Metropolitan Ambition: Visions of Urbanism

“The cinema exploited the city dweller's secret desire to escape the technical-industrial world, although ironically the vehicle for escape was itself a product of this technical world” — Anton Kaes The cinema — the aesthetic symbol of the Industrial Age — has long envisioned both radial and realist projections of metropolitan life. The medium, like urbanism itself, was established as a byproduct of late capitalism and the technological revolution. Consequently, consumer attitudes within these urbanized spaces varied from disdain to fascination. The bourgeois approached film with skepticism, leaving the proletariat to become its primary consumers. This introduction of the new medium seemed to be, to an extent, a reorientation of art in relation to class. Cinema’s inherent technological reproducibility (and therefore its appeal to a diverse, urban audience) became synonymous with the mass culture of a large metropolitan area — the home to both a dense proletariat population and a bourgeois hierarchy. Urbanism itself has been a key subject in film since the medium’s inception, spearheaded by cinematic architects such as the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière. As seen in their early cinematic shorts such as Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896), which serves as the transportation for the viewer to venture the urban world, they also offer an early glimpse of the working class citizens of these spaces as shown in Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895). These small increments of cinema set the stage for its evolving relationship with the metropolis and industrialism. Throughout the 20th century, filmmakers have documented modernization through urbanism as it unfolded. Cities such as Paris, New York, and Sao Paulo had a major role in depicting the ideal metropolis as symbols of ambition, innovation, and injustice. The bustling streets of Paris, the overhead of skyscrapers of Manhattan, and the complexity of São Paulo are used as concrete idols that solidify themes of alienation and systemic urban hardships into filmic materiality. This list follows the cinematic depictions of the great heights and the tumultuous realities of metropolitan spaces, their architectural transformations, and the ambitions of both the citizens and the cities themselves — central to the ever-changing, ever-growing, human experience. As a medium-rooted technological advancement, the cinema and the metropolis will forever be inseparable.