Architecture for the Screen

by Ramirez, Juan Antonio; Moffitt, John F.

• ISBN13: 9780786469307
• ISBN10: 0786469307
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-28
• Publisher: McFarland Publishing

Summary

It is unlikely that you have ever found yourself trapped inside a burning skyscraper or entombed within an Egyptian pyramid. Nonetheless, you probably have some idea of these and many other places because of their portrayal on screen. The movies have overcome the constraints of time and place by bringing us images of diverse and otherwise unfamiliar settings. This work covers the many applications of art and architecture appearing in the movies produced in Hollywood from the very beginning until the fifties. The first chapters deal with the process of design, construction, physical characteristics and immediate functions of a wide variety of architectural sets. The remaining chapters examine the great number of styles shown in those movies and take the reader up to the final triumph of modernist architecture in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Architecture in the Movies and Elsewhere in History	p. 1
Preface to the English Edition: Ten Lessons About Architecture in the Movies	p. 5
Preface to the First Edition (1986)	p. 11
General Introduction
Film Architecture and the Crisis of Modernism	p. 13
From Shooting on Location to Filming in the Studios	p. 16
The Architecture of Movie Theaters and Architecture in the Movies	p. 21
Film Architecture vs. Ordinary Architecture	p. 23
Set Design
The First Advances in Art Direction	p. 26
Architect vs. Director: Joseph Urban	p. 27
The "Illustrators": Anton Grot and William Cameron Menzies	p. 32
Stage Designers and Painters: Wilfred Buckland and Ben Carré	p. 36
Supervising Architects: Hans Dreier, Van Nest Polglase, and Cedric Gibbons	p. 38
Other Art Directors	p. 42
The Design Process	p. 43
Background Research	p. 45
Additional Aspects of Design	p. 49
The Imaginary Client and the Viewing Customer: Scale Models	p. 49
Working Conditions and the Studio Styles	p. 51
Set Construction
Techniques, Materials, and Architectural Machinery	p. 54
Tricks of the Trade	p. 59
The Impact of Sound	p. 67
. From Furniture to Artificial Landscapes
Set Dressing and the Accessories Departments	p. 69
Wardrobes vs. Sets	p. 72
The Construction of Landscapes	p. 72
Artificial Oceans and Creative Ship-Building	p. 76
Heavenly Effects	p. 79
Architecture and Desire: The Character of Film Constructions
Six Distinctive Qualities	p. 81
Color and Lighting	p. 90
A Driving Functionalism	p. 93
The Death and Resurrection of Sets
Methods of Destruction: Fire, Burial, Abandonment	p. 97
The Ruins of Hollywood	p. 101
Architectural Metempsychosis: The Permanent Sets	p. 102
Some Statistics	p. 109
Architectural Styles from Antiquity
Mesopotamia and Palestine	p. 114
Egypt	p. 122
Greco-Roman Architecture	p. 127
From Medieval to Renaissance Architectural Styles
Castles and Palaces	p. 132
The Gothic of Terror	p. 135
Church, Cloister, Street…	p. 141
Examples from the Renaissance	p. 143
The Provinces of Exoticism
From Legendary Arabia to Contemporary Legend: Moorish Spain	p. 146
An Archetypal Spain	p. 151
India	p. 153
Pan-Slavic Architecture and/or the Jungle	p. 156
The Far East	p. 157
Pre-Columbian America	p. 160
. From Colonial Baroque to Contemporary Eclecticism
The "Spanish Style" and the Bourgeois Baroque	p. 162
Did a Cinematic Neo-Classicism Exist?	p. 170
"American" Architecture, Frontier to Urban	p. 171
Other (Old World) Countries	p. 176
Modern Architecture Conquers Hollywood
The First Moderns: Urban, Rambova, et al.	p. 179
Art Deco and Zigzag Geometrization	p. 186
The Ocean Liner and "Streamline Moderne"	p. 190
The International Style	p. 194
Rationalist-Surrealist Architecture in Musicals	p. 201
Epilogue
Some Omnipresent Elements: Staircases, Bathrooms, Bedrooms	p. 206
Partial Conclusions	p. 213
Notes	p. 217
Bibliography	p. 227
Index	p. 241
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