The Cinema of Urban Crisis
Title
The Cinema of Urban Crisis
Subtitle
Seventies Film and the Reinvention of the City
Price
€ 73,95 excl. VAT
ISBN
9789089646378
Format
Paperback
Number of pages
424
Language
English
Publication date
Dimensions
15.6 x 23.4 cm
Also available as
eBook PDF - € 73,99
Table of Contents
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Introduction: Cinema and Urbanism after 1968 1. Crisis and Restructuring in Seventies Hollywood: Spatial Perspectives 2. Atlantic City, Philadelphia, Detroit: Deindustrialization and Urban Renaissance 3. New York City: The Big Apple from Urban Crisis to Fiscal Crisis 4. San Francisco: Networks of Post-Fordism 5. Los Angeles: The Emergence of Postmodern Urbanism Interlude: Towards a Transnational Urban Cinema 6. London: Grassroots Action and the Critique of Modernism 7. Paris: Urban theory and "the Other Parises" 8. Rome and Milan: Cinema, Architecture and the Italian anni di piombo 9. Frankfurt, Cologne, Berlin: New German Cinema and the Urban Public Sphere Conclusion: Beyond the Crisis

Reviews and Features

'The Cinema of Urban Crisis is instantly a classic study on the relationship between the city and the cinema. The breadth and scope of this magnificent work is remarkable; Webb . . . has a seemingly limitless knowledge of urban history, political movements and ideology, and film. . . . This is an outstanding and important work. . . . Essential.' - Choice

This is an outstanding and important work. - G.R. Butters, Choice Connect

Lawrence Webb

The Cinema of Urban Crisis

Seventies Film and the Reinvention of the City

In the 1970s, cities across the United States and Western Europe faced a deep social and political crisis that challenged established principles of planning, economics and urban theory. At the same time, film industries experienced a parallel process of transition, the effects of which rippled through the aesthetic and narrative form of the decade's cinema. The Cinema of Urban Crisis traces a new path through the cinematic legacy of the 1970s by drawing together these intertwined histories of urban and cultural change. Bringing issues of space and place to the fore, the book unpacks the geographical and spatial dynamics of film movements from the New Hollywood to the New German Cinema, showing how the crisis of the seventies and the emerging 'postindustrial' economy brought film and the city together in new configurations.

Chapters cover a range of cities on both sides of the Atlantic, from New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco to London, Paris and Berlin. Integrating analysis of film industries and production practices with detailed considerations of individual texts, the book offers strikingly original close analyses of a wide range of films, from New Hollywood (The Conversation, The King of Marvin Gardens, Rocky) to European art cinema (Alice in the Cities, The Passenger, Tout va Bien) and popular international genres such as the political thriller and the crime film. Focusing on the aesthetic and representational strategies of these films, the book argues that the decade's cinema engaged with - and helped to shape - the passage from the 'urban crisis' of the late sixties to the neoliberal 'urban renaissance' of the early eighties. Splicing ideas from film studies with urban geography and architectural history, the book offers a fresh perspective on a rich period of film history and opens up new directions for critical engagement between film and urban studies.
Author

Lawrence Webb

Dr Lawrence Webb is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex.