in the world and together they became an icon. Here, in one of the first “monster movies” architecture was not used to represent a rejection towards the modern style but as a recognition of the visual impact it has on a city and as such also when it is captured on film. In Germany, another risky science fiction production arose, “Metropolis”. In it, austrian director Fritz Lang shows a futuristic vision of what cities and societies could turn into if they continue with modern ideas. Huge motorways crossing right in the middle of colossal towers, heights that put a shame on the skyscrapers under construction in those years and a dependence on machines and their precision are some of the concerns in the story. In fact, one could argue that the main point of the film is to show the manner in which humans themselves are turning into machines. A critique of the work model that was born in part thanks to the industrial revolution where you could clock in and out every day of the week for the rest of your productive life. The intricate models used to represent the cities as also the set design are the main tools the director uses to show his critique. A critique to something Le Corbusier had in mind for the city of the
11 Interpreted as such in the Space, Place and National Identity chapter in Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination.
future12. It’s quite the achievement of this film to take all these ideas that masterminds of the time had, build a simple story around them, process it in an audiovisual manner and screen it to the whole world. Even though at the time it wasn’t a common thing to mix genres, one could argue that “Metropolis”, besides being a science fiction film becomes also something of a horror. Maybe it wasn’t the original idea of the director but the way technology itself is men’s doom can easily be perceived as a warning. In the end, isn’t every horror classic a warning of something? Careful when you go into the woods alone, be cautious when you’re defenseless in the shower and be prepared when the machines overtake humanity. As it was shown in these examples, film could say a lot by the visual content in them. And while architects were busy perfecting the new style, audiences and filmmakers were trying to express in one way or another their worries about where this new way of living could take them. Fritz Lang expertly encompasses this sociological concern in “Metropolis” and at the same time he communicates a message of social justice. There were two admirers of the way Lang’s films expressed a message, they eventually met with him in order to persuade him into working together on future projects. These two admirers were Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.
5. World War II: Film as a propaganda machine Adolf Hitler and Albert Goebbels had decided to gain more followers by spreading their ideologies through radio, posters, films and unlikely also through architecture. It’s interesting that the minister of propaganda was the one in charged of hiring an architect, but it’s precisely this action the one that speaks the most of what they wanted to achieve. With architecture their goal was to communicate their politics and it was Albert Speer’s commission of helping to renovate the Party’s Berlin headquarters that would turn him into Hitler’s favorite architect13. Later in his life, Speer would specify his commission in more clear manner: “Architecture is politics in stone. That was Hitler’s concept for his buildings” 14 . Speer’s architecture though not groundbreaking in the same manner of Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, did accomplish its goal of showing to the world a strong, clean Germany. In an interview, Fritz Lang has stated that Goebbels met with him as an admirer and also to make him know that the Hitler himself were great followers of his work. Such fanatics were of Lang’s films that they also made him the offer of making him an honorary Aryan despite having a Jewish background, this with the intention of persuade him to make him the “the man who will give us the 12 In a very similar way Jane Jacobs would later critique Le Corbusier’s public housing projects 13 Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, p. 77 1976, Chelsea House Publishers, New York 14 Bernhard leitner, and Sophie Wilkins. “Albert Speer, the Architect from a Conversation of July 21, 1978.” October 20 (1982) p. 14.
