Los Angeles Plays Itself

I watched this movie at the 'Rotterdam Film Festival' in The Netherlands and beforehand had no idea what to expect. After a few minutes it became clear to me that the movie was a collection of hundreds of movie-fragments, all located in the city of Los Angeles. Being a movie freak I was very interested from that point on, and Thomas Anderson didn't let me down. A terrible amount of time and research must have been spent making this movie, and it pays off! Having been in L.A. myself I really liked all places that are shown in the movie, and all movie-fragments being shown. Unfortunately, a lot (I think to many) of old movie fragments are shown (1950-1960), which makes it a little 'unrecognizable', at least for me. After part two of the movie, I had seen so many peaces of 'old material', and together with listening 2 hours to the voice of Mr. Anderson, I became to tired to go for the 3rd hour. Nevertheless, I can really recommend this movie to anyone who likes watching movies, and likes learning more about them and about a city that was so very important in movie making!

This is one of the most interesting projects about cinema (as the filmed frame) that I know of. It is about the city as background, as character and subject. They were making as far back as the 1920's films as hymns to the cityscape and what life in it, 'city symphonies' they called them, but here it is about the most photographed city in the world. A place that was nothing more than a small town when the dream factories rolled in and shaped it into a myth that sustains itself. And it's entirely in terms of cinematic history, entirely cobbled together from other peoples' vision of that place.

So the essay is about the history of a city as reflected in cinema and shaped by it, about Hollywood's idea of Los Angeles overlapping with the actual place where real people live. The filmmaker has compiled clips from a large array of films; from silents and noir to 80's action and modern blockbusters. The idea is that we're looking at the background of these shots, at the actual reality and place over which is superimposed the movie fantasy.

Various insights here, ranging from the stridently interprative to the intuitively discerning. It amuses the narrator for example, how modernist architectural houses built to signify transparence are turned by movies into the dens of iniquity of shady characters simply because they look weird from the outside. How the same building could substitute as a hotel, a police station, and a newspaper office depending on the movie. How the disappearance of entire neighborhoods can be actually traced in the footage of movies filmed there. Bunker Hill was a busy, homely district where pensioners and poor immigrants lived in the late 50's, but in '84 it substitutes well as a desolate urban wasteland in Night of the Comet.

And a more interesting one. How cinema imagined in Chinatown or Who Framed Roger Rabbit, perhaps reflecting public opinion, devious schemes by shady groups of plutocrats to usurp control of the water or public transport, while the actual reality was banal; these things happened, or efforts towards them, but in the public eye and with its support.

For a three hour documentary about a town that houses 10 million and looks dusty and dirty even when it's at its pristine and pretentious best, this is some compelling stuff. The droll voice of the narrator (Encke King- please tell me that's a pseudonym for the documentary's creator, Thom Anderson) expounds the essay like a cynical alcoholic history professor might talk about the Arapahoe during a Friday night session in which you were hoping to deal with no more important topics than whose breasts look best on GoT or what's up with Jets QB situation. And you'll listen to him because what he says makes sense. Yes, Hollywood is full of overprivileged white guys who pretend the city they live in doesn't exist outside of their fortress-like movie studios and bougie Bel-Air penthouses. I myself lived in Los Angeles for a year, and Hollywood is more of an odor than a thing. You get a faint whiff of it from time to time, but for the most part, Los Angeles is a place where underprivileged multi-ethnic people scrape out a living and pay too much for it. Every single Asian country is represented there (China, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the Phillipines, all of 'em), and of course a good 1/3 of it is Mexican (and you can't forget how many black people live there...). It's a melting pot.

Anderson includes a history of Los Angeles by showing how the filmed history got everything wrong and he expounds on the cops and how they're portrayed. His essay sounds like what it is: a tenured film professor being overly critical and at times pseudo-intelligent about an industry borne of immigrants when at its best... which is hilarious given how kind he is to anyone obviously not born in America, as though their portrayal of Los Angeles is more honest because they don't pretend to know anything about it (or probably care all that much-- I lived there, and I never found a reason to care about it. It was a just a place with a lot of people and not a particularly inviting one). This would probably be labeled communist propaganda if it came out during the 50s with how much it seems to disdain anyone who isn't working class or below. Which would be more admirable if the filmmaker was just some guy who watched a lot of movies while he scraped out a living repairing motorcycles in Simi Valley and not some coddled condescending liberal who's been sucking at the film school teat since the 60s.

And yet, I give it an 8. The guy does know his stuff.

Okay, it's not "entertainment" as someone else complained. And I bet Thom Anderson is damned proud of that! On the other hand, if you are interested in film and American society, this is an endlessly absorbing piece of work, sort of a U.S. version of Chris Marker's provocative and witty dissection of the European left released here as "Grin Without a Cat." This is essay film-making at a very high level of intelligence. Anderson's thesis, wildly over simplified, has to do with the way that American filmmakers use the depiction of L.A. to promote a certain vision of urban society, of architectural modernism and of late capitalism. He draws on such a wide range of film clips -- everything from Samuel Fuller and Robert Aldrich to Michael Mann and Roman Polanski to obscure indie films of the 50s and 60s -- that this film will probably never be released on DVD simply because the rights clearances will take forever. I was particularly struck by his remarks on the cynicism of films like "Chinatown" as fueling a sense of social and political powerlessness among audiences and the comparison to some of the terrific Black indie films of the 60s and 70s, particularly Killer of Sheep.

My only real quibble with the film, and it is not inconsiderable, is that it wasn't clear to me -- admittedly on one viewing -- how the two halves fit together either visually or in terms of the ideas.

But what a pleasure it is to see a movie that HAS ideas, and expresses them with wit and savvy.

A fantastic film covering all of the bases of the way in which Los Angeles is seen through the eyes of Hollywood. Full of wonderful insights, this film is an in depth study more than it is a crowd-pleaser. Also a great source of information for film-buffs...a plethora of little-known facts and behind-the-scenes information. Some of the movies are blockbusters, others you may not have ever heard of, but each film that Thom Anderson studies and quotes proves to be a unique take on the subject. If you love DVD special features, you will love this movie. If you love Los Angeles, you will love this movie. If you HATE Los Angeles, you will love this movie. If you don't know yet, or know nothing about LA, get your hands on a copy of this movie. It will make it easier to decide.