Arch 443/646: Architecture and Film
Fall 2003

Just Imagine (1930)
Fox Films

The film introduces scientific and technological innovations in what could be called a semi-strategic manner, coaxing the audience into a gradual suspension of disbelief. For example, as an audience, we are presented in the beginning of the film with a city full of commuting citizens piloting personal airplanes. In the characters’ dwellings we see a video projection when someone comes to call and an automatic hand dryer being used in the bathroom. These events, although by no means common practice in the 1930s, would still seem feasible projections due to these ideas being based on existing technologies and scientific knowledge. Our suspension of disbelief is in some way formed and prepared for the much more outrageous scientific projections to be presented later in the film.

As the film progresses, we are introduced to a character who was struck by lighting in the 1930s being revitalized by a group of scientists in the 1980s. We are presented with vending machines which not only provided meal and drink supplements in pill form, but also children. We also see the protagonists fly to Mars in a rocket, shooting effortlessly from star to star.

The film is a strange hybrid of musical comedy and science fiction, a genre which does not lend itself well to being realistic. However, I do believe it to project ideas which could be perceived as realistic over a span of fifty years.

Anne-Marie Armstrong 3B

The portrayal of the urban grain in Just Imagine is larger in scale than Metropolis. The buildings are taller, there appear to be more of them and there is substantial space between them. The buildings of Metropolis are overbearing reflecting a view of the urban as causation for human suffering – the Machines must be fed. The density of buildings is overbearing and is always presented from the pedestrian vantage point – humanity is dwarfed. In Just imagine there is a positive attitude to the urban where humanities ultimate metaphor to personal freedom is common place – one can fly around in it at will. The expanses between buildings present an elevated vantage point - humanity is free.

There is a distinct Upper World and Lower World in Metropolis that is used to symbolize a privileged ruling class and a downtrodden working class. The city of Just Imagine reflects no class struggle. The conflicts in the film are implied to be a class struggle with the Hero being the underdog but the City is the same City for both players in conflict. Everybody gets to fly a plane.

The skyscraper building character is treated differently in both films. Metropolis has a Gothic overture to the skyscraper facades, dark spaces between buildings and use of catacombs. It is a motif associated with mans view of himself as a lesser being standing in awe of the cosmos, certainly not in control of it. Just Imagine depicts the character of the buildings as Modern motif. The buildings are taller and lighter with large glass expanses. The Modern character of the buildings is associated with mans view of Modernism, a view of himself as progressive and change as a positive.

Both films use “Skyscrapers” as the definitive image of the future city but each film portrays that future differently and that difference carries over in the building character. The Gothic “Skyscrapers” of Metropolis reflect a warning of mans possible future while the Modern “skyscrapers” of Just Imagine reflect a spoof on progress, a more humorous warning, but still a warning. The future city is probably still a cross section of New York City – somewhere between Downtown and Midtown.

James Arvai 4A

The two films both use their costumes to identify a barrier between two distinct types, be they workers and bourgeoisie or humans and aliens. In either case the depiction of the costumes strengthens these futuristic divisions.

8. Why do you think that cars (which weren’t that old at the time) were abandoned in favour of air travel? Why were they retained as the dominant method of travel in Metropolis, only 4 years earlier?

In Just Imagine, “New York is presented fifty years into the future as a completely different city with an entirely changed skyline and urban organization”. Due to its futuristic component, this sci-fi film adopted modern technologies, such as airplanes and incorporated them as elemental to everyday life as a form of transportation. This practical response to the need to relocate is based on efficiency and speed (aspects of the machine age). Still obvious practicalities do not diminish the element of romance, enhanced by the presence of beautiful and wondrous high flying machines and scenes, where film characters soar through the skies, meeting and making exchanges miles above the ground. In both the scenarios played out in Just Imagine and Metropolis the directors incorporated the planes for romance. They were also foreseeing a future of super skyscrapers and personal airplanes.

We cannot deny the “enthusiasm for technology” in both films. Metropolis explores modes of transportation, highly developed and intricate infrastructural gestures and routes. All of which were intended to demonstrate, describe and characterize future possibilities and the intricacies of the plots and sub plots present in the film. “Set design had to create more than just a background. It had to accompany the plot, underlining and commenting on it”. Hence it is possible to interpret the incorporation of airplanes as opposed to car as a suggestion of plot and possibility. It was part of a futurist vision of lifestyle in an urban city and directly linked to the plot of the film, which accordingly takes place in a futurist setting.