national socialist film”15 According to Lang, Goebbels explained "Mr Lang, we decide who is Jewish and who is not"16. Lang left for Paris that very night. Goebbels then hired a very unique voice in his team: one of the first woman directors in history, Leni Riefenstahl. Her main commission was to produce propaganda films that showed the power and stability of the country under a Nazi regime. In 1935’s “Triumph des Willens” powerful images of the army and Hitler himself are shot in the middle of the Nazi party rally grounds design by Albert Speer. Later on, she filmed a two-part documentary about the 1936 Olympic games that open and close with the majestic sights of the stadium designed by Werner March and also by Speer. Goebbels made sure that these films and therefore Speer’s architecture were projected all over Germany. It is curious to wonder what other countries with such a radical notion such as Italy and Mussolini’s fascism movement would have made with such tools. Though it has been noted that Mussolini agreed that architecture was more likely to be the one to express fascist ideals rather than film since Italian population was not interested in such material17. While the war was at their highest peak, the opposition was handling their own propaganda machine though admittedly in a more subliminal manner. Even in big mainstream productions a propaganda message can be found. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December of 1941, the United States entered in the Second World War, almost immediately studios would begin to greenlight films with a theme of resistance against repression. The most notorious would be 1942’s Academy Award for Best Picture winner “Casablanca” it is reported that Warner Brothers executives demanded that any unpleasant character besides Nazis should belong to a country that was an enemy of the country at the time, mainly in this film: Italy. In a more evident fashion, “Why we Fight” was the first of the series of American propaganda films where they intended to show the danger that Nazis represented for the “American way of life”. They were shown as a preview in most cinemas with the hope that people would volunteer in the army. The film main focus was to delineate Nazis and Fascists as barbarians who destroyed architectural monuments, hence civilization. This is evident from the start when it opens with almost apocalyptic 15 Fritz Lang interview by William Friedkin (1974) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or0j1mY_rug 16 Review of Lang's Metropolis on moviediva.com, accessed 16 January 2006. 17 Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, p. 77 1976, Chelsea House Publishers, New York
sites of destruction around the world such as Great Britain, France, Norway and China, in this scenes the frame focuses on iconic buildings such as the Eiffel Tower. In the end no matter the side you were on, war, its impact on architecture and cities, and film were used by both sides as means to incite either fear, anger or respect.
6. Film follows function: the role of the architect on film Not all propaganda made at the time was aimed directly towards the war. Cities were changing drastically; the invention of the car had spread to most of the United States and as one would expect from a capitalist country their main concern was for the business to grow even more. Sponsored by General Motors Corporation, in 1939 the New York’s Fair or more commonly known as Futurama was held. It’s intention was to show the future of cities where the car is the main modulor18, but also to push further the idea that the suburb is the way of the future for American families to live. The exhibition was accompanied by a documentary explaining clearly this process called “To New Horizons”, which was curiously also produced by General Motors. The images represented in the documentary show the model of city which we currently know now is the one that comes with an innumerable amount of problems; yet in “To New Horizons” it’s clear that the filmmakers and the urban planers and architects in charge are simply using the medium as way to sell the idea of happiness that a car can bring. Even though the war came to a close and economy began to stabilize, it was important at least for Americans to keep their ideologies on check and accept any mistake on their way of life was of course unconceivable. While cities kept growing and the idea of suburbs began to dominate, the need for social housing became more and more important. While new architectural voices such as Louis Kahn began to design projects for the public, organizations such as National Real Estate Board had launch a campaign that branded public housing as socialist and maintained that in the heart of the American dream is the desire of individualism, to be able to say “home sweet home”19. This refusal to accept social housing affected most of American cities with notable exceptions such as New York, Chicago or San Francisco whose urban planning was already designed for high density buildings. The skyscraper was still a novelty that fascinated most architects, even Mies van der Rohe would end up designing the Seagram Building in New York. This fascination was also shared by the general public. Take for instance 1949’s “The Fountainhead” a film and novel where for a few times in the history in cinema the main character is an architect whose immersion in his work is crucial to the story. Gary Cooper’s character is commissioned to build the tallest and most unusual skyscraper in the world yet he struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism against the popular standards that are required from him. For a film that is all about architecture is surprising and disappointing that it barely shows any work from an artist or architect working at the time; though it’s relevant to notice that Warner Bros. in fact approached Frank Lloyd Wright and asked him to submit some architectural 18 Refering to the anthropometric scale of proportions devised Le Corbusier. 19 Explained in The Housing Project vs. The Skyscraper chapter of “Skyscraper Cinema”
designs to be used in the film. However, the studio balked when Wright requested his usual fee of $250,000, and decided instead to leave the designs to the film's art director, Edward Carrere20. Here’s one fact that could be troublesome for some enthusiasts of film; it can cost exuberant amounts of money to shoot a film in true gems of architecture so it’s necessary to revise some big budget or mainstream productions, commonly the only place where you can find them. It can be surprising where these buildings can be found. Let’s take for instance the horror film “House on Hunted Hill”. It has the distinction of being the first time a Frank Lloyd Wright’s building is shot on wide-release film21. Unfortunately, still such was the alienation to its architecture that it’s represented as a hunted house. Though it’s quite refreshing for the horror genre to not to use a gothic building, this time around it hurts a bit modern architecture’s perception or more specifically Wright’s building itself. It’s clear that around this time the architect’s main function was to simply supply the backdrop for whichever is the main intention of the film whether it is to sell a product or produce scares.
