Favorite Movies About Los Angeles with an Architectural Bent
Wed, 04/28/2010 - 3:53pm
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles is my favorite film about Los Angeles. I hope that everyone can see this film if they love Los Angeles.
I have always been captivated by the treatment of the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in Maya Deren's experimental short Meshes of the Afternoon. For another take on the style, the courtship scene in Double Indemnity bring out its more sinister qualities.
Too many to pick just one...
The Graduate (TWA tiles at airport, Sunset Strip, etc.)
Skaterdater (South Bay)
Pee Wee's Big Adventure (lots of spots!)
I can't believe no one has mentioned "Strangers When We Met" (1960), one of the great Richard Quine melodramas, where Kirk Douglas plays a tortured L.A. architect. Also, I don't know if this counts, but what about "The Black Cat" (1934), where Boris Karloff plays a demented doctor that's clearly based on Los Angeles' Rudolph Schindler from the way he dresses to the modernist house/castle he lives inside.
Via an email sent to LAVA by mistake, I just discovered Robby Cress' blog Dear Old Hollywood, an exploration of classic film locations as they look today. Check out this entry on Richard Carradine's favorite, Strangers When We Meet:
http://dearoldhollywood.blogspot.com/2009/05/strangers-when-we-meet-film-locations.html
One of my favoriates is "Heat" (1996)