The complex infrastructure and structures designed for Metropolis demonstrate and represent the dynamic and intricacies of social and technological development respectively. These aspects co-exist and intermingle. The filmmaker demonstrates his version of their impacts and connectivity. The airplanes flying over and under, passing by and through with great ease and mobility, displacing as we the viewers do through the setting are a mean by which to create a metaphor and visual description based on the plot and subplot. In the same instance buildings, routes, events and characters round out and contribute to the whole of the production. Therefor technology, newly adapted modes of transportation and modern design (the city’s architecture) allow us to better imagine a city of the future. These aspects and the method in which they are employed draw us into the film and make believable the themes and events that form the movie.

Airplanes, an aspect of the futurist vision, were also important to the architects responsible for the set design. The “film will be faithful to the architects boldest dreams”. The architecture and infrastructure of the above world mirror similar concepts and aesthetics. A multiple of layered materials, windowpanes and mullions form the city and reach vertically to the sky. Large strips and bands made into bridges pass over and under each other. Similarly planes flew through and about invisible trajectories in the sky.

To further expand on why planes were essential and opted for over cars in Metropolis we can discuss a few aspects attributed to sci-fi films of this era and the machine age. “The Machine Age – a period of sweeping technological changes stretching roughly between 1914 and 1939—rocketed the world into the future. Urban landscapes began sprouting setback skyscrapers, cable-spun bridges, and blinking radio towers. At the close of World War 1, a new machine aesthetic insinuated itself into this milieu, giving further rise to two ubiquitous modes of transportation—the automobile and the airplane—capable of diminishing great distances with unthrottled velocity. At the heart of this machine aesthetic were the principals of flight and speed—both reflected in the art and design of this era”. The airplanes in the films were symbols of sorts of the machine age’s outlook, aesthetic (beautiful machines) and principals. Even the architecture of the film embodied characteristics determined by the machine age, beautiful glowing buildings that operate similarly to machines. However flight and speed were largely embodied by the planes in Metropolis, as well as romance. “Lang transcribes the skyline that he had earlier witnessed from New York’s harbor to create a cinematic cityscape of the future, one that spatially delineates the paradoxical attitudes of a nation caught between “ the rational and irrational, between pragmatic and romantic”.

Lastly the developments in special effects enabled the design team for the film to incorporate images of airplanes. They simulated flight over the futuristic urban context of Metropolis, “ the effects of motion was again achieved by shooting frame by frame and by individually advancing each car, airplane, train and elevator between each shot”. Therefore technological innovation in movies encouraged the incorporation and adaptation of elements such as airplanes, flying through a scene in constant motion through a single trajectory. The airplanes were brought into new types of scenes, incorporated into scenic landscape scenes, contexts that had not been explored previously. Similarly these new scenes resulted in creating a futuristic context that leapt from background to foreground the overriding issues, technology its uses and evils presented in Metropolis.
In addition the site context of the film provided a stronger and overwhelming sense of place, local and tone, demonstrated through visuals alone. Another reason to interpret the incorporation of the airplanes and their role in the setting of Metropolis, as significant and successful, in creating a vision of a futuristic city. A feat that would not have been achieved by only incorporating cars alone as their means of transpiration. The visuals of Metropolis served to determine, expand, explain, depict or predict events to come or precede settings and events throughout the course of the film.

Bibliography:
Ø Film Architecture, 1999 by Prestel Verlag, Munich – London – New York
Ø A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age.
http:/www.findarticles.com/articles/mi_1_54/ai_67330047/print

Natalie Drago 3B

The protagonist of Just Imagine lives in a world of science and technology, in a society stricken with mechanical order and lack of identity of its people. Humanity seems to have diminished to names being replaced by numbers, and people are deprived of earthly pleasures such as savouring a delicious meal or sipping a glass of wine. The notion of human emotion has been suppressed, as the characters live towards a culture of mechanization and extreme dictatorship. This is emphasized by the arranged marriage of LN-18, where the court decides, disregarding her love for J-21, that she should marry another individual. Hence, the plot of Just Imagine revolves around the struggle of J-21 trying to win the hand of LN-18, signifying the fight between human emotion and the society governed by strict scientific and rational law.

The film addresses the issue of arranged marriage as a problem of future society as a message that human emotion and identity cannot be suppressed in favour of a mechanized society, and that human emotion will naturally overcome the laws of science and reason.

Vivien Liu 3B

Through the eyes of the German expressionist director Fritz Lang’s 1926 Metropolis comes an industrial futuristic vision of what the year 2026 and the devices that would be used 100 years from his point of vision. This produced a perception in my opinion forwarding a dream of seeing and talking to people through the visual medium of cinema reflecting that of the video telephone within his movie. In the year 1927 one year after the release of Metropolis the first talking movie the jazz singer was released, there was only 5 minutes of talking dialogue within the movie but thus become a great break through in cinematic history. Up until this point in time the desire and hunger to produce a talking movie I believed fueled the visual idea of the video telephone. Making this a futuristic device not yet reachable but believable on the silver screen.
Three years after the release of the jazz singer, Just imagine was released in 1930 clearly influenced by the desire of being able to communicate through the visual medium and being a talking movie, the use of the video/telephone within the film becomes a more reachable goal after the domestication of the technology use for talking movies.