7. It’s a match! These first 50 years in the history of cinema are undoubtedly their most transformative, whether referring to technique or content the next decades would take into account classic films that came in this period. Considering that in all probability the films listed in this writing until now may seem dated to most of contemporary audiences it seems fitting to conclude focusing on the work of Alfred Hitchcock. His work coincidentally lies right in the middle of film’s one century history and also serves as a bridge to more contemporary results. It was evident since 1940’s “Rebecca” that architecture itself played an important role in the film’s story, and therefore in Hitchcock’s mind. In 1948’s “Rope”, we can find one of the first instances of a film purposefully shot in just one set and with close to only 5 apparent cuts in the whole movie. The final result feels more as a play than a moving picture and it’s curious that in its opening scene just as in a play the curtains are opened and a New 20 This and many fact are found in the Internet Movie Data Base of the film. 21 Though the … house was first used in “ “ it’s not considered to be a wide-release. Meaning it had a ver small amount of showings.
York background is displayed, and for the rest of its running time the city ominously remains there with gradual changes in the lighting to denote the passing of time. “Rear Window” is a film that somewhat takes this claustrophobic concept but incorporates it directly into the narrative. From its opening establishing shot we can sense this lack of privacy, quite the opposite to “Rope”. In fact, it serves almost as a warning of the threats that lie in the model of living of cities like New York.
Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” is one of the few films where modern architecture is displayed in its maximum splendor yet never pops out or feels out of place. It has something to do with the fact that from its opening titles, the façade of a building is the main backdrop and even the composition of the credits follow the perspective lines of the architecture. During the second act, the story takes us the the United Nations Headquarters, the second time in history the Le Corbusier and Niemeyer’s building was captured on film22. And finally the climax of the film unfolds in a house that purposefully reminds of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. One of the many reasons “North by Northwest” is so special is the fact that the architecture and set designs in it are some of the most purely modern designs ever put on celluloid yet there is no apparent critique to it or no rejection to its forms, instead they are embraced and admired in the same way any building from any style can be behold.
22 The first one being 1953’s “The Glass Wall” one year later after the completion of the building.
Hitchcock’s work became the standard of what commercial film aspired to. It almost singlehandedly defined the post war era film and thrived in the different kinds of paranoia that lied in American’s subconscious. Called a master in building suspense, his work was wildly successful and so it can also claim to be the one that brought modern architecture to the main public’s mind in a way no other filmmaker did before. The films that followed gradually incorporated modern structures in them. The 1960’s saw the set designs of Ken Adam, who did some very simple yet bold designs for a spy film called “Dr. No”, little did he imagined it would become the longest movie series in history. James Bond and the modern set designs for the villains are now part of the general iconography of action film genre in general. The following decades have seen the rise of new voices in both film an architecture. New architectural styles have derived from modernism and just as it was rejected originally, these new ones have also suffered a backlash of their own. As reviewed in these examples, modern architecture was first perceived as cold and uninviting, yet as the years came by the perception shifted to clean, luxurious and stylish. A lot of it is thanks to film with its capability to transport us to any place, ot continues to be the perfect partner. From the traditional European settings in Richard Linklater’s “Before” Trilogy to the post modern and futuristic designs in Joseph Kosinski’s “Oblivion” and “TRON: Legacy”. From the bleak future imagined by Ridley Scott in “Blade Runner” to the pop postmodernism in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”. Film and architecture are intrinsically joined in the general public’s subconscious. Movies and now TV series are one of the most accessible media forms of the XXI century. As long as this partnership continues we can remain increasing the knowledge and critique view of our past, present and future.
