Cinematography in Representing Architecture

The invention of cinematography opened a myriad of perspectives on space and time in

modern society. It allowed time, space, and the common conception of reality to be warped in

perspective. This allowed for a whole new view on architecture as well as art in general. At the

time cinematography first became popular, it went hand in hand with the artistic movements

blossoming during that era. Artistic movements such as Cubism and De Stijl were focusing on

the frame of reference of space and time, and how to combine colors and shape to represent

something in an abstract form. Architecture was taking shape in a similar way with the abstract

movements as its guide. With cinematography getting bigger and bigger alongside these

movements it allowed for directors and videographers to provide a lot of different perspectives

on architecture in their films.

One film that was famous of its representation of architecture was Les Mysteres du

Chateau du De, directed and shot by Man Ray and Jacques-André Boiffard. This short film was

shot in the setting of the Vicomte de Noailles’ chateau in Hyeres, which was made by the

architect Mallet-Stevens, as is discussed in Rob Mallet-Stevens, Architecte. The villa is made

from a lot of cubic forms set up in an asymmetrical fashion as was common with Cubist and De

Stijl art around that time. Man Ray found it to resemble a favorite poem of his by Mallarme, in

its style and use of space. The poem is arranged in an abnormal fashion with no sense of

organization to it, and certain important words are bolded and enlarged. Man Ray’s intention in

the film was to represent the villa in a fashion such that it resembled the poem to its fullest

potential. Form over function, he mixed shots and used unique angles to distort the viewers

perspective of the building. Not because he found the building to lack character and abstraction

as is was, but rather to give a new perspective or representation. His lighting intended to bring
out colors in the simple geometric forms that would resemble a Mondrian painting. His purpose

was to enhance and bring out the life that Mallet-Stevens built into the shapes and space of the

architecture.

Another way that people were using cinematography to represent architecture in ways not

seen before was through the use of building model sets in a process called the Schufftan process.

It allowed directors and producers to display monumental cities and futuristic technologies just

by building a small scale model set. This process was used very famously in the movie

Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang. The city of Metropolis can be seen in the movie as a massive

futuristic city with planes flying between buildings and freeways above ground going through

the buildings. At the center of the city there is an enormous tower called the tower of Babel,

which is where the leader of the city resides. The tower of Babel brings the city focus to the

center where it resides towering over the rest of the city, very similar in manner to Bruno Tout’s

city crown. The use of the models allows people to imagine a tower protruding thousands of feet

into the clouds, when in reality the model was only about 10 feet tall. It also allowed for the city

wide filming of Metropolis, a city that did not exist, on a fairly small budget. Without models,

constructing a full scale set of Metropolis would obviously be an impossible task. This process of

set making has allowed for directors to put progressive ideas of architecture into what seems like

reality. It has been used in several other movies to produce futuristic cities, including the famous

1982 movie, Blade Runner, showing that this same process was still used several decades after it

was invented in order to represent cities on a full scale architectural level. Obviously it has gone

out of practice recently with the use of CGI (computer generated images), in which the

representation of nearly any form is practically limitless at a very small cost.