Terri
Meyer Boake B.E.S. B.Arch. M.Arch. Associate
Professor School of Architecture University of Waterloo
last updated
February 2, 2008
Arch 443/646:
Architecture and Film
Course Home Page Portal
Course
Description:This
course explores the relationship between Architecture and the
development of early and modern films. Students will look at
the source and portrayal of architectural expression in film:
precedents for imagery, its relationship to the development of
early modern architecture, and its vision of the urban future.
Contemporary and futuristic architecture will also be examined
in recent films to study its expression of the vision of the
future of urban built form.
Below is
a list of potential films to be included in the course. Given that
the term consists of 12 lectures maximum, and the final class will
be taken by the showing of the film productions of the current term,
each course will likely view 10 to 11 films taken from the list below.
The "plan" is
to have a different selection each year, each with a different "theme".
The first offering of the course in 2002 looked at a series of three
themes and served as an introduction to the medium. Subsequent courses
may focus on themes of: early modern films, architecture of the future,
science fiction in film, the metropolis, zero-gravity architecture
(space), the architecture of the super-hero, intergalactic building,
famous buildings in film, etc.
Theme
1:
Early Film and Its Use of Architecture as Significant Set
All
of the internet reviews below were active as of August 2002.
The
Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) (72 minutes)
The film that forged
the dark, ominous cinematic movement known as German Expressionism - and
influenced vanguard filmmakers for generations. Werner Krauss stars as
a deranged hypnotist who spreads death through the countryside from a
ramshackle traveling carnival. In making the film Robert Wiene and designers
combined techniques of painting, theatre and film to conjure a nightmare
world of splintered reality ... boldly creating a visual representation
of insanity .. taking the art of cinema a lengthy stride into unexplored
stylistic and psychological terrain, hinting at the terrifying power the
medium might possess.
In 16th
century Prague, Rabbi Loew creates a terrifying giant golem from clay
to protect his people from their persecutors. Employing sorcery, he
brings the artificial man to life, endowing him with human emotions.
Famulus, Loew’s evil
assistant, manages to take control of the golem, commanding it to perform
sordid criminal acts culminating in the kidnapping of the Rabbi’s
beautiful daughter, Miriam. The monster, outraged by his vile misuse,
rebels and a deadly rampage ensues. With high, angular sets by famed architect
Hans Poelzig and full of wonderful imagery captured by the camera of Karl
Freund, this silent classic captivates the eye. Masterfully combining
terror and pathos, Wegener’s stiff-limbed portrayal of the golem
clearly influenced Boris Karloff’s performance in Frankenstein.
This 1920 version of The Golem is considered definitive among the film’s
many productions and is an unforgettable horror masterpiece.
Filmed in
Germany by famed director Paul Leni, this film is about a writer who
visits a mysterious wax museum to do a write-up on the exhibits. As
he spotlights each wax character they come to life to reenact their
famous lives. The lives in questions are the most famous murderers
and barbarians of all time, Jack The Ripper, Harroun al Rasdchid and
Ivan The Terrible. The stars of this film are the who’s who of early German cinema; Emil
Jannings as Raschid, Conrad Veidt as Ivan and Werner Krauss as The Ripper.
Similar in style and set design as “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”.
Fritz
Lang’s Metropolis (1926) (115 minutes)
Fritz Lang's most
famous silent film uses science fiction and spectacular special effects
to tell a story of biting social criticism. In a futuristic time and place,
an above ground city of lightness, culture and respectability is kept
going only by the enslaved proletariat laboring beneath in the underground
city: a nightmarish, cruel and dark place. An innovative and influential
film in its day and now considered one of the hippest films of the sci-fi
genre.
I have this
film in its "common" release as well as the rerelease in
2002 of the restored version.
SUNRISE
starring JANET GAYNOR GEORGE O’BRIEN VHS An attractive woman from the city, on
vacation, stays in a small farming community and dazzles a young married
farmer. The wicked woman suggests that the man's deceptively dowdy-looking
wife might "accidentally" drown. Can he, will he go through
with it? The scene changes; in unexpected company, the man gets a kaleidoscopic
taste of what the actual city is like. The dramatic climax comes in a
fearsome storm and its aftermath. A beautifully done silent classic.
