Los Angeles and Cinema

Abstract

This article discusses the history of cinema in Los Angeles and the complex relationship that American film has had with its host city throughout film history. First, General Overviews considers the essential texts on Los Angeles and Southern California history. Although many of these works are not part of the literature on cinema and media studies, they nevertheless provide a critical starting point for scholars studying the role of Los Angeles on film. The Mission Legend examines the mythical allure of the region that enticed film pioneers to leave the East Coast for the land of sunshine. Edendale features texts on the early studios of the 1910s. Weimar on the Pacific is on the contributions that Austrian and German émigrés made to the cultural landscape, including crucial theorists and German-Austrian filmmakers who fled to the United States. Los Angeles Modernist Architecture discusses another group of German-Austrian immigrants—modernist architects who constructed homes that would later become iconic film locations. Film noir has had an enduring relationship with the City of Angels, and Noir focuses on Los Angeles as a noir character in its own right. Los Angeles and New Hollywood reviews depictions of Los Angeles in films from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, including those by American filmmakers and European tourist filmmakers with their own take on Los Angeles: Michelangelo Antonioni, John Boorman, Jacques Deray, and Wim Wenders, to name a few. Los Angeles Disaster Cinema has remained consistent in Hollywood cinema over the last forty years, and as such, a scholarly focus on this aspect of Los Angeles Cinema is featured. Los Angeles and African American Cinema discusses texts on the L.A. Rebellion School, which invigorated a neorealist cinema about the Los Angeles African American experience, as well as studies on the L.A. “hood films” that emerged during the early 1990s. Los Angeles and Chicano Cinema offers a series of texts for scholars looking to engage with this field. The music industry has also played a crucial role in L.A. history, but the Los Angeles Punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s also energized a punk aesthetic in cinema that emerged from films like Repo Man. Toward the end of the twentieth century, many auteur filmmakers, heavily influenced by New Hollywood cinema, created portraits of Los Angeles, and Los Angeles Auteur Filmmakers provides some key texts on these filmmakers. Lastly, this article features a section on Documentary Films, because there are so many nonfiction films that will serve scholars of Los Angeles Cinema well in their research.