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Los Angeles plays itself (Anderson [2003] 2014)

by henrymo@umich.edu

Maybe we live in Ann Arbor, a semi-dense municipality with a population of 118,000 and ranked as the most educated city in the U.S., so why would we be interested in a film about L.A., the sprawling concrete jungle that is home to 3.9 million and the interstices of Hollywood? Well for starters, this essay-film/documentary offers a fascinating analysis of the city behind the facade. It is a critique of the decay of Los Angeles in and through cinema.

Accordingly, director, Thom Anderson (professor at the California Institute of Arts) presents a study of how the city has been interpreted, represented, and obliterated through the movies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the critique reveals the failings of cinema to capture the true essence of a place as experienced by residents far removed from the screen. The film seeks to reclaim the city from cinema, and in so doing seeks to save cinema in itself.

Los Angeles plays itself (2003) was not released commercially and was originally only seen in film festival screenings and through file-sharing. Since garnering a larger audience, the film has won critical acclaim and was recently remastered in 2014.

Professor Anderson uses footage from what seems to be hundreds of films (and television shows) spanning from the 1920s to 2001, which are reassembled with his own shots of Los Angeles into a comprehensive, inside, and cinephilic perspective. The film is organized into two parts covering numerous themed essays around brilliant and lucid analyses of the city. These include the city as backdrop and character, past and future, high and low tourism, and modernist architecture and simulacrum that reveal the socio-economic conditions of the times. Although part one of the film at times drags on - when dealing with architecture - the second part is where it all comes together - when addressing urban planning.

In part two, Anderson's critiques become a fascinating historical recount of Los Angeles' public transportation system and the automobile, aqueducts and infrastructure, and working class and non-white neighborhoods. He takes the viewer from a Singing in the Rain Los Angeles to a Boyz in the Hood Los Angeles (see Mike Davis 2014).

In the finale, it is evident that Los Angeles plays itself is a celebration of cinema born of the city and not the other way around. Although the film is a few notches below the poetics of Italo Calvino, it seemingly serves as a tribute to his novel Invisible Cities (1978).

Here are a handful of the prominently featured and celebrated works in Los Angeles plays itself that are well worth brushing up on:

Dragnet (television series: 1951-1959)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (2003)
Blade Runner (2007)
Chinatown (1974)
Killer of Sheep (1977)

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