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Post by pimpinainteasy on Apr 8, 2017 15:15:56 GMT
a great example of a "film of place" is polanski's GHOST WRITER. i wish i lived in that small town/island and i could travel by ferry. even the motels and hotels there are so beautiful. the gorgeous sleepy desk clerk at the motel reception, chowder sandwiches, rainy beaches, eccentric folk like the character played by eli wallach ..... the possibilities seem to be endless in the beautiful deserted island in GHOST WRITER.
THE BIRDS was also a film of place i guess.
so name and discuss some more films of place.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Apr 8, 2017 15:21:19 GMT
Close My EyesLife on the bank of the Thames looked languid and idyllic in this film. Beautiful houses, people and scenery.
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Post by spiderwort on Apr 8, 2017 16:32:09 GMT
Great topic! One of my favorite considerations in any film. Child of the prairie that I am, I tend to go for rural landscapes. My choices will generally reflect locations in which the place itself is almost a character - but then, maybe that's part of what all films are about - or should be, even it's just the canvas of the human face. Anyway, here are some that really resonate with me:
Picnic (1953) - small town Kansas, shot on location, which clearly reflects the personality of that place and time and the love that playwright William Inge had for his hometown of Independence, though the film was shot elsewhere in Kansas.
The Last Picture Show (1971) - a beautiful film shot in small-town Texas, not far from the home of author, Larry McMurtry. A film in which the town is virtually a character unto itself.
Hud (1963) - another Larry McMurtry film shot in the vast prairie of the Texas panhandle (not near McMurtry's home), where the immense horizon meets the sky in a kind of quiet infinitude, defining the place in an existential way.
Shane (1953) - exquisitely beautiful locations in Wyoming near the Grand Tetons, and, again, a film in which the place is also a character in the film, something to be both treasured and overcome.
How Green Was My Valley (1941) - another beautiful John Ford film in which the place is also a character. Ford wanted to shoot it in Wales, but because of the war was forced instead to shoot it in the small mountains and hills east of Malibu, California. But it still looks beautiful, like Wales, I would imagine. And the great art direction creates the village so completely that it's hard not to be caught up in the lyrical beauty of the place, which truly defines its characters.
Places in the Heart (1983) - another Texas film, written and directed by Robert Benton, who grew up in the small town of Waxahachie in the Depression. From farming scenes, to tornadoes, it's a film in which the characters are never able to escape the reality of their "place" in the world. Interesting that the title honors your word, for it is, indeed, a "place" film.
One city film that I love, which fits this category: On the Waterfront (1954); again a film that is defined by its location, which is a gritty but beautiful background for the emotionally complex story.
I could go on forever, but will stop for now.
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Apr 9, 2017 2:14:17 GMT
great choice, spiderwort. it is one of my favorite films.
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Apr 9, 2017 2:25:57 GMT
Close My EyesLife on the bank of the Thames looked languid and idyllic in this film. Beautiful houses, people and scenery. cheers, ff. |
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Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 9, 2017 2:34:53 GMT
Even if I never get to Venice (Italy, that is; not the one just south of Santa Monica), I'll always have the feeling I've been there from who-knows-how-many viewings of Summertime. And if anyone who has been there should tell me that David Lean's depiction of it is not really representative, then it's just as well if don't get to the real one, because his is the Venice I long to visit (and will again).
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 9, 2017 2:42:54 GMT
Roman Holiday I've never been to Rome. I will never get to go to Rome. But because of this film, I don't need to go there in person. CharadeAnother films that makes you feel that you have been to that city. Actually, I preferred the Paris of Charade to being in the real one, but that's just me.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 9, 2017 2:46:17 GMT
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baj2
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Post by baj2 on Apr 9, 2017 3:16:56 GMT
Europe has some picturesque locations that enhances the storytelling. Where all else could they film a classic like THE SOUND OF MUSIC?
I do like films portrayed on the Mediterranean. From Spain to France to Monaco to Italy and even all around to Greece (although technically isn't that on the Adriatic)...sometimes also on the North African coast ?
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 9, 2017 3:21:25 GMT
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 9, 2017 3:28:17 GMT
pimpinainteasyThose British Manor House movies come to mind The Remains of the Day Howards End the filmography of James Ivory (<--link) has a ton of films that take you "there" wherever "there" may be.