Aaron Nelson 3B

Through the condition of distributing food in the form of a pill there is evidence of technology overriding experience. Food and beverage is served from complex high tech vending machines with a full menu that seems infinite. In the process replaces restaurants and grocery stores, thus replacing cooks, waiters, waitresses, cashiers, bar tenders, and many other occupations. Society has accepted the new way of eating and overall the experience of eating is forgotten. Such is the case when looking at J-21’s reaction to Single O upon tasting the food pill for the first time. J-21 simply says to Single O ‘get used to it’.

There is evidence of one such event during Just Imagine that presents a highly ritualized drinking event a short time before Single O, j-21, and RT-42 depart for Mars. During this event a formally dressed group of men dance around with their bottle of pills in a highly choreographed scene ending with J-21 climbing on the table and all members of the gathering taking the beer pill. The event shows that there still is some evidence of gathering with drinking but the event has been reduced to a short act directed more towards the ceremony then the taste and texture of the drink. Here technology has minimized the ritual of drinking with friends to an outrageous charade of dancing and singing and disregards the taste and texture of beer.

Considering the portrayal of food and drink in Just imagine a collective disengagement of the human being with a predetermined natural process is portrayed.

Mike Votruba 3B

I think this movie is a rant against prohibition and the laboratory looks like a big cave full of equipment derived from moonshine technology and art deco lighting design.
I don’t really think it’s fair to criticize this movie on the basis of technological accuracy because it’s a comedy with an aim at social/beauraucratic critique rather than a presentation of future technology. It details the machinations of the courts involvement in personal, human affairs.
If you insist on picking on the science there is plenty of material that wouldn’t have been difficult to portray accurately since the standards of the time were better than those in this movie. For this reason, I presume it was deliberate. The portrayal of the lab isn’t very clinical, and appears to be modeled on science at the level of hometown GP’s and lecture theatres rather than on scientific investigative procedure. Science proceeds with wild abandon and little apparent control, which is particularly pointed when single 0 is told there is no use for him just moments after he has been revived from 50 years of death. 1980 is predicted to be a place where the actions of people are tightly controlled while science and technology proceed free from explanations. Airplanes show no clues where the power source might be located or transmitted. The baby machine demonstrates the outcome but gives no clue how it manufactures the babies it dispenses. It isn’t important that food in pill form does not occupy enough volume to supply the minimum required energy to sustain life.
However, it did a terrific job with the video-phone contraption then since even TV’s hadn’t been invented at that time. The hovercraft were also pretty far sighted even if the tail end was too small to be functional.

Nancy Gibson -- masters

Back to the future, ahead to the past

Memory does not desappear so easily. But it can be repressed, hidden or even altered, infuencing our understanding of the present. Memory is present in many aspects of the movie. Apparently in a not-so-far future, people live a very different reality, where technical progress is leading to a “better society” by means of simplifying everyday problems, but paying in change the price of their private life and feelings, restricted by an intense icy overplanning. Playing with dates, the authors seem to place the action in the future, but in fact, we are actually looking at a portrait of 30s, whose most peculiar aspects are sharpened by the precise excess of “futuristic” technology and ordered organization.

Science offers the possibility of eating simple pills, communicating in real time, escaping urban traffic by flying d getting ready made babies, but in doing so it cannot avoid a necessary paternalistic order to reduce middle class desires to a couple of numbers. Paradoxically the role of science, in the movie, is to make clear the subtly underliyng contraddictory condition of the 1930 bourgeouisie, depressed not only by the economical crack, but also by the gap lying between desire and social conventions, their own life gap. The attempt to sublime by means of rich technology all passions, feelings and desire in a well ordered and functional society is worthless. So, if science is reduced to nothing but mercyless memory of the present condition of man, memory of the past takes place in fact in the protagonist’s words as a struggling nostalgia for the last 50 years.

In his Back to the Future, single 0 is the only person who sees at same time both real contraddictory present and the only possible escape way, ahead to the past. Troughout his words give me old good days he is literally suggesting to J21 that the only possible way of ransom is actually nostalgia for 1880 true love, when the pioneer spirit was still standing as founding stone of american people’s sober integrity. What seems to be the moral?: is it perharps that only when we get drunk by excess of science, communication, speed, order, then we can temporarily stand our real daily life by means of a simple, brief clowny laugh? No, the answer lies in a more powerful device.

Single 0 wakes up in a dream, a dream that can last all his life, but it does not matter - it is just a dream: as far as we can find escape in nostalgia, we will feel safe at least in the last shelter of modern man, our mind.

