Movies and Cities

Early Motion Pictures and the Urban Experience
Early motion pictures were a way of seeing cities and urban sensibilities in ways we have never seen before. As discussed in class, “unlocking” cities and urban landscapes before us in panoramas and conversely labyrinths. Walter Benjamin said that films were a way “man could represent his environment.” The 19th century environment was civically not a wholesome or healthy one. It was in shambles and it took a book of rules to simply move through the public spaces genteelly. What was needed in the cities at the end of the 19th century, was culture, public spaces, and a coherent image of themselves. The Nickelodeon could do this with their very public gathering spaces, their honest pretensions to art and the ability to show us a slice of the world around us we could not otherwise have seen without the aid of film. (Muybridge reminds us of this with his horse film.)
We needed a way of comprehending this urban sprawl and our r...