There is a kind of film interested in the way the character of a city determines the characters that inhabit it. It is the kind of film which leads you to the realization that a building can look awfully similar to an old man’s face or makes you feel that the people issuing out of doors and into streets are less like residents and more like offspring of the architecture they populate.
“I always believed it was the things you don't choose that makes you who you are. Your city, your neighborhood, your family. People here take pride in these things, like it was something they'd accomplished.” This is the opening sentiment for Ben Affleck’s 2007 film Gone Baby Gone. It is the voice of Patrick Kenzie, a private eye who ‘finds people who started in the cracks and fell through.’ A montage of these ‘people’ framed within the city determining their collective fates accompanies his voiceover. We are to believe these people and the narrative they endure are products of the city of Boston. They will always be victims of the place before they are victims of each other.
Then there is Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan. The opening monologue is delivered to us in the same way that its partnering dialogue suggests the city exists for the character speaking; "a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin." The way the dialogue is spoken says as much as its actual content. It identifies both the character and the images as quintessential New York. The city is spoken of as if it were a lover to be possessed; “New York was his town, and always would be.” As the monologue unfolds we learn that to merely ‘adore’ the city is not an accurate enough response. Artistic satisfaction is finally found upon the revelation that he was the city he loved; “Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.” Was there ever a greater description of New York?
Films like Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera and Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City are some of the first to explore the ‘personalities’ of cities. They showcase the technological and industrial triumphs of people in the architecture and machinery they have created. It is the birth of the city and the ‘city film’ that is on display. The films pre-date the moment cities seemingly broke free of their human masters and developed personalities and intentions of their own. In these films the humans are depicted affecting the objects rather than falling prey to them and yet it is actually a handing over of power from man to machine that is unwittingly accomplished. There is a dramatic irony inherent in the nature of both films. It is identified through arrogant acts of self-worship, permeating the films’ gazes, and conjuring Old Testament images of Babel and the consequent promise of harsh judgment and cursed futures.
Maybe that’s too far?
I can imagine however that it would be quite the rollercoaster ride to embark upon a double feature comprising of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City and Germany Year Zero. Rossellini’s magnificent film made in 1948 follows a boy with extraordinary struggles through a bombed out Berlin, which has greater similarities to a moonscape than the city in Ruttman’s film made 20 years earlier. Year Zero depicts a boy who is the product of the place he lives. He is victim of the city he inhabits. There is no dialogue in the film as to what has happened or who is to blame. The city has decided their fates, it simply is as it is, a film about the people who started in the cracks and fell through.
This is more of a compliment than a 'comment' but I thought the way in which you described how 'a building can look awfully similar to an old man’s face' and 'the people issuing out of doors and into streets are less like residents and more like offspring of the architecture they populate' to me, was the most poetic and humorous thing I've read all day. So imagined and inspired! So thanks for making me chuckle and suggesting ways to see things differently. And the quote you included from Ben Affleck’s 2007 film Gone Baby Gone has got me wanting more; 'totes' going on my gi-normous list of films to watch!
ReplyDeleteFirst things first, the title of this post is lovely. And it’s just an added benefit that it’s relevant. I really like the way you’ve strung the same idea throughout different movies, particularly Manhattan, because I love Manhattan. I particularly like the idea that a city is the people who live in it. Without the experiences of its inhabitants, a city is just a lot of steel and concrete sitting atop a mass of land. Maybe a city is always like that? Even in Year Zero, while the little boy becomes a victim of the city, it’s possibly by virtue of the people and the experiences which have contributed to Berlin’s existence which give the city a kind of malevolent agency?
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I could cope with a double feature of Ruttmann's Berlin and Germany Year Zero because of that massive rupture between the two - where one posits the city as a glorified testament to man's control over industry, and the other frames it as a destructive space that engulfs the individual ... To end with Germany Year Zero would be gut wrenching
ReplyDeleteThough I suppose the suicide in Ruttmann's film does move against that notion of the glorified city and into the 'city as trauma' thing - but even so, it is almost inconsequential in relation to the rest of the film. It passes by almost unnoticed and seems to be an isolated incident - not like the pervasive trauma that permeates Germany Year Zero
People as products or even victims of a place is an interesting concept which is certainly invoked by city symphonies, and the quote included from 'Gone Baby Gone' reminds me of a novel titled 'Neverwhere' by Neil Gaiman which is about a place under the streets of London which is 'the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks'.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have watched the film, it is only when I have seen that particular excerpt in writing that I am reminded of this shared concept that is evident in two separate genres (drama/mystery vs fantasy).
This, in my opinion, is evidence of how, in film, the verbal can be neglected in favour of the visual. Which makes both the intertitles and the images in Manhatta all the more intriguing.
Nice angle Lacey. I wonder if the notion of the city as agent and dark entity is purely a child of the cinema? Because of its infinitely seductive cinematic quality. Some have identified the proto-cinematic city in Dickens, Wilkie Collins etc but is this looking back with a C20th cinematic eye?
ReplyDeleteFilm noir wasn't possible before the invention of the cinematic city. Year Zero is like a noir film without the narrative. The Third Man, perhaps, marries the city symphony with the noir flick most perfectly...
Ayn Rand may have been mad as a stump but she shared my love of hard-boiled detective fiction of the brutal-realist style, Mickey Spillane in particular. In Spillane's 'One Lonely Night' is the greatest evocation of the cinematic city I have ever read:
'The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, separating me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Some place over there I had left my car and I started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink.'
I am amazed at the emotional responses people in this class have to some of the texts. The 'suicide' in Berlin barely touched me but now I see some people saw it as traumatic. Maybe it's just because people get swept up by your 'poetry' and it makes them want to feel these emootions when they comment. Well done, sir.
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