Just
Imagine (1930)
Very rare
1930 science fiction film about futuristic 1980 New York where airplanes
have replaced cars and features a combination of booze jokes, sci-fi,
lewd sex, vaudeville jokes. Babies are gotten through vending machines,
and a trip to Mars proves Martians to be twins, (Each set has a good
over-sexed one, and an evil homicidal one.) Pepper this oddity with
bad puns, miniature effects, and musical numbers and you got a bizarre
wacky film! It stars El Brendel, Maureen O'Sullivan & John Garrick.
This is the VHS version.
Very strange movie but with some quite interesting presentations of futuristic
architecture as well as lifestyle.
The
Black Cat (1934) (66 minutes)
Boris Karloff
and Bela Lugose star in this shocking horror classic of Satanism and
murder. At a time when films often promoted modern architecture as
a major attribute of fast-paced, modern life, here it became a distincitive
feature of European decadance, a direct result of the horrors of World
War I. Hjalmar Poelzig's ultramodern villa with Corbusier style ribbon
windows is located above a World War I cemetary on the walls of the
ruined fortress of Marmaro.
"A masterpiece of construction built upon the ruins of a masterpiece
of destruction." What was considered by many to be a wicked, shameless
film, mercilessly satirizing celebrated European achievements in modern
architecture, classical music, and film, became the most successful Universal
Studios film of 1934.
H.
G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come (1936) (97 minutes)
One of the most important
science fiction films of all time, it opens prior to World War II and
takes the viewer on a hundred year time trip to 2036 A.D. when a man and
woman are rocketed to the moon. This inspired saga predicts television,
jet planes and evil dictators. Featuring fabulous sets, a rich musical
score and sweeping visual grandeur. Visionary science fiction novelist
H.G. Wells teams up with ace producer Alexander Korda to produce this
landmark motion picture epic.
"Metropolis
is the new milestone in anime. It has beauty, power, mystery and
above all... heat. Images from this film will stay with you forever."
James Cameron
In the industrial
tri-level world of Metropolis, Duke Red is a powerful leader with plans
to unveil a highly advanced robot named Tima. But Duke Red's violent son
Rock distrusts robots, and intends to find and destroy Tima. Lost in the
confusing labyrinth of Metropolis, Tima is beginning a friendship with
the young nephew of a Japanese detective. But when Duke Red separates
the two innocents, Tima's life - and the fate of the universe - is dangerously
at stake.
Student
Reviews:
this review is flash intensive and may take some
time to load at over 10MB - but it is worth it!
Duncan Bates link
Vivien Liu: website
link
Masters Research
Paper:
this
paper is 10MB so it takes a while to load on Acrobat - be patient!
On
Your Mark (Studio Ghibli 1995) (6 minutes)
In a futuristic
Megacity, a pair of Policemen take part in a raid on a religious cult’s
temple. While searching through the rubble they find a starved and
weak young girl, with angelic wings. Though they revive her, she is
carted off by a biohazard unit, and put under examination. After much
deliberation, they realize that she has simply gone from one prison
into another. Together they hatch a plan to free the girl, and show
her the blue sky she belongs in. You would think that by that synopsis,
and the stunning pics, that this was a one-shot hour-long feature film.
And if you did so, you would be mistaken. Done back in 1995, and paired
up in theatres with Mimi
wo Sumeseba, this animated short was the music video presented for
the popular Japanese music duo, Chage & Aska. Running only six minutes,
forty seconds long, and featuring not a word of dialogue, this animated
short manages to tell a touching and amusing story, with only music and
imagery to guide it along. The animation is crisp, as all Ghibli fare,
but the music is every bit as fantastic as the visuals; Chage & Aska
are no J-POP idols of the week, they’ve been around for a good
long while, and as such know how to SING. I rate this right beside Mononoke
Hime for best of all time simply because of what it achieves, with
so little to work with.
Theme
3: Modern and Contemporary Film and its Vision of Architecture of the Future
-- Dystopia
Soylent
Green (1973)
A
future which is possible, but which none of us wants to think about
in these days of holes in the ozone and global warming appears in "Soylent Green."
New York, with 40,000,000 people, perpetual smog, and constant hot, hot
temperatures is grim, to say the least. Charlton Heston does an outstanding
performance as Thorn, a harried, overworked police officer who uncovers
the horrifying secret of Soylent Green. There is much to like in this
movie, a well-crafted look into the near future. One of the most frightening
aspects of this video is the state-sponsored suicide clinic, "Home."
