When Directors Made a City Feel Alive
“I’m not trying to make it feel real. I’m trying to make it feel alive.”
-Ingmar Bergman
In this article, I will talk about how these locations have made an impression on me and their significance to their respective narratives.
New York City (Taxi Driver)
In his 1976 picture, director Martin Scorsese creates a perfectly isolative atmosphere in a city with seven million inhabitants. To accomplish this, he depicted the landscape of New York City through the lenses of a completely distorted nightmare. Scorsese creates a physical detachment between the protagonist and the city that he roams through the use of the taxi cab that Travis Brickle (Rober De Niro) regularly drives throughout the film. The cinematography inside the cab adds to the folkloric themes that Director of Photography Michael Chapman wanted to communicate. Travis gets referred to as a cowboy multiple times by sport (Harvey Keitel). Likewise, the yellow cab becomes a symbolic vessel. Rather a symbolic horse for Travis to traverse the underworld, as steam escapes from vents in the streets, and the cab splashes through water from hydrants while observing the vice of a city. Travis is also a spectator to essential human interaction and relationships that he desperately desires, which is depicted as nothing more than far-out fantasy in the eyes of Travis thanks to the usage of anamorphic lenses, which gives the cab sequence a lucid, almost fantasy-like tone.
Fargo (Fargo)
The Minnesota snow of the film becomes an overbearing and lingering presence of the story: long stretches of empty landscape shorn of trees with shrubs not only becomes the backdrop of the film but a device to exaggerate the tones of the story. Minnesota itself is a topographically varied state, but here everything looks the same. The snow serves as a connection to the three individual stories and intensifies the suspense of the mystery. Personifying the film’s central theme, as the greed of the antagonists keeps piling up on them, the cold white snow also serves as a physical manifestation of their ambition, akin to the use of snow in the Shining, but with a more elegant execution (IMO). The snow transforms Fargo into a bleak, desolate place, reflecting and accentuating its leading players’ characteristics and contrasting the soft and warm qualities of its protagonist, Officer Gunderson.
Gotham (Batman)
The most significant contribution the 1989 cinematic depiction of the dark knight will be known for is its rendition of Gotham City. It’s become impossible to think of Batman without thinking about the City of Gotham. It’s important to remember that Gotham was initially a simple backdrop to accommodate the more light-hearted stories that appealed to a younger audience, not doing much to develop a specific atmosphere or continuity to the comic. Tim Burton’s Batman adds an Industrial/noir aesthetic to the home of the cape crusader. Gotham could now reflect its character’s psyche with an established continuity of locations like Crime Alley, Ace Chemicals, and Arkham Asylum added a more profound emotional atmosphere. Gotham would be further developed in the comics to follow and in the Batman the animated series. All that being said, it’s still impossible to forget the genuine inspired contribution Batman has attributed to the mythology of the City of Gotham.
Los Angeles (Blade Runner)
It’s difficult to talk about atmosphere and ambiance in cinema without thinking of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Despite being the most synthetic and distant depiction of contemporary society, the city of 2019, Los Angeles, ultimately feels the most alive. Filmmaker Ridley Scott not only creates an unmatched ambiance with the use of neon-laced propaganda, probing lights, and rain. Of which becomes the film’s signature calling card, the city’s tone is that of malaise. Being credited for the invention of the cyberpunk genre, Ridley Scott’s word, while beautiful, also presents essential, thematic questions about love, exploitation, and hierarchy.
New York City (Midnight Cowboy)
My favorite thing about Midnight Cowboy’s New York City is how desolate it comes off as. There is an apparent contrast between the brightly lit midwest that the films start and the dark and relentless nature of the big city. The town’s toll on our would-be protagonists is both physical and spiritual. Ultimately, the leading antagonist found in the story is the danger of homelessness. The elegant but straightforward cinematography used by director John Schlesinger creates a heartbreaking but powerful message that will leave an impression on anyone who watches this movie.