What a difference between the beautiful city of Just Imagine and the labyrinthic city of our psyche presented in The Cabinets of Dr. Caligari, where we face the real power of the unreal, the onyiric insanity of our psychological and emotional needs, which is well capable of affecting our life much more than real science. Being all of these aspects already rooted in the raising modern city, they make it definitevly a dedalus with no escape way except for our inner selfconscious confrontation with actual facts of life.

What a difference between the astonishing potential power of the both beautiful and threatning Lang’s Metroplis left in man’s hands, and the useless beauty of the art decò decorative backgound which traces the skyline of Just Imagine’s city.
In the latter the outside architecture is merely representing the exterior life that took place on the Earth, shining of science and progress, but left in the background. On the opposite, interiors are almost depressing, despite their technological equipements. on Mars, where all sets are conceived as richer deco interiors, we almost feel at home in redescovering true values, easily becoming able to understand the difference between the good and the evil, altough they apparently presented the same face.

WhereasWiene’s expressionist city describes the modern problem of urban life and explains the necessary steps to deal with it, Lang’s Metropolis suggests a possible open ended solution, based on dealing with temporary balance and unbalanced crisis for the rest of our life. The modern city is a dangerous but potentially heroic structure, a device for a better life, which demands both understanding and partial acceptation of nowdays conditions. On the opposite in Just Imagine the city has no active role: here we are told that the modern man has to boldy go where no man has gone before to be back to the future as an acclaimed hero who is leading his people ahead to the past, gaining his right to love again. I saw enough. Beam us up, Scotty.

Francesco Mancini

Satellite of Love – Lou Reed

Captain’s Log.
Stardate 17061971.33
Location: approaching Solar System, Milky Way.

First officer came to tell me we just jumped into hyperspace. We’re going to reach this planet soon. Mars.
Yesterday during our daily meeting the crew and I watched decided to watch a movie which was supposed to talk about the future. Well, our past actually.
It was a strange feeling. They knew very few things at that time. All missions, all attempts to exploring Mars started later. 10 maybe 15 years later.
And the journey! It was such a short journey! I wonder how many years it took with no warped speed!
It was really a strange feeling; all the people could breathe with no problem at all...and we need a very very expensive technology just to move one foot. And what about the people? I do wonder whythey thought about martian people as a sort of carribean dancers! It was 1930, i know, a very bad period. Poorness, suffering, economical difficulties. They just wanted to have fun, don’t think, just having fun. Everybody sings in the film, all the time. People from Mars dance and sing too. Were things on Earth very bad? So, just look at the sky! The new frontier, there was no chance to go West anymore, the sky seemed to be the only way out!
Just imagine.Just imagine and you can get it, it seems to say.
Do not think of your ordinary life, just smile and sing, everything will be great. If your life here is not that good: catch a ride and fly to Mars. New place, new life. And then come back as a hero and everything will be amazing. That’s what they must have thought while making it.
It was Mars, but it also seemed just a stage where to dance onto. Everything had to be easy over there, and every problem you might face had to have a proper solution. Maybe for this reason Martian people has a double identity, you always know how to solve problems. If you meet the evil, you can always call the good ones!
I’m feeling we are reducing speed. In few hours we will be revolving around Mars. I’ve got time enough to study a bit more.
Hey, who tooks my copy of John Carpenter’s Ghost of Mars???
End of transmission. File saved.

christian n. tognela

The movie “Just Imagine” shot in 1930, describes how life could have been in 1980;
the scenery is very similar to the one of “Metropolis”, both movies describe the city of the future in which technology and new infrastructures have a very important role and both refer to New York which, in the period the movies are shot, is the symbol of modernity.
Probably for the fact that in 1930 New York is the most modern city in the world, the architectural elements represented in the city of 1980 in “Just Imagine” and in that of 2000 in “Metropolis” are those belonging to it.
In 1930 New York was in fact the only skyscraper city on earth, except for Chicago, and Just Imagine’ s futuristic city is obviously inspired by the design of New York architects such as Harvey W. Corbett (one of the principal designer of the Rockfeller Center) and expecially from the work of Hugh Ferris whose book “The Metropolis of Tomorrow” was published in 1929.
Ferris’ ideal metropolis, based on some of the most prominent American skyscrapers, has widely spaced towers raising from lower buildings, linked by multi-level walkways and bridges, and Corbett himself, designing the Rockfeller Center, proposed schemes for a multi-level city.
Just Imagine’s city with its layout of buildings and avenues more regular and widely spaced shows all those characteristics of New York of ‘30s even if traffic is on nine levels, airplanes land on the roofs of the building, people is identified by a serial numbers and babies are born from vending machines.

Federica Martella