April 13, 2020

Beyond the Frame #15: Blow-up

April 13, 2020/ Chris Rogers

The following piece is a continuation of a series, Behind the Frame by Chris Rogers, which analyzes how the built environment has been represented on the big screen. Interiors will post future pieces on INTJournal.com.

Destruction of the built environment has been a feature of moving pictures since the silent days. Buster Keaton integrated real buildings, model work and – famously – collapsing scenic flats to show the impact of a cyclone in Steamboat Bill, Jr. and although later directors have declined to place themselves at the literal centre of such mayhem, all have recognised that, whatever their generation or preferred genre, breaking down an architectural reality must be as convincing as building it up.

Entering the era of colour, the Hollywood epic provided renewed opportunity for ambitious scenes of urban devastation. An entire city burned in Gone with the Wind, driven by civil war but paralleling the tempestuous relationships of the lead characters. Extensive existing sets on a Californian backlot, including one constructed to represent Skull Island in King Kong, were re-fronted and then set ablaze – filmed separately, the conflagrations were merged via optical compositing to increase the sense of spectacle.

The global conflicts that followed are an obvious source of convincing architectural destruction in film. Ken Annakin’s recreation of the D-Day assault on the port of Ouistreham for The Longest Day begins with a single, sustained aerial shot that shadows Allied soldiers charging along the quayside before revealing their objective to be a fortified casino – during the bitter battle that follows one building is blown apart, disintegrating in near real time. Nearby Port-en-Bessin stood in for the town, its own inlet a close match; the ‘casino’ was built there especially for the production and designed to undergo a phased collapse. Use of a helicopter as the camera platform gave a sure sense of the sequence’s geography. Simulating an attack in this way is feasible when the target is a single building but for multiple road and rail bridges subjected to mass aerial bombing an alternative is needed. With The Bridges at Toko-Ri Mark Robson brought the Korean War to cinema audiences through a fictionalised account of an actual US Navy raid on a heavily defended valley. Repeated strikes on the titular structures were executed by flying model aircraft on wires above a realistic terrain model the size of a football field, featuring inch-to-the-foot scale bridges so large a person could walk through their arches and working trains. Set against a mountain backdrop outside Los Angeles for further realism, a helicopter was again used with pyrotechnics providing the explosive destruction.

Peacetime brought its own tensions. Echoing wider societal concerns, the disaster movie of the 1960s and 70s frequently conveyed distrust of authority and distaste at corporate greed as hubristic feats of construction were ravaged in widescreen and Sensurround. For sheer scope Earthquake leads this field, even if its dramatic tropes were already clichés. Mark Robson again peels apart the infrastructure of modern life – here a collapsing row of stilt houses, there a falling freeway overpass – through painstakingly realised miniatures enhanced by subtle photographic effects such as aerial perspective and motion blur.

If demolition on the silver screen has been principally driven by natural or man-made cataclysm, The Medusa Touch draws on both in its story of a misanthrope with telekinetic powers whose flashes of rage have increasingly horrifying effects. To show this director Jack Gold crafted depictions of everyday architecture turned catastrophic that are still disturbing today. The collapse of a crowded cathedral unfolds with implacable logic from the first teetering pinnacle; an airliner crashing into a tower block still shocks even after world events saw that particular nightmare become a reality. Real buildings, miniatures and physical effects were once again combined for these scenes.

Two examples of what Larry Gross called the “big, loud action movie” (‘BLAM’) each feature a key scene in which devastating a building is a plot-specific act. The Nakatomi Corporation in Die Hard is decapitated hierarchically with the murder of its chief executive but an explosion on its rooftop accomplishes the feat literally – large-scale miniatures of Fox Plaza where the film was shot were employed, along with optical compositing. The present is destroyed to save the future in Terminator 2: Judgment Day when an explosion obliterates a semiconductor factory’s contents, foreshadowing an ending that repeats the moment at the micro scale. A false extra floor was added to a genuine technology company’s building in Fremont, California and then detonated for the shot.

As the above have shown, complete destruction of an actual building for a film is seldom necessary and rarely possible. But if reality is the goal and this its ultimate expression, some directors have succeeded.