A poignant aspect of this video is that Edward G. Robinson was actually
dying of cancer during the filming and succumbed just a few months later.
Jacques Tati, the
choreographer of the charming, comical ballet that is Playtime, casts
the endearingly clumsy Monsieur Hulot as the principal character wandering
through modernist Paris. Amid the babble of English, French and German
tourists, Hulot tries to reconcile the old-fashioned ways with the confusion
of the encroaching age of technology.
Interesting
view of 1960's (Modern) Paris. Intriguing filming, sets and a highlight
of the
"sounds" of modernity.
A cockeyed fusion
of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Godard's irreverent
journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional
films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy
Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60.
Modern noir meets
high opera in the French suspense flick Diva. Delivery boy Jules has an
opera obsession. He spends his small disposable income on sophisticated
sound equipment and manages to bootleg a live performance of his favorite
diva, Cynthia Hawkins (played by real-life opera singer Wilhelmina Wiggins
Fernandez). But Jules is spotted making the recording by shady investors
who want the tape. As if that weren't enough, a second cassette, filled
with enough evidence to topple an international drug and prostitution
ring, makes its way into Jules's mailbag. Writer-director Jean-Jacques
Beineix does a terrific job of adapting Delacorta's pulpy novel for the
screen, keeping all the excitement while adding a layer of depth. A movie
to make even a dedicated opera hater appreciate a perfectly sung aria,
Diva has enormous loft apartments, thugs galore, gorgeous visuals, and
a corker of a chase scene.
Terry
Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) (2 hours 30 minutes)
Brazil is
a surrealistic nightmare vision of a "perfect" future where
technology reigns supreme. Everyone is monitored by a secret government
agency that forbids love to interfere with efficiency. Johathan Pryce
and Robert De Niro star with Michael Palin in this chilling black comedy
directed by former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. When a daydreaming
bureaucrat becomes unwittingly involved with an underground superhero
and a beautiful mystery woman, he becomes the tragic victim of his
own romantic illusions.
Rick Deckard
(Harrison Ford) prowls the steel and microchip jungle of 21st century
Los Angeles. He's a "blade runner" stalking genetically made
criminal replicants. His assignment: kill them. Their crime: wanting
to be human. The story of Blade Runner is familiar to countless fans.
The version we will
be viewing is the out of print original cut (only available
on VHS) that includes the voiceover narration by Harrison Ford and some
footage that was cut from the DVD release. (I have both editions available
for the class).
Bruce Willis, Milla
Jovovich and Gary Oldman star in acclaimed director Luc Besson's outrageous
sci-fi adventure. An extravagantly styled tale of good against evil set
in an unbelievable twenty-third century world.
Fifty years after
Batman's debut as a comic strip in 1939, Warner Bros. turned the theme
into a major motion picture with a $27M budget. The film was produced
at the Pinewood Studios outside London, which provided spacious soundstages
and a 95 acre backlot for the creation of an ambitiously complex city
set. Eventually the 400 m long set became the most expensive outdoor set
built in Europe since Cleopatra. Created in an astonishingly short time
it is also one of the most compelling urban visions in the history of
filmmaking.
A flawed but stylish
adaptation of the Chester Gould comic strip by director Warren Beatty,
who also stars in the title role. The minimalist plot involves a battalion
of baddies who confront the intrepid detective in a series of strung-together
vignettes. Al Pacino is a comedic if overblown standout as Big Boy Caprice,
and Madonna simply smolders as aggressive blonde bombshell Breathless
Mahoney. Shot in bright, primary colors, this also won Oscars for Best
Art/Set Direction and Makeup (for those inventively hideous criminals).
Minority
Report (2002)
Set in the
chillingly possible future of 2054, Steven Spielberg's Minority Report
is arguably the most intelligently provocative sci-fi thriller since
Blade Runner. Like Ridley Scott's "future noir" classic, Spielberg's gritty
vision was freely adapted from a story by Philip K. Dick, with its central
premise of "Precrime" law enforcement, totally reliant on three
isolated human "precogs" capable (due to drug-related mutation)
of envisioning murders before they're committed. Inspired by the brainstorming
of expert futurists, Spielberg packs this paranoid chase with potential
conspirators, domestic tragedy, and a heartbreaking precog pawn. Making
judicious use of astonishing special effects, Minority Report brilliantly
extrapolates a future that's utterly convincing, and too close for comfort.
