This avuncular documentary by Thom Andersen is about the
depiction of L.A. in films, and about the way the history of
the city has been presented by the film industry. There is
lots of discussion of noir, accompanied by film clips. One of
Andersen's points is that, as a citizen, he is bothered by
the fact that films using location shots often do not use the
real addresses in scripts. A small point perhaps. But he
keeps reminding us fake is fake. LA Confidential and
Chinatown are fictions. Although Chinatown refers to actual
scandals, it was set in 1938 and does not tell the real story
of the engineering of the water supply at the beginning of
the century. As for LA Confidential, he strains to make the
point that (without referring to Ellroy's novels) the real
conduct of the LAPD was much worse. There's a provocative
segment on Dragnet--which he says, in the person of the
robot-like sneers and orders of Joe Friday-- shows the real
contempt the force had for the people it was supposed to
protect and serve. He resents in general the "secret history"
that noir movies create, while at the same time narrating in
a tone which seems to me to do little other than confirm
those films insights. Ah, but Cain and Chandler were "snobs,"
and their 1940s film writing created a vision of the
Depression muddied by the passage of a decade. Andersen is,
if nothing else, a controversialist. He despises a rather
wide range of intellectuals, Joan Didion and Woody Allen
especially. And his favorite Marlowe film is the re-make of
The Long Goodbye starring Elliot Gould. Go figure.
The film is a must see, not least b/c of the discussion of
the Zoot-Suit riots as a watershed for LA's Hispanic youth,
and for Andersen's excavation of African-American films of
the last quarter century, which show an urban LA one does not
need cars, cell phones, and suburban plazas to
experience.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 26 Aug 2004 EDT