Using Popular Film in the Architectural History Classroom

In 1945 Beela Balaazs, the Hungarian author, film director, and critic, observed that motion pictures had revived the language of the human body and facial expressions, which had been subdued by print culture: "The first new world discovered by the film camera in the days of the silent film was the world of very small things visible only from very short distances, the hidden life of little things. . . . By means of the close-up the camera in the days of the silent film revealed also the hidden mainsprings of a life which we had thought we already knew so well. In the days of the silent film [the close-up] not only revealed new things, but showed us the meaning of the old."1 More than half a century later, and more than a century and a half after Victor Hugo's statement that the printed book had surpassed architecture in communicative efficacy ("This will kill that"), Balaazs's observation of the revelatory character of film cannot be taken lightly by those who teach architecture and architectural history.2 While film uses mechanisms that are unfamiliar and even counterintuitive to us, it can present the dramatic power of architecture. Used carefully, popular films can enliven architectural history classes.3To place actors in an actual building instead of on a set is a comparatively new trend in filmmaking, and in the beginning it was a debatable proposition.4 The director Marcel L'Herbier ( Veille d'Armes , 1935) reacted against the incorporation of the real into filmic fiction. However, Virgilio Marchi, the art director of Italian Neorealist films ( Umberto D. , 1952; Stazione Termini , 1951) argued for the realistic representation of daily life, to be attained by location shoots, and questioned the use of spectacular studio sets. The production designer Jean Andree …