Cities and Film

James Donald describes the cinema in it's early days as an 'exclusively urban phenomenon- both in Europe and the US. They were mostly to be found in working class and immigrant ghettos'. The number of cinemas exploded between the mid 1910's and 1930's and saw their 'glorious transformation into motion-picture palaces' - and that back then they offered more services than it seems is available today, at the mention of baby-sitting.

However, it is said that this consolidated the suburbs and that by bringing the experience of 'going out' to a way of life primarily built around 'staying in', the way of life mediated increasingly through a privatised experience of telephone, radio and television. The mass nature of the cinema itself was not just about 'selling itself to a market far larger and less socially discriminated than before, but implies a homology between cinematic spectatorship and urban experience, with both being characterised by distraction, diffusion and anonymity.'

Donald's view of the cinema and the impact of film within the cityscapes throughout the US and the EU so far drew similar parallels with ideologies of creating a lack of individualism by upsetting the boundaries between the classes - reducing the lines between them to a quiet standstill as opposed to a loud barrier. This implies to create a generally negative space for creative production, at least to an active audience who would not sit passively. Cinema was very much a social experience many years ago and many other activities took place whilst observing the film itself.

Stout defines the urban class in a slightly different way in the realm of journalism; 'that visual culture was embedded in social reality of urban life and had urged visual art generally away from landscape toward cityscape. As a medium of artistic expression, photography perfectly exemplified the spirit of the modern age.'

Already this representation of the urban, lower class society is seen to be not only more appreciative of creative arts, especially in journalism, illustration and photography but the potential for all of those within the people and living spaces is also recognized and used, perhaps even exploit - 'if the architecture of the city could present images of foreboding power or lyrical freedom, it was none-the-less the lives of the people of the city themselves that became the constantly recurring theme of photo-journalists and the like,' bearing 'the individual faces that communicate directly to the viewer with a sense of direct, immediate reality that is the transcendent essence of urban life.'

Overall I feel that architecture and film are presented differently; both positive and negatively, but Stout's presentation of them both presents them as a truth-exposing, necessary reality - however grim, whereas Donald presents them as being a negative experience that detracts the human qualities of the city's inhabitants, expressed as either 'the ultimate expressions of life in the city', or the anonymity of the urban class and environment.