{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03214142225793491, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0018079550020088388, 'mean_word_length': 5.286616161616162, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern from Reel to Real - Edited by Nezar Alsayyad

The history of the modern metropolis, it has been noted, occupies a shared timeline with that of the cinema. In an engaging sequence of essays titled Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern from Reel to Real, Nezar AlSayyad, Berkeley Professor of Architecture, Planning and Urban History, proposes that these two histories are not only concurrent but inextricably covalent as well. Arranged as a series of nine essays covering variations on the theme of urbanism through the lens of cinema, AlSayyad argues, given the ubiquitous presence of the cinematic within modernity, that ‘‘urbanism cannot be understood outside the space of the celluloid city’’ (p. i). Seeking to clarify the ostensible hybridity of his approach to this material, AlSayyad is careful to point out that his subject is not purely about film, nor is his book, strictly speaking, about cities portrayed in the films under discussion; he writes, it ‘‘does not engage with the actual physical attributes of those cities’’ (p. xii). Instead, he proposes an urban history of the twentieth century situated in what is described as the real/reel spaces of the cinematic city, a construct that is ‘‘not only that which appears on the screen, but also the mental city made by the medium of cinema, and subsequently re-experienced in the real private and public spaces of the city’’ (p. 2). The conflation of real and reel provides AlSayyad’s analysis with a framework to overcome the normative boundaries separating cinematic and urban criticism. His approach avoids the self-referential vortex of most film criticism, which relies upon an often-stupefying mise en abı̂me, wherein every film is circumscribed by an infinitely regressive web of references to other films. At the same time, his method of inquiry overcomes the merely representational role that films have played in urban criticism by asserting their generative potential, wherein cinema not only reflects the captive reality of the built environment but also speculates upon its latent possibilities, in the same spirit that Benjamin, in ‘‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’’ foresaw cinema’s capacity to foment an ‘‘immense and unexpected field of action.’’ AlSayyad’s initial chapters, arranged in roughly chronological order, discuss the development of modern cinematic urbanism. Berlin: Symphony of a Big City (1927) plays off of Modern Times (1936) in the first chapter, where Ruttman’s cinematic ode to the rhythms of urban modernity is both foil and complement to Chaplin’s tragicomic fable of the dehumanizing tendencies of industrialization. It is here that AlSayyad begins to delineate one of the recurring leitmotivs of cinematic urbanism, the rising impact of Taylorist mechanized production, paired with the concomitant development of Fordist consumerist appeasement. This theme frames subsequent chapters outlining the ‘‘cinematic small town’’ (which pairs Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso with Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life) and the dystopic urbanism of ‘‘the future past’’ (which aligns Lang’s Metropolis with that of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil). The Taylorist/Fordist thread culminates in the fourth chapter of Cinematic Urbanism, which takes as its historical setting the postwar consolidation of American hegemony in Western Europe through the Fordist underpinnings of the Marshall Plan. AlSayyad situates the growing rejection of these economic and social paradigms within a vivid reading of Tati’s Mon Oncle and Playtime, in which the director’s alter ego, Monsieur Hulot, enacts one of the recurring tropes of urban modernity, that of the flâneur, epitomized cinematically by Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. While the Hulot films are certainly emblematic of what AlSayyad characterizes as the ‘‘modernity of cynicism,’’ and while his reliance upon ‘‘compare and contrast’’ pairings of films within all but one of his chapters generally serve his purposes well, one cannot but wonder if the discussion might have been enhanced here by an intrusion from Tati’s irascible compatriot, Jean-Luc Godard. In particular, Godard’s Alphaville and Two or Three Things I Know about Her—where Her, among other things, refers to the city of Paris —which ruminate at length on urban renewal and the consumer society, seem particularly apt company for Tati’s preoccupations. Perhaps the most compelling of the essays contained in this collection comes in the chapter titled ‘‘An Alternate Modernity: Race, Ethnicity and the Urban Experience.’’ In it, AlSayyad elegantly explores the supple layering rendered by readings of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Stephen Frear’s My Beautiful Laundrette. Recognizing the paucity of research in urban studies at the intersection of ‘‘ethnic difference, modernity, and spatial geography,’’ AlSayyad frames his reading of these films with respect to the complex interplay of identity in the