The Battle of Huế is the setting for the final act of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, as a squad of US Marines is trapped by an enemy sniper. Streets and buildings have been shattered and refashioned, and new pathways lead to death or survival. Enough of the derelict Becton Gas Works in East London echoed the French colonial architecture of the Vietnamese city to make filming there feasible, with set dressing with appropriate signage and advertisements adding another layer of verisimilitude. Already due for demolition, the director and production designer Anton Furst chose certain structures for early attention to further serve the story. For the bravura opening sequence of Demolition Man, in which the hero gains his titular nickname, director Marco Brambilla secured agreement to delay the planned implosion of a former manufacturing plant in Louisville, Kentucky until after dark and exaggerated the modest blasts needed for the job with much gasoline.

The apotheosis of cinematic destruction has an other-worldly origin. In alien invasion satire Mars Attacks! the fictional Galaxy Hotel tower in Las Vegas is sliced vertically by a flying saucer’s ray gun, the halves tumbling to the ground one after the other. The more prosaic truth was that the 31-storey Landmark hotel and casino in that city, a suitably space-age design from 1969, was being redeveloped and a necessary step in the process was recorded for Tim Burton’s film.

Whether adding narrative meaning or simply enjoyment, demolition in film is seldom a careless act.

Chris Rogers writes, speaks and creates tours about architecture and other aspects of visual culture. He has written three books, including How to Read London – A crash course in London architecture (Ivy Press, 2017), a publisher's best-seller. His work and thoughts on architecture, film, art, design and television can be found at www.chrismrogers.net

February 28, 2020

Beyond the Frame #14: Trailer

February 28, 2020/ Chris Rogers

The most fundamental materialization of architecture is the home, the building that provides the essentials of shelter, comfort and privacy for each of us. But it is also often a manifestation of the owner’s personality, revealed through size, shape, materials and color, an aspect that has attracted many film-makers seeking more or less subtle indicators of their characters’ psychology.

Arguably the most famous home in cinema is the Bates residence in Psycho. A clapboard mansion, its Second Empire style and faded glory immediately suggest the previous century and so introduce Norman Bates’s mother long before ‘she’ appears. The remote, rural house also underscores the vulnerability of Marion Crane by contrasting sharply with the steel-framed modernity of the city she has left behind. Alfred Hitchcock had the house created on the studio backlot from a painting of a real home in upstate New York by artist Edward Hopper, whose work is associated with isolation and alienation and has itself influenced many films.

Directors have sometimes signaled their antagonists with Modernist architecture. Michael Mann demonstrates this with Francis Dollarhyde’s house from Manhunter. Generous strip windows and translucent glass block walls typify the International Style, originated by European architects between the world wars, but also represent a serial killer’s obsession with seeing, revealed elsewhere through his use of mirrors, film and surveillance. That the source novel has the same character inhabiting a large Victorian home reminiscent of Hitchcock’s earlier work shows Mann’s understanding of architecture’s narrative possibilities. For his Heat, armed robber Neil McCauley occupies only barely a vast, empty house of plate glass and slick surfaces whose clinical sterility echoes his credo of emotional detachment – a lack of personality in the house defining absolutely the personality of the occupier. The New England home to which former British Prime Minister Adam Lang retreats in Roman Polanski’s The Ghost [Writer] is a blank bunker whose slit windows give occasional glimpses of its windswept surroundings. With anodyne decoration and a staff of acolytes, the house may not be Lang’s own but serves as an analogue of the vapid, pliant politician.

More sympathetic characters are generally found in homelier, if still indicative, surroundings. Reaching 1980s New York and with considerable accrued wealth, the immortal clansman hero of Highlander lives above his own antiques store – a dryly witty nod to his origins – in an expansive loft apartment. Director Russell Mulcahy’s fluid camera movement through its double-height, open plan living space alludes to MacLeod’s own navigation through centuries of life. A polygonal inner sanctum lined with mementoes from across the globe makes both points explicit and recalls the childhood visit to the Tower of London armory that inspired co-screenwriter Gregory Widen to conceive the film. In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Deckard’s 97th-floor apartment is also presented as a cocoon-like refuge from a wearisome world cluttered with objects from his and perhaps others’ lives. Richly textured cement block walls based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis-Brown House, a low ceiling and a windowless kitchen all contribute, as does diffuse lighting in warm tones.