Theme
4: The Architecture of Space: Contemplating a Zero Gravity World
Aelita:
Queen of Mars (1924)
A Soviet
sensation upon its heavily publicized release in 1924, Aelita, the
Queen of Mars is now a curiosity of post-revolutionary Russian silent
cinema, a bit laughable in its revolutionary zeal not only on Earth
but on Mars as well! Despite a cool reaction from critics, the film
was such a hit with the Soviet public that many Russian babies born
in '24 were named Aelita, and the Cubist designs of the Martian sets--heavily
influenced by the avant-garde "constructivist" style--would
in turn influence science fiction films in the years to follow (most
notably the Flash Gordon serials). With costume designs performances
that are truly out of this world, Aelita was the 1924 equivalent of
a Spielberg spectacular; now it's a museum piece, unlikely to raise
anyone's pulse, but it's startling to think that this film was even
possible in 1924 Russia.
H.G.
Wells: First Men on the Moon (1964)
H.G. Wells'
fantastic account of life on the moon is vividly brought to the screen
by special effects master Ray Harryhausen in this amazing sci-fi epic
featuring unforgettable extra-terrestrial creatures. The film begins
with a team of United Nations astronauts planning an upcoming moon
mission. The astronauts are both confused and intrigued by a man (Judd)
who claims he, his fiancee and a scientist journeyed to the moon 65
years ago and were attacked by "Selenites,"
grotesque, human-like ant forms that live in immense crystal caverns.
Now it is up to the U.N. team to attempt a lunar landing that could be
more horrifying than ever believed possible.
The Ray Harryhausen
special effects again take center stage and they still hold up, even today.
This film represented a technical and stylistic challange for Harryhausen
because it was shot in the widescreen Panavision format, which did not
allow for the use of traditional stop-motion animation techniques. Consequently,
blue screen superimposing was used throughout and this lends a real sense
of scope and spectacle to the film. The art direction and design are well
thought out and are first rate, making the underground lunar empire seem
all the more probable on the otherwise airless moon.
Silent
Running (1971) (90 minutes)
As this
science fiction classic opens, botanist Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern)
has spent 8 years aboard the space freighter "Valley Forge" preserving the only
botanical specimens left from Earth under huge geodesic domes. When he
receives orders to destroy the project and return home, Lowell rebels
and hijacks the freighter, while plunging the craft into the gaseous rings
of Saturn. From that moment on he has only the trees, the gardens and
two drone robots to keep him company on his greatest adventure of all.
You HAVE to think of this film as a "period" piece. It immediately
preceded Star Wars and many of the people working on the sets for Running
were also involved in Star Wars. It also speaks to a political time where
the world is still involved in the Vietnam War and the US and Russia
are still taunting each other with nuclear weapons. The budget was a
mere $1M.
Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (148 minutes)
2001: A Space Odyssey
is a countdown to tomorrow, a road map to human destiny, a quest for the
infinite. It is a dazzling, compelling drama of man vs. machine, a stunning
meld of music and motion. To begin his voyage into the future, Kubrick
visits our prehistoric ape ancestry past, then leaps millennia into colonized
space, and ultimately whisks astronaut Bowman into uncharted realms of
space, perhaps even into immortality. And meet HAL. Douglas Trumball,
who is involved in the sets for this film, goes on to direct Silent Running
and then become involved in the Star Wars saga.
this
review is image intensive and may take a while to load, but it is worth
the wait!
Masters Research
Paper:
Outland
(1981) (110 minutes)
Io, Jupiter's innermost
moon, hosts mining colony Con-Am 27, a high-tech hellhole. There Marshall
O'Neil probes some mysterious deaths, among the miners. In pursuit of
the truth, he is alone. In Outland, writer/director Peter Hyams depicts
a chilling extension of today's corporation-driven world. Dehumanization
is vividly evoked in the environments of production designer Phillip Harrison
and special-effects wizard John Stears.
