So it’s that time of year when some serious listing begins (for a really mental take on this--in the best sense--check Woebot’s beautiful scans of his top 100 records when they are successfully loaded).
So, Whitebait would like to offer his guide to twenty classic ‘city’ films worth watching for the first time or once again. This list is for when you might be lurking at the video shop over the
next week or so looking for something interesting to watch.
Get more details on each release at imd. Nothing surprising nor obscurantist here – just a mix of generally well know popular/fun/arty stuff. He isn’t arguing that these are ‘the’ best city films (and do pitch in with your own recommendations in the comments please), just the ones that have tended to lodge in his mind for whatever reason.
His definition of a ‘city film’ is one where the urban setting or environment takes on the status of an actor, or becomes a key point of meditation.
So, it isn’t enough that the film is just has the city as a backdrop - that would be too easy wouldn’t it.
In alphabetical order (doh!):
1. All About My Mother - this may seem tenuous given the criteria but it gets on the list for that one perfect Freudian scene when Manuela is shuttling from Madrid to Barcelona. A train tunnel, an exquisite musical buildup and then a taxi past Sagrada Familiar. One of the most exhilarating moments of recent cinema.
2. Bladerunner – is it Los Angeles or really Tokyo? Doesn’t matter as it is still stands brilliantly today as we keep on marching into the cyborg future that arrived 100 years ago.
3. Chinatown – yes, Los Angeles figures strongly. Crooked water politics and noir in the land of sunshine.
4. Chungking Express – crowded and deserted Hong Kong exteriors and the gorgeous Faye Wong sneaking into a policeman’s house to provide a free makeover (life before Queer Eye!).
5. Collateral – brilliant in every way. And a great tongue-in-cheek thriller ending in the sense that like all good recent LA films it slams the idea that there is life in the city beyond car travel - by equating the metro rail system with death.
6. Dark City – familiar sci-fi noir themes but very handsomely and adeptly executed.
7. Falling Down – yes, this film has a crappy racist politics at the heart of it but it is one hundred times more complex and intelligent in the way it goes about these complex politics than detractors will acknowledge. And in doing so it offers some handy insights into the politics of city space and mobility.
8. Fellini’s Roma/La Dolce Vita – Whitebait learnt some Italian for a while and this was a great way to practice. He likes the essay-like Roma just because it seemed a damn weird movie the first time around. And the second time.
9. La Haine – was a film of note before the recent Parisian uprisings but W. suspects it might be even more gripping and pertinent now.
10. L.A. Story – still some great and eminently repeatable one-liners despite the unsatisfying romance narrative at the centre. And a reference to that great Martin poem, ‘Oh pointy birds, oh pointy pointy …’
11. Manhattan – Whitebait remembers a time when he did trust film critics who would write that the latest Woody Allen film was worth shelling out for at the cinema.
12. Naked – a brutal and funny film in equal doses. Life on some very dark English streets
13. Short Cuts – this is tied up in some bad memories for Whitebait (and he still hasn’t plucked up the courage to see it again) but because Raymond Carver’s stories were the inspiration it still goes on the list.
14. Summer of Sam / Do the Right Thing – while DtRT is the acknowledged classic (so damn hot and tense on those New York streets) … SoS goes back to the late seventies and reworks similar themes with another great soundtrack.
15. The Big Sleep – who knew it rained in Los Angeles so much?
16. The End of Violence / Wings of Desire – EoV isn’t a successful film but it has a great eerie take on L.A. and Bill Pulman is in great form. More interesting than satisfying. If you aren’t in the mood for that then go straight to WoD.
17. The Last Wave – a completely different representation of Sydney in its articulation of the unease that remains in a place forcibly acquired from its indigenous inhabitants.
18. Tokyo Story - it is nearly all studio sets and yet it paints a damning picture of the role of the urban in the disintegration of familial bonds and individual selfishness (Beware – the pace is slow in a good way).
19. Sans Soleil – more an essay on memory and therefore quite a different viewing experience. But many of the scenes from Tokyo remain etched in my mind.
20. Wonderland – would contend for number one if that was the objective of this exercise. A moped riding through the streets, trains in the night, a Michael Nyman score, blind dating, London streets, a barking neighbour’s dog who drives a woman to the brink … this is The Poetry of City Life 101. Exceptional.
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