In The Yakuza, Harry Kilmer returns to Japan decades after military service there to help his businessman friend Tanner. He stays with another friend, a settled expatriate whose dwelling is a hybrid of American ranch house and traditional Japanese home that features walls of planed timber and delicate folding screens. This calm, minimalist dwelling, seen to be located in a modest garden, welcomes Kilmer and slowly softens Dusty, his confident young bodyguard. It is juxtaposed with the metallic finishes and gaudy colors of the contemporary hotel suite favored by the bullish Tanner, who is later revealed to have betrayed Kilmer. Sensitively made by Sydney Pollack using a mixed cast and crew, the film was one of the earliest Western productions to shoot in Japan.

The homes of ambivalent personas lie between these opposites. The baroque eclecticism of Xanadu speaks to the shallow excesses of newspaper baron Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. Outside and in, its uncaring melange of periods suggests restlessness fueled by unlimited wealth coupled to a lack of taste, as Oriental nudges Spanish Mission which jostles with Egyptian. In truth this approach was common to the rapidly-rich of that period and can be seen in the homes of many, including William Randolph Hearst, one of the real-life models for Kane.

Bruce Wayne either builds or inherits Wayne Manor, depending on the story, and fittingly its appearances on film have had varied representations. The Tudor Gothic Knebworth House in Hertfordshire seen in Tim Burton’s Batman was last rebuilt in the 1850s, three quarters of a century before Standard Oil founder Herbert L. Pratt even started work on The Braes in Long Island which features in Batman & Robin. Yet in these films and those of Christopher Nolan, which have used two further English country houses of wildly varying age, their architecture has always implied wealth and respectability, with just a hint of foreboding. A suitable home for a dark knight.

January 02, 2020

Beyond the Frame #13: Tracking Shot

January 02, 2020/ Chris Rogers

The railway has a special place in the history of cinema. In 1895, an arriving train was the subject of one of the first public projections of a motion picture, startling the audience to such an extent that some felt the locomotive was about to burst out of the screen. Ever since, directors and screenwriters have been repeatedly attracted to the specific filmic architectures of train, platform and station.

The station, in film, is invariably a terminal, and thus both literally and symbolically the beginning or end of a journey. Its architectural majesty suggests this, impressing those arriving or comforting those departing, but cinema has often highlighted how impersonal and uncaring such places can be. In the Texas-set The Getaway, Doc McCoy’s wife has agency in the city but is less astute in a crowded train station, losing her bag and the couple’s fortune to a practised trickster whom her husband must therefore pursue. Repeated cuts to her awaiting Doc’s return emphasize her loneliness in the emptying concourse of the then Sunset Station in San Antonio. Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum and Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables depict an anonymity that can prove fatal. In the first, a coldly mechanical assassination passes almost unnoticed in the quotidian setting of rush-hour at London Waterloo, whilst in the second, an intricate, three-dimensional shoot-out co-opts the Neoclassical glamour of Union Station in Chicago as a stage for mass tragedy.

The generosity of space associated with station architecture has also enabled simple exuberance, whether an impromptu mass waltz filling the main concourse of New York’s Grand Central Terminal in The Fisher King or an out-of-control locomotive ploughing through Chicago’s concourse in Silver Streak. The former was done for real on location in a single night, the latter achieved by physical and visual effects and filming at Toronto Union Station. That Grand Central was, for many years, reachable by helicopter via the roof of the 59-storey Pan Am building towering over it is exploited in Coogan’s Bluff to create a vivid contrast between the world Arizona sheriff Clint Eastwood habitually commands and the kaleidoscopic, hedonistic metropolis he is forced to traverse to find his quarry.

The platform is a place of transition, a liminal space between stasis and motion often employed for scenes revolving around decisions or dilemmas. Arguably the most famous example is Brief Encounter, where the would-be-adulterous protagonists say their goodbyes each time they part and where, for one, an implied end could occur. Shooting at night heightens the tension by focusing on the characters and reducing the station and the train to illuminated backdrops. In the permanent night deep below the streets of New York the subway network is the unwitting host of an audacious robbery in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Once more, platforms represent options – does a police officer risk what is ahead, unseen and unknown? Does a thief and killer face the consequences of his actions, or take another direction? On an epic wartime train journey to freedom aboard Von Ryan’s Express, hundreds of escaped Allied prisoners repeatedly face choices on platforms or at the trackside, any one of which could result in disaster. To represent Florence’s main station, the cantilevered concrete canopies of Roma Ostiense were used – appropriately, given it was built to welcome Hitler in 1938 and includes fascist symbols.