The Russian answer
to 2001, and very nearly as memorable a movie. The legendary Russian director
Andrei Tarkovsky made this extremely deliberate science-fiction epic,
an adaptation of a novel by Stanislaw Lem. The story follows a cosmonaut
(Donatas Banionis) on an eerie trip to a planet where haunting memories
can take physical form. Its bare outline makes it sound like a routine
space-flight picture, an elongated Twilight Zone episode; but the further
into its mysteries we travel, the less familiar anything seems. Even though
Tarkovsky's meanings and methods are sometimes mystifying, Solaris has
a way of crawling inside your head, especially given the slow pace and
general lack of forward momentum. By the time the final images cross the
screen, Tarkovsky has gone way beyond SF conventions into a moving, unsettling
vision of memory and home. Well worthy of cult status, Solaris is both
challenging art-house fare and a whacked-out head trip.
Super
Structures: The Making of the International Space Station (2000) (52 minutes)
Modern civilization
has been built by the unlimited imaginations of those who have been undaunted
by what seems to be insurmountable obstacles and challenges. In 1998 construction
began 250 miles above the earth on the International Space Station. Astronauts
have been doubling as construction workers on one of the largest projects
ever conceived. It will take 45 space missions to provide the materials
necessary to build the station. In the end it will weigh over 1 million
pounds and cover the size of two football fields.
Total
Recall (1990) (124 minutes)
This Schwarzeneggar
film is set in the future (but filmed in Mexico City) and speaks about
travel to Mars and vacations that are the result of brain implants. It
makes interesting use of present day modern architecture to speak of an
architecture of the future (all in concrete...) and presents a view of
life on Mars and living conditions on the planet.
Star
Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002) (142 minutes)
I guess you can't
have a course about film and architecture of the future without at least
one of the Star Wars set... I picked this one as it has some of the most
intriguing sets and use of digital/computer assistance in the production
of the architecture of so many types of places in the future.
Theme
5: The Architect in Film
The
Fountainhead (1949) (115 minutes)
Architects tend to
receive strange portrayal in movies, and to talk about the subject, one
has to begin with this one as it does make reference to the ego and characteristics
that architects either have to live up to or overcome. Much is written
about this film in texts about architecture and film (Lamster).
The
Draughtsman's Contract
"I try very hard
never to distort or dissemble," says Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins),
a draughtsman of considerable talent contracted by a certain Mrs. Herbert
(Janet Suzman) to make 12 drawings for her absent husband of their English
estate. While Mr. Neville aims for fidelity in his drawings, infidelity
in private is quite another matter. Then the film becomes a cerebral puzzle
when objects start appearing mysteriously in the subjects of Mr. Neville's
various drawings: a ladder that wasn't there before, a pair of boots standing
in a field. Mr. Neville's penchant for realism is stymied by these clues,
which may or may not suggest the murder of Mr. Herbert. Peter Greenaway
seems to have directed this, his first art-house success, with the aim
of exploring the failings of perspective in art and casting his doubtful
eye on the possibility of "faithful" drawings such as those
by which Mr. Neville makes his living. Greenaway was, after all, an art
student, and must have known that drawing machines like the one Mr. Neville
uses in the film (which is set in 1694) led not only to the invention
of photography, and therefore of film itself, but also to the renouncing
of perspective that informs so much of 20th-century painting.
The
Belly of an Architect (I1987) (119 minutes)
Stourley Kracklite,
played by Brian Dennehy, is a man with a prodigious ego, lust for life
and may seem initially to be less than a sympathetic protagonist. He is
an architect, an artist with a vision and a mission.From the beginning,
his passion for his intellectual mentor,a fictional 18th century French
architect, Etienne-Louis Boullee, and the scientist Sir Isaac Newton,
provokes thinly veiled ridicule and skepticism from his Italian colleagues.
Even
faced with a young and ruthless nemesis, Kracklite remains indomitable.
His belly, the center of gravity, becomes a metaphor for his frailty,
his humility and his humanity.
Student
Reviews: Anne-Marie Armstrong website
link
This is
the counterpoint to the Fountianhead -- the architect as complete underdog
without any money, power, charisma. Woody Harrelson (better known for
his role in
"Cheers") plays the architect/small pracitioner/also professor
(you have to love his lectures) who is struggling against the money and
power Robert Redford offers as he purchases the affections of the architect's
wife.
