James Sanders: Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies (2001)•
James Sanders (1955- )James Sanders: Celluloid Skyline (2001)
[Anglican Community Shop, Devonport - 14/7/2022]:
James Sanders. Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies. 2001. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2002.
Marion Davies & Leslie Howard in Five and Ten (1931)[James Sanders Studio: Celluloid Skyline (2001)]
Celluloid Skylines
Celluloid Skyline tells a story of two cities, both called “New York.” One is a real city, an urban agglomeration of millions. The other is a mythic city, so rich in memory and association and sense of place that to people everywhere it has come to seem real: the New York of 42nd Street, Rear Window, King Kong, Dead End, The Naked City, Ghostbusters, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, Do the Right Thing — a magical city of the imagination that is as complex, dynamic and familiar as its namesake of stone and steel.It's an interesting concept, don't you think? That contrast between an ideal city of the imagination and its real-world original.
It's also, I'd remark parenthetically, the subject of my own Doctoral thesis, which attempted to chart the lineaments of the imaginary place called "South America" in European literature - certainly a very different proposition than the actual Latin America!
So you can imagine that I was pretty pleased to pick up a copy of this imposing tome in a local Op Shop for the princely sum of $8. Mind you, there is a sense in which the occasion of the book has come to overshadow its actual substance. There's a poignant paragraph on the first page acknowledging the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. The book, it seems, was already complete and ready to go, and - after some soul-searching - the decision was made to release it without alterations.
It is, then, as much a memorial to a particular state of mind, a certain sense of complacency which now seems characteristic of the late twentieth century Pax Americana, as it is to the New York movies it was originally intended to celebrate.
Glenn Busch & Bruce Connew. My Place. A Place in Time. 21st Century Documentary Project. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005.Once before I encountered this phenomenon of the historical irony which can broaden the appeal of an otherwise fairly bounded cultural artefact. Fiona Farrell sent Bronwyn and me a copy of the book My Place, a series of images recording the everday lifestyle of Christchurch, a few years before the twin earthquakes of 2010-11. The life they record seems, now, extraordinarily poignant, given that so many of the landmarks - grandiose and casual - the photographs record have been completely erased.
New York: A Documentary Film, dir. Ric Burns, writ. Ric Burns & James Sanders – narrated by David Ogden Stiers – (USA, 1999-2003). 5-DVD set.James Sanders is certainly the right person to compile such a complex evocation of this cinematic New York via a judicious selection of reflections and stills. He was, after all, the co-author of Ric Burns' exhaustive (and fascinating) documentary record of the city through time.
The main effect Sanders' book has had on me, though, is to start me thinking about my own place and time - and, in particular, the ways in which the "times of my time" (in Norman Mailer's phrase) have been recorded by the local film industry.
How has my native city, Auckland, been portrayed on film over the years? I'm not sure I'd have the chutzpah to attempt such a book or documentary project myself, but I can foresee a few of the movies and TV shows which would have to be included in it:
- Sleeping Dogs (1977)
- Goodbye Pork Pie (1981)
- Constance (1984)
- The Quiet Earth (1985)
- Once Were Warriors (1994)
- Topless Women Talk About Their Lives (1997)
- No. 2 (2006)
First of all, of course, would have to come that infamous scene of the charging line of helmeted police in Roger Donaldson's Sleeping Dogs. When the Red Squads started clubbing the anti-apartheid protestors a few years later, in 1981, a lot of them said: "It's just like Sleeping Dogs" - according to Sam Neill's documentary Cinema of Unease, that is. Reality was imitating fiction, rather than the other way around.
Geoff Murphy's classic road movie Goodbye Pork Pie has its obligatory Auckland sequence, too, though in this case it's just an appetiser for its long pan-shot through the entire country: "We're Taking this Car to Invercargill!"
Then there's the less well-known but still-worth-a-look movie Constance. Donogh Rees' starring role as "a primary school teacher in love with the movies and drawn increasingly into a fantasy world" also fits in rather well with the overall idea of parallel real and imaginary cities.
Continuing with the fantasy theme, there are those deserted streets - and stadiums - traversed by Zac Hobson (played by Bruno Lawrence) in Geoff Murphy's sci-fi masterpiece The Quiet Earth. It takes an invigorating dive into the surf at Piha to purge Zac of all the bottled-up madness Auckland brings out in him.
Another indispensable Auckland-through-cinema image would have to be the opening sequence of Once Were Warriors, as the camera shifts from the idyllic rural vistas of heartland New Zealand to the alienating motorway traffic of the modern city.
For another, deliberately less polished view, one could do worse than look at Harry Sinclair's rather misleadingly titled 1990s slacker movie Topless Women Talk About Their Lives. It's not a particularly pretty side of the city, but that doesn't make it untrue.
Anything here from this century? You might be forgiven for wondering at this point. How about Toa Fraser's groundbreaking No. 2, set on the slopes of one of Auckland's many volcanic cones, Mt. Roskill (named, according to one of the characters, for all the rascals who reside there)?
There are certainly a lot of other movies one could include besides these ones. Sue McCauley's Other Halves, for instance. Or even, for that matter, Maurice Gee's Under the Mountain (2009). No doubt there are many more. So many New Zealand films have a scene or two set in Auckland, even if the balance of the action is elsewhere.
And , if one were to extend the quest to television, recent Lucy Lawless vehicle My Life is Murder, whose second series is set in a very brightly-hued Auckland, complete with up-to-date views of the Wynyard Quarter, might well qualify. Not to mention local stalwarts such as Shortland Street (1992-?), 800 words (2015-18) or even the Kaipara-based Brokenwood Mysteries.
If you have any other ideas, feel free to add them in the comments section below. You know, it really could make a killer book ...
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- category - Cinema and TV: Anthologies & Secondary Literature
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