On occasion, the perspective is altered. In Carlito’s Way , De Palma returns to trains but has his film both begin and end on a platform – the same one, in fact, since the entire story is told in flashback. For John Sturges, a Bad Day at Black Rock starts when a train that has for years passed through stops for a man to do his duty; outside the screen the world continues. In both films, the platform holds the power of life and death.

Once aboard, the small spaces of a train are well suited to intimate drama, where dialogue and the interplay of character are to the fore. The views constructed outside the windows become almost as important as how the characters move from one state to another in every sense. Yet even here thrillers conjure surprises from the linear, sequential layout of the corridor, the dining carriage and the baggage car. Alfred Hitchcock knew this: from The Lady Vanishes to Strangers on a Train. Later, still in his work, Roger Thornhill finds a moment to rest from unexpected travails in North by North West after an apparently chance meeting on a train, even if he and the audience are soon to find otherwise. Loaded conversations lead to action in the original Mission: Impossible, when the exterior of the train becomes as important as the interior and the whole enters the Channel Tunnel, increasing the pressure through a new type of space.

The James Bond franchise has understood all of these possibilities since its inception and demonstrates as much in early and recent installments. The barbed verbal ballet of Bond’s first meeting with Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale occurs in the comfortably colourless surroundings of a contemporary high-speed train, centering our attention on the conversation. A similarly sharp exchange between actual enemies in From Russia With Love is the prelude to a tightly choreographed and brutally fatal fight, the entire scene exploiting the compressed architecture of the sleeper carriage to the maximum. End of the line, indeed.

December 30, 2019

The Best "Film & Architecture" Movies of the Decade

December 30, 2019/ Interiors

It’s hard enough making a list for “Best Movies of the Year”, let alone a list for “Best Movies of the Decade.” But a list of “Best Film & Architecture Movies of the past 10 years”? Almost impossible. So yes, we probably left out one, or two, or seven really, really great films and we probably have movies in the “wrong” order. But, we tried our best and that’s what counts. Hopefully, we’ll get it right for next decade’s list. Or not…

10. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Yes, a movie with very few architectural spaces made the list for the best “Film & Architecture” Movies of the Decade. Why? Because George Miller created an entire world that is so immersive, original and visually stunning.

9. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Blade Runner 2049 borrows a page from Mad Max: Fury Road, where it pulls inspiration from it’s prequel film but tries to establish its own architectural universe. The original Blade Runner is one of the greatest Architectural Movies of all time so Blade Runner 2049 had a lot to live up to but Denis Villeneuve far exceeded our expectations.

8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

The film is a beautiful love letter, not only to an entire city (San Francisco), but to a very specific house. Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails were able to tell an incredible story about the concept of family, an undying friendship and urban gentrification in today’s society. Also, to see our Interview with the film’s Production Designer, Jona Tochet, click here.

7. Black Panther (2018)

Due to special effects and computer-generated realities, Superhero Movies sometimes don’t get enough recognition for their Art Direction and Production Design. However, Black Panther was the first to get nominated and win for Best Production Design at the Academy Awards in 2019. This was thanks to Ryan Coogler and Hannah Beachler’s amazing depiction of the fictional African country of Wakanda.

6. Roma (2018)

For Roma, Production Designer, Eugenio Cabellero, had to take very personal memories from Director, Alfono Cuarón, and create exact locations from his childhood. Caballero and his team constructed or revamped entire boulevards to depict an accurate representation of 1970s Mexico City, all while creating spaces that would translate well into Black and White. For all that, it might be one of the most complex feats of Production Design ever done this decade.

5. A Ghost Story (2017)

A Ghost Story not only looks at the Architectural space of a home, but the psychology and phenomenology of these spaces in relation to ghosts. This film creates conversations and powerful discussions based on these concepts with a visual depiction that stays with you long after. Also, to see our Interview with the film’s Production Designer, Jade Healy and Director, David Lowery, click here.

4. Her (2013)

The Architecture for the film, Her, is subconscious. It is one of the most important aspects of the movie, and yet, it is not assuming or overpowering in any way. Director, Spike Jonze and Production Designer, K.K. Barrett were more interested in reflecting the emotional qualities of the characters through the Production Design. Everything from Theodore Twombly’s (Joaquin Phoenix) apartment to the entire city of Los Angeles was handled with unique perspective and masterful execution. Also, to see our analysis of the film for Archdaily, click here.

3. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Wes Anderson created a fictional Eastern European land called Zubrowka with its own original architecture, design aesthetic and fashion. Heavily inspired by the German artistic style Jugendstil, The Grand Budapest Hotel featured Art Nouveau details and referenced historical texts and photographic negatives from the 1920s to make sure the architectural landscape was accurate. It’s no wonder it won the Academy Award, Art Directors Guild Award and Critics Choice Award for Production Design.

2. Inception (2010)

Honestly, Inception could have made this list based on this scene alone - a scene in which an entire group of buildings are being flipped up and over a city during a dream sequence. Christopher Nolan has a knack for creating breathtaking Architectural Realities in his films and Inception is his best example of this. Fun Fact: It’s also the number 1 movie most referenced when you tell someone you like architecture and movies.

1. Columbus (2017)

To understand the film Columbus, you need to know some backstory: the city of Columbus, Indiana became a Midwestern Mecca of Architecture in the mid-1950s, thanks to J. Irwin Miller. Columbus tells the story of 2 characters trying to find themselves through the Architecture and Buildings of this amazing town. The Film’s director, Kogonada, has an affinity for Architecture and Architectural spaces and he delivers on every possible aspect you would want from a movie about “Film & Architecture”.

February 24, 2019

2019 Oscar Predictions

February 24, 2019/ Armen Karaoghlanian

The only preface I have for these predictions is that the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should be ashamed that First Man wasn’t nominated across the board. I’m excited for these Oscars otherwise, because Best Picture could legitimately go to four or five films, and a lot of the other major categories could have surprises as well. The Academy is also clearly struggling to put together a show (no host, back peddling on announcements), so in case they need a producer for next year, just know that I am available.

Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star Is Born
Vice

Will Win: Green Book
Should Win: Black Panther
If I picked my favorite of the year: First Man

Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman
Paweł Pawlikowski, Cold War
Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite
Alfonso Cuarón, Roma
Adam McKay, Vice

Will Win: Alfonso Cuarón, Roma
Should Win: Alfonso Cuarón, Roma
If I picked my favorite of the year: Damien Chazelle, First Man

Christian Bale, Vice
Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born
Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate
Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Viggo Mortensen, Green Book

Will Win: Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Should Win: Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born
If I picked my favorite of the year: Ryan Gosling, First Man

Yalitza Aparicio, Roma
Glenn Close, The Wife
Olivia Colman, The Favourite
Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born
Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Will Win: Glenn Close, The Wife
Should Win: Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born
If I picked my favorite of the year: Helena Howard, Madeline’s Madeline

Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman
Sam Elliott, A Star Is Born
Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Sam Rockwell, Vice

Will Win: Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Should Win: Mahershala Ali, Green Book
If I picked my favorite of the year: Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther

Amy Adams, Vice
Marina de Tavira, Roma
Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Emma Stone, The Favourite
Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Will Win: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Should Win: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
If I picked my favorite of the year: Rachel McAdams, Game Night

The Favourite
First Reformed
Green Book
Roma
Vice

Will Win: The Favourite
Should Win: First Reformed
If I picked my favorite of the year: First Reformed

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
BlacKkKlansman
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
If Beale Street Could Talk
A Star Is Born

Will Win: BlacKkKlansman
Should Win: If Beale Street Could Talk
If I picked my favorite of the year: First Man

Cold War
The Favourite
Never Look Away
Roma
A Star Is Born

Will Win: Roma
Should Win: Roma
If I picked my favorite of the year: First Man

BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Vice

Will Win: Bohemian Rhapsody
Should Win: The Favourite
If I picked my favorite of the year: First Man

Black Panther
The Favourite
First Man
Mary Poppins Returns
Roma

Will Win: The Favourite
Should Win: First Man
If I picked my favorite of the year: First Man

Avengers: Infinity War
Christopher Robin
First Man
Ready Player One
Solo: A Star Wars Story

Will Win: First Man
Should Win: First Man
If I picked my favorite of the year: First Man

Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
If Beale Street Could Talk
Isle of Dogs
Mary Poppins Returns

Will Win: If Beale Street Could Talk
Should Win: If Beale Street Could Talk
If I picked my favorite of the year: First Man

Think Pieces