Cinematic Cities: A ‘Film and History’ Overview for South Africa's Major Metropolises from the 1890s to the 1950s*

Abstract

This article provides a thematic and chronological overview of ideas about South African cities, parts of cities or urbanity in general contained in films from the 1890s to the 1950s. These ideas – whether in feature films, travelogues, newsreels, documentaries or docudramas – reflected the attitudes not only of the film makers, but often also of many others in the places and periods in which they were made. City films could also transmit ideas, and thereby convey or help maintain attitudes towards the urban. Yet there is still a paucity of studies on cinematic portrayals of African cities. The article is drawn from a larger project that looks at the perceptions and experiences of South African cities from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, and the consequences of those perceptions and experiences. Hence it is an exercise in both film as historical evidence and the role of film in history. The article argues that depictions of South African urbanity on film contained both utopian and dystopian imagery, as was usual with cinematic depictions of cities in many other parts of the world. For South Africa, depictions of cities in film during the 1920s and 1930s were largely utopian, the product in part of the rise of place-selling initiatives. But after the Second World War the likes of Cry, the Beloved Country and Civilization on Trial in South Africa provided decidedly dystopian visions of South African ‘slums’. The article explains how and why this happened, and why such representations were part of more general post-war domestic and international debate on the nature of South African urban problems and possibilities, not least over the conditions and experiences of urban Africans. It also suggests ways in which this debate, and therefore visual and literary depictions of cities, evolved in the course of the 1950s, resulting in more complex cinematic representations that argued that even South African ‘slums’ were places of creativity as well as hardship.