48 Hrs.

Lobby cards for Walter Hill's 48 Hrs.

48 Hrs. is a mysterious film.
The greatest puzzles in Walter Hill's 1982 action flick are the lights: frequently out of focus in the foreground, they pop up seemingly unexplained. Streetlights become will-o-wisps at the edge of the frame; streets are photographed from above through of clusters China lanterns that form glowing clouds. We can still tell what they are—ordinary, familiar objects—but in the way they’re introduced, they become foreign. Suddenly the ordinary warrants an explanation. San Francisco is some place we've never heard of; when its hilly streets are used to set the film's car chase, we're surprised--the streets that we've seen a million times have become unfamiliar.
The film seems shot through binoculars—or, rather, with a zoom lens. We’re aware of the zooming (every time the camera moves, we notice the tell-tale distortion of space), but it doesn’t suggest physical distance—rather what we become aware of are the numerous objects, many of them obviously far from the actors, in the foreground. The zoom lens becomes a way to sketch telling details while allowing them to remain vague; we take these details for granted, yet we can’t completely make them out--they’re like the false memories a dream leaves behind, readily accepted but not completely understood. These qualities are all reinforced by the film’s numerous unresolved plot points, which don’t seem messy, but rather consistent with its aesthetic—even with its acting, with that odd chemistry between Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. It leaves you with a sensation that doesn’t easily submit to written or spoken language—one that can only be described by making another film.

The Sound of Airports

Airplanes and movies were born around the same time, but the movies grew up faster. Perhaps it's because the airplane exists to satisfy only a few desires or needs, whereas the possibilities of the cinema seemed endless in its early years.

There is also the economic question--even with the rising price of movie tickets, it's still cheaper to catch a two-hour film than a two-hour flight. Airplanes were just out of reach for common people for a long time, so it seems unsurprising that (like the movies) they captivated the public imagination, impressing as much with their single-mindedness as the movies did with their variations.

And now, like the movies, airplanes are an everyday miracle. Airports are as banal as movie theaters nowadays.

Movies have an advantage over airplanes--airplanes have little opportunity to portray movies, but the cinema has had a field day with air travel and the locations associated with it. In American cinema, there is a tendency to emphasize the loud noise of airports, hoping to play off the audience's (perceived) anti-social tendencies. Most movie airports are like the busy town in the second scene of Heaven's Gate--an undercurrent of loudness, unfamiliar. Unlike Heaven's Gate, most American films seem to play off the idea of the community as something threatening--there can't be anything good about this many people in one place. Airports (and subway stations) are boring and suspicious. The emphasis on background sound suggests a belief that airports (and public spaces in general) cause people to lose their individuality (by robbing characters of their voices, or at least of some of their voices' power). Even in Billy Wilder's Avanti!, the drone of the airplane is used to disorient the audience in order to set them up for a joke involving confusion at the airport's passport check, where Jack Lemmon has to prove his own identity. The culture of public space in American cinema is an anti-flânerie, where places like airports rob individuals rather than allow them to reinforce their identities.

This is not to say that airports are comfortable or even friendly places, but nonetheless the view in mainstream (or, for that matter, any) American films is to follow a model when it comes to their portrayal and the portrayal of other public spaces. We reinforce these ideas without really understanding them, or being completely honest to our experiences.

De Palma's Chicago

To borrow a term from Thom Andersen, Brian DePalma (like Alfred Hitchcock) is a ”low tourist”: a filmmaker who, when describing the city where his film is set, chooses obvious landmarks or characteristics already imprinted on the national or cinematic consciousness. The Fury, which is mostly set (as a title card informs us) in “CHICAGO 1978,” shows a city of crowded Tom Palazzolo beaches, industrious elevated trains and a South Loop resembling the cinematic view of New York (and big cities in general): newly free to mention the existence of sleaze, 1970s Americans film reveled in sex shop storefronts, sleazy hustlers and porno theatres. There had always been red light districts, but for a good fifteen years, American filmmakers were giddy to mention this newly accepted facet of urban culture. It’s odd to see the South Loop’s El train support columns, something tourists lean up against when posing for pictures instead propping up movie pimps and drug dealers—it’s hard to believe that something as bland as the columns is our closest architectural connection to that fairly recent (but, thanks to development and urban planning, completely gone) past.