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Apr 9, 2017 3:33:29 GMT
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Post by petrolino on Apr 9, 2017 3:33:37 GMT
'Five Corners' (1987) always leaves me feeling like I've lived in New York my whole life. It feels deeply evocative of time and place. The director Tony Bill is from California and studied in Indiana, but it's written by the playwright John Patrick Shanley who's from the Bronx.   And the use of a song so nostalgic - 'In My Life' by the Beatles which evokes their world in Liverpool - is a stroke of genius aided by Handmade Films and George Harrison. John Lennon later became an honorary New Yorker. |
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Apr 9, 2017 6:27:42 GMT
The Quiet Man (1952) is greatly enhanced by John Ford's showcasing of Ireland and its countryside.
Another great example, I would say, is Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973), his first Western as a director. Universal wanted him to use the studio's back lot, but Eastwood instead discovered eerie Mono Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and, working with legendary set designer Henry Bumstead (who had designed Vertigo, among other famous films), built an entire town out of raw wood in twenty-eight days on the shores of the lake. The location and its surrounding region, along with the desert outside of Reno that Eastwood used for the unforgettable opening and closing shots, elevate the film to another level that could not possibly have been achieved on a studio lot or even a more conventional, more frequently employed Western location, such as Monument Valley or Old Tuscon.
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Post by telegonus on Apr 9, 2017 9:48:51 GMT
Classic era mostly:
The Island Of Lost Souls
The Lost Patrol
The Informer
The Petrified Forest
Dead End
Of Human Hearts
Five Came Back
Wuthering Heights
Gone With The Wind
Drums Along The Mohawk
Rebecca
The Long Voyage Home
The Devil And Daniel Webster
King's Row
In all the filmed I listed the sense of place (and time) is essential to how they work. If it hadn't been the the art direction, lighting, sound, the talent behind the scenes that give these movies their special qualities they wouldn't work nearly so well.
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Post by telegonus on Apr 9, 2017 16:30:15 GMT
a great example of a "film of place" is polanski's GHOST WRITER. i wish i lived in that small town/island and i could travel by ferry. even the motels and hotels there are so beautiful. the gorgeous sleepy desk clerk at the motel reception, chowder sandwiches, rainy beaches, eccentric folk like the character played by eli wallach ..... the possibilities seem to be endless in the beautiful deserted island in GHOST WRITER. THE BIRDS was also a film of place i guess. so name and discuss some more films of place. Of Hitchcock's films, Shadow Of A Doubt deserves a mention also. Rear Window, for sure. Not, in my opinion, the same year's Hitch-Grace Kelly project, Dial M For Murder, which is too set-bound, feels like a filmed play, doesn't really evoke anyplace but the stage. It was much the same for Frank Capra's adaptation of Arsenic And Old Lace, a movie I dearly love but which feels like a movie. Some screen adaptations of plays do, others don't, or so it seems to me. One that does: A Streetcar Named Desire, which doesn't so much feel like the real New Orleans but evoke the real New Orleans. The same director's (Elia Kazan) Panic In The Streets was filmed in N.O. and, needless to say, evokes it. Another movie with a strong sense of place, Henry Hathaway's 1948 Call Northside 777. The same year's Naked City, also filmed on location, evokes New York as much as the former film feels very Chicago. |
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Post by teleadm on Apr 10, 2017 18:15:55 GMT
I came to think of two Powell and Pressburger movies Black Narcissus 1947 with it's always earie windy convent high up in the mountins in Himalayas (though probably made in Wales), and I Know Where I'm Going! 1945 way out in the scottish Hebrides.
There was also a handfull movies with London locations by producer-director Herbert Wilcox and his wife actress Anna Neagle, I Live in Grosvenor Square 1945, Piccadilly Incident 1946, The Courtneys of Curzon Street 1947, Spring in Park Lane 1948, Elizabeth of Ladymead 1948 and Maytime in Mayfair 1949. The where all popular with the audiences except Ladymead.
I've always thought it was interesting to look at the location shots from old cold war West-Berlin in Funeral in Berlin 1966 and A Dandy in Aspic 1968.
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baj2
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Post by baj2 on Apr 11, 2017 0:27:40 GMT
Especially if you live or have lived in New York, Manhattan (and its architecture today and in the past) can define the right atmosphere for a movie.
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Post by jervistetch on Apr 11, 2017 1:14:07 GMT
The time-travel romance SOMEWHERE IN TIME is soapy and silly but I still like it. The majority of the movie is filmed at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. It has to be one of the most spectacularly beautiful hotels that I've ever seen and it's as much a character in that film as the actors are. I like to think that I'll travel there one day. You never know.
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Post by pippinmaniac on Apr 11, 2017 1:28:40 GMT
"Vertigo" and San Francisco go together.
"The Quiet Man" made me want to visit Ireland.
"You Only Live Twice" had Japan as the setting. (By the way, one thing that seems to be missing in most modern Bond films is picturesque locations.)
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