Cities, Words and Images pp 186-215 | Cite as
Martin Scorsese and the Rhythm of the Metropolis
Abstract
How could we possibly think of the cinema without images of cities springing to mind? Throughout the past century, cities have been caught by the camera in documentaries and in fictions, continuing the tradition of the literary works that represent people, events and feelings in a metropolitan environment. For a whole century urban landscapes have been coming and going on screens in no particular order and with no recognizable development or thematic unity, since cities have been the canvas for a story as often as they have been the main subject, the protagonist of the whole film. Ever since René Clair’s Paris qui dort (1924), which has so much in common with Guillaume Apollinaire’s visions of Paris, and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926), which has so much in common with an expressionist painting or a constructivist project, films and cities have been an irresistible combination, proving that architecture and film-making have as close a relationship as cinema and theatre or painting or literature — the arts which have most typically been associated with film (one need only think of André Bazin’s essays on these topics).1
Keywords
Taxi Driver Urban Life American Cinema Vertical Vision Vertical MontagePreview
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Notes
- 1.See André Bazin, ‘Théâtre et cinéma’, ‘Peinture et cinéma’, Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1990), pp. 129–78 and 187–92.Google Scholar
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