Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)
You can’t beat a good film documentary. It’s unfortunate then that most of what passes for genuine insight into the movies these days are little more than studio disseminated propaganda, I find that locating examples of actual merit in todays media landscape is akin to divining for truffles in a cyclone . It was therefore a joy to see that the Barbican were screening “Los Angeles Play’s Itself’, a hugely admired, seriously minded epic three hour documentary dissecting the visual representation of the city of angels on the silver screen. I found it absolutely riveting but hey, maybe I don’t get out much. ‘LAPI’ deftly walks that fine line between an overly complex, academic film theorist tract and an empty, ultimately vacuous collection of film clips thrown together with no rhyme or reason, it delivers genuine insight, provoking connections and thoughts whilst also remaining accessibly entertaining throughout its marathon running length. Like many great documentaries it takes as its starting point a central conceit, namely that the real LA has not been accurately represented on screen in terms of its architecture or infrastructure, its culture nor sociology throughout the last 100 years despite being the most photographed city on the planet.
Native film-maker Thom Andersen leads the audience on a dexterous cantor of the visual history of Los Angeles as presented in the movies, from the early talkies of the 1920’s and 1930’s when the pioneer film-makers began to 
escape the confines of those embryonic studio environments, the Black Maria’s and the like (prevalent in the silent era of course) and began shooting out on the streets and suburbs of LA, conjuring the mean streets of New York in Burbank, substituting the hills of Hollywood for the trenches of World War ravaged Europe, substituting the district of downtown LA for any European turn of the century capital metropolis. I’ve been waiting to see this film for years ever since a review cropped up by John Paterson in the Guardian and it was terrific, satisfying both my film interest and provoking some fond memories from my holiday a couple of years ago.
Andersson starts with coverage of some of the most famous LA landmarks which have populated the screen over the years including of course the Bradbury Building and Union Station, the modernist classic Frank Lloyd Wright house, the iconic LA City Hall which frequently appeared in the titles of TV programmes of the 1950’s and 60’s (most famously Dragnet), and the Lovell Health House seen in the likes of ‘LA Confidential‘ amongst others. He makes a case for a spilt between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ representation of LA by what he calls ‘tourists’, film-makers who have come to shoot and work in the city and either luxuriate in its strange and unique architecture, locations and milieu like Antonioni in the likes of ‘Zabriskie Point‘ or Polanski in ‘Chinatown‘ and those who mock and dismiss the city, its history and cultural achievements as being minor, deferring to the popular opinion of the city and its inhabitants being vacuous, image obsessed morons.
The documentary makes some quite unusual and intriguing observations, amongst them the revelation that not a single one of Hitchcock’s American movies was actually set in LA despite his twenty five year residency where he made approximately thirty films. Andersson picks up on trends such as the 1980’s action movie tendency to portray schizophrenically action sequences detailing sleek, fetishistic cars careering around corners, dwarfed by the rigidly angled post war concrete and glass mega-structures which is the equivalent of a futurists wet dream. His diagnosis of the portrayal of the LAPD in film got the biggest laugh when he queried why in cinema their motto ‘To Protect & Serve’ is invariably seen in almost ironic ‘inverted commas’, not surprising given their shocking record of corruption and racism.
The film concluded perfectly by giving me some pointers on new film-makers to check out, I’d heard of Charles Burnett before but I now have a new impetus to check out his LA set 1970’s neo-realist work, the environment of which should be quite an antidote to the usual rodeo drive mansions and $6,000 a month art-deco apartments which are rented by homicide detectives on a real-world income of about $40K a year!!! In conclusion here is the comprehensive list of the films featured in ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself‘, and here are the best clips I can find as to reflect the sort of themes, breadth of examination that the film commands. Superb, I hope this arrives on DVD at some point in the near future as there was plenty more to absorb and learn.
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