It is often noted that a movie location inventively used can be like a character in its own right. In extreme instances it would be truer to say that it becomes the movie itself – the canvas on which everything else is mounted.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in The Third Man, the most beloved of director Carol Reed’s collaborations with Graham Greene. No wonder this 1949 masterpiece was voted by Guardian Cities readers as the film they’d most like to see as part of the Barbican’s upcoming City Visions season. Other contenders included Chinatown (set in 1940s Los Angeles) and Wings of Desire (a divided, late-1980s Berlin). But it is the post-war Vienna of Reed and Greene’s vision that exemplifies for so many viewers the unique cinematic power a city can wield.
In their 1947 thriller Odd Man Out, shot largely in Belfast, Reed and Greene had shown a city to be a treacherous labyrinth: shadows and scaffolding transform it into a large-scale Snakes & Ladders board. Vienna in The Third Man might have continued the visual motif but for the lingering idealism in its hero, Holly Martin (played by Joseph Cotten), that isn’t quite extinguished by the corruption and despair he encounters. Resilient traces of romance still cling to the city’s bereft and crumbling streets – shot in black-and-white, with great poetry and playfulness, by the cinematographer Robert Krasker.
The Third Man is being shown in a special Guardian Cities presentation on 27 September. Throughout the City Vision season, you will find diverse and idiosyncratic examples of cities in cinema to delight your inner-urbanist. Here are five more of my personal highlights …
Los Angeles Plays Itself
As the home of Hollywood, Los Angeles can scarcely claim to be under-represented on screen. But the miracle of Thom Anderson’s documentary essay, which gathers together almost three hours’ worth of movie representations of LA, lies in its discursive component. Far from being a greatest hits package, it follows threads and trends in the splintered portrayals of its subject. The celebratory, the aggrandising and the outright fraudulent are assembled to show a city that can be the geographical equivalent of both a star, celebrated for a recognisable persona, and a method actor rendered unrecognisable from one movie to the next.
Neighbouring Sounds
Recife, the fifth-largest city in Brazil, is the setting for this intricate and gradually disquieting psychological drama about the residents in one prosperous neighbourhood. As with most of the films in this season, Neighbouring Sounds is a visually arresting work. But the clue to what sets it apart lies in the noun in its title: the director Kleber Mendonça Filho never forgets that cinema is also an aural medium. The sound design (credited to the director and Pablo Lamar) is beautifully detailed; the audience with which I saw the picture almost didn’t dare breathe for fear of missing a vital clue on the soundtrack. The picture shows how geography, architecture and history intersect with social status and wellbeing. Crucially, it reminds us what cities are like to listen to as well as to live in.
Jem Cohen: NYC Films
Some New York movies in the season are bound to be familiar (Do the Right Thing), perhaps even over-familiar (Manhattan). But the short works of Jem Cohen are something else. Cohen is an experimental filmmaker perhaps best known for his music video work with the likes of REM, Fugazi and Patti Smith (though as his website puts it: “‘Please note: Jem did not and does not consider himself a ‘music video director’’”). But for almost 30 years, Cohen has been documenting New York City in a series of fragmented, scrapbook-like shorts which encompass the lyrical and the grimy, with a political aspect foregrounded in pieces such as Gravity Hill Newsreels: Occupy Wall Street #03.
Footsteps in Jerusalem
Leading filmmakers from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School tell their stories in this 2013 portrait inspired by the renowned documentary essayist David Perlov, known as the forefather of Israeli documentary. Cultural and geographical shifts come to light through the juxtaposing of their contrasting perspectives. This 90-minute film is being screened with the short Looking Awry, in which a Palestinian director is commissioned by an American organisation to make a documentary in which Jerusalem is portrayed as a haven of peace and harmony. What could possibly go wrong?
Oscar Niemeyer: Life is a Breath of Air
The modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer, who died in 2012, is best known for his curved civic buildings in Brasilia. (He also collaborated on the UN building in New York.) He could bring to city life fluid waves of elegance, and a certain defiant serenity—witness his work on the Pampulha architectural complex, all dome-like sanctuaries and wavy, watery lines. He is celebrated in this 2005 documentary, which will be followed by a panel discussion about the international impact of Brazilian architecture. Also screening in the season is Sao Paolo, A Metropolitan Symphony, a 1929 film never before shown in the UK. Its day-in-the-life footage of the bustling city will be augmented by a live piano accompaniment.
City Visions, a season of films, talks and debates, runs at the Barbican Centre in London from 25 September to 9 November.
• Constructing Worlds: classic photographs that redefine our cities