Bibliography Books: Cohen, Jean-Louis. The Future of Architecture. Since 1889 Phaidon Press, March 28, 2012 Colquhoun A. Modern Architecture Oxford University Press, USA, 2002 Merrill Schleier. Architecture and Gender in American Film University of Minnesota Press, 2009 Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris, Sarah Street. Film Architecture and the Transnational Imagination: Set Design in 1930s European Cinema Amsterdam University Press, 2007 Peter Blundell-Jones. Modern Architecture Through Case Studies Architectural Press; 1st edition, 2002 Mark Lamster. Architecture and Film Princeton Architectural Press, 2000 Benton, Tim. The Villas of Le Corbusier Yale University Press, 1987 Farr, Finis. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography Scribner, 1961 Schoenbaum, David. Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933–1939 Norton, 1997 Articles: Daniel Portilla. Films & Architecture: "North by Northwest" Archdaily, 19 February 2013 Liana Hayles. 10 Movies With Iconic Architecture in a Starring Role Architizer, 22 May 2014 Essays: Brian R. Jacobson. The ‘imponderable fluidity’ of modernity: Georges Méliès and the architectural origins of cinema,19 April 2010 Dissertations: Jake Joseph Richardson. The Case of Albert Speer - Can we find beauty in an architecture which has clearly and intentionally served to legitimize a political system we despise? Newcastle University, 2015 Films:
Le Manoir du Diable Dir. George Méliès. Star-Film, 1896 Le Voyage dans la Lune Dir. George Méliès. Star-Film, 1902 One Week Dir. Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton. Joseph M. Schenck Productions, 1920 Safety Last! Dir. Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor. Hal Roah Studios, 1923 Aelita Dir. Yakov Protazanov. Mezhrabpom-Rus, 1924 Metropolis Dir. Fritz Lang. Universum Film, 1927 Á nous la liberté Dir. René Clair. Films Sonores Tobis, 1931 King Kong Dir. Merian C. Cooper. RKO Radio Pictures, 1933 Triumph des Willens Dir. Leni Riefenstahl. Leni Riefenstahl-Produktion, 1935 Modern Times Dir. Charles Chaplin. Charles Chaplin Productions, 1936 Olympia 1. Teil - Fest der Völker Dir. Leni Riefenstahl. Olympia Film GmbH, 1938 To New Horizons Dir. Uncredited. General Motors Corporation, 1940 Rebecca Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Selznick International Pictures, 1940 Casablanca Dir. Michael Curtiz. Warner Bros., 1942 Why We Fight Dir. Frank Capra. U.S. War Department, 1942 The Big Clock Dir. John Farrow. Paramount Pictures, 1948 Rope Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Warner Bros., 1948 The Fountainhead Dir. King Vidor. Warner Bros., 1949 Rear Window Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount Pictures, 1954 North by Northwest Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1959 House on Haunted Hill Dir. William Castle. William Castle Productions, 1959 Dr. No Dir. Terrence Young. Eon Productions, 1962 Goldfinger Dir. Guy Hamilton. Eon Productions, 1964 Thunderball Dir. Terrence Young. Eon Productions, 1965 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1964 Playtime Dir. Jacques Tati. Specta Films, 1967 A Clockwork Orange Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros., 1971 Moonraker Dir. Lewis Gilbert. Eon Productions, 1979 Manhattan Dir. Woody Allen. Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions, 1979 Blade Runner Dir. Ridley Scott. The Ladd Company, 1982 Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Dir. John Hughes. Paramount Pictures, 1986 Before Sunrise Dir. Richard Linklater. Castle Rock Entertainment, 1995 Gattaca Dir. Andrew Niccol. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1997 Dogville Dir. Lars von Trier. Zentropa Entertainments, 2003 Before Sunset Dir. Richard Linklater. Warner Independent Pictures, 2004 Star Wars: Episoide III- The Revenge of the Sith Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 2005 The International Dir. Tom Tykwer. Columbia Pictures, 2009 Up Dir. Pete Docter & Bob Peterson. Walt Disney Pictures, 2009 A Single Man Dir. Tom Ford. Fade to Black Productions, 2009 TRON Legacy Dir. Joseph Kosinski. Walt Disney Pictures, 2010
Inception Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros., 2010 Hanna Dir. Joe Wright. Focus Features, 2011 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol Dir. Brad Bird. Paramount Pictures, 2011 Oblivion Dir. Joseph Kosinski. Universal Pictures, 2013 Her Dir. Spike Jonze. Annapurna Pictures, 2013 Before Midnight Dir. Richard Linklater. Faliro House Productions, 2013 Ex Machina Dir. Alex Garland. Universal Pictures International, 2015 SPECTRE Dir. Sam Mendes. Eon Productions, 2015 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Dir. Zack Snyder. Warner Bros., 2016