Welcome to Fear City

Nathan Holmes

Description

2019 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

The early 1970s were a moment of transformation for both the American city and its cinema. As intensified suburbanization, racial division, deindustrialization, and decaying infrastructure cast the future of the city in doubt, detective films, blaxploitation, police procedurals, and heist films confronted spectators with contemporary scenes from urban streets. Welcome to Fear City argues that the location-shot crime films of the 1970s were part of a larger cultural ambivalence felt toward urban life, evident in popular magazines, architectural discourse, urban sociology, and visual culture. Yet they also helped to reinvigorate the city as a site of variegated experience and a positively disordered public life—in stark contrast to the socially homogenous and spatially ordered suburbs. Discussing the design of parking garages and street lighting, the dynamics of mugging, panoramas of ruin, and the optics of undercover police operations in such films as Klute, The French Connection, Detroit 9000, Death Wish, and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Nathan Holmes demonstrates that crime genres did not simply mirror urban settings and social realities, but actively produced and circulated new ideas about the shifting surfaces of public culture.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Crime Film and the Messy City

1. Parking Garage, Apartment, Disco, Skyscraper: Alan J. Pakula’s Banal Modernity

2. Everyone Here Is a Cop: Urban Spectatorship and the Popular Culture of Policing in the Super-Cop Cycle

3. Detroit 9000 and Hollywood’s Midwest

4. Bystander Effects: Death Wish and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Conclusion: The Lure of the City

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Film
• États-Unis
• History of film
• History of the Americas
• 20th century
• Visual culture
• Película fotográfica
• United States of America
• USA

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781438471228
• Langue: English

Extrait

Welcome to Fear City

Welcome to Fear City
Crime Film, Crisis, and the Urban Imagination

Nathan Holmes
Cover: Gene Hackman in The French Connection (1971). 20th Century-Fox / Photofest, © 20th Century-Fox.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Holmes, Nathan.
Title: Welcome to fear city : crime film, crisis, and the urban imagination / Nathan Holmes.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2018] | Series: SUNY series, Horizons of cinema | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017050738 | ISBN 9781438471211 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438471228 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cities and towns in motion pictures. | City and town life in motion pictures. | Crime films—United States—History and criticism. | United States—Social life and customs—20th century. | United States—In motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.C513 H65 2018 | DDC 791.43/621732—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050738
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Crime Film and the Messy City
1. Parking Garage, Apartment, Disco, Skyscraper: Alan J. Pakula’s Banal Modernity
2. Everyone Here Is a Cop: Urban Spectatorship and the Popular Culture of Policing in the Super-Cop Cycle
3. Detroit 9000 and Hollywood’s Midwest
4. Bystander Effects: Death Wish and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Conclusion: The Lure of the City
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations Figure I.1 Newsweek , November 1971. Figure 1.1 All the President’s Men . Woodward’s view of the parking garage. Figure 1.2 Julien Allen Painting of Woodward’s meeting with Deep Throat for New York magazine’s “Illustrated Secret History of Watergate,” June 1974. Figure 1.3 Klute . Peter Cable in boardroom with World Trade Center Tower in background. Figure 1.4 Photograph of Richard M. Nixon taken by presidential photographer Ollie Atkins at Camp David shortly after his reelection in 1972. Figure 1.5 Life , November 19, 1971. Figure 2.1 “The Supercops,” Dave Greenberg and Robert Hantz, photographed for New York magazine. Figure 2.2 Photograph of NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit in LIFE . Figure 2.3 Members of NYPD Street Crime Unit depicted in New York City Police Street Crime Unit: An Exemplary Project (1975). Figure 2.4 Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) undercover in The French Connection. Figure 2.5 Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) catches Popeye’s gaze in The French Connection. Figure 3.1 Advertisement in The Chicago Tribune. Figure 3.2 A criminal negotiates urban blight in Detroit 9000 ’s final chase sequence. Figure 3.3 More detritus in Detroit 9000 ’s final chase. Figure 3.4 Sweetback’s running silhouette superimposed on a Los Angeles streetscape in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Figure 4.1 New York cover illustration for “Mugging Hour” feature. Figure 4.2 Welcome to Fear City pamphlet released by New York police and fire departments. Figure 4.3 Death Wish Poster. Figure 4.4 Death Wish . A mugging in progress shown from Kersey’s point-of-view. Figure 4.5 Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Transit Authority Central Command Center. Figure 5.1 Alan Moore and Mike Collins’s Daredevil spoof “Grit!”
Acknowledgments
When I think of how this book developed, changed shape, and then took its present form, a number of paths, and a large cast of people come to mind.
One trajectory begins with a group of friends watching American crime films in a ramshackle Milwaukee Avenue loft. Returning to Chicago from Paris on an abortive dissertation proposal research trip, I received a consoling text message from my roommate and friend Josh Goldsmith, which advised me to write about the movies we loved to discover together. He told me to entitle the project “This City Will Kill You.” The name didn’t stick but the general idea was all there in that text.
Another trajectory was my experience reading and learning from Tom Gunning, particularly his work connecting cinema, detective fiction, and urban visual culture. Tom incited me to think seriously about the crime genre as a form and his fierce dialectical thinking about cinema and modern vision, as well as his encouragement and support of this project are, I hope, evident on every page. I was also inspired by Ed Dimendberg’s work on film noir and modern space and so was thrilled when he agreed to become a dissertation advisor. Many thanks to Ed for his careful readings and suggestions, and for introducing me to Eagle Rock’s Cacao Mexicatessen. Jim Lastra, who combined his invaluable dissertation guidance and deep knowledge of cinema with personal experiences of the cities and films about which I was writing, was key in convincing me that I was moving in the right direction.
Many of these chapters took initial shape at the University of Chicago, where I was fortunate to join a community of students and scholars who, around the bad coffee and bagels of the Mass Culture Workshop, demonstrated an encouraging willingness to help me sort through my ideas. These include: Inga Pollman, Mara Fortes, Adam Hart, Ian Jones, Hannah Frank, Nova Smith, Katharina Loew, Noa Steimatsky, Mary Adekoya, Christina Petersen, Robert Bird, David Levin, Julie Turnock, Kalisha Cornett, Richard Davis, Michelle Puetz, Artemis Willis, Lee Carruthers, Charles Tepperman, Clint Froelich, Caitlin McGrath, Sarah Keller, and many others. Miriam Hansen passed away shortly after the very beginnings of work on my dissertation, but her kindness was extremely important, and I hope that readers will detect her spirit here.
Murray Pomerance has been a kind and diligent editor, and I thank him for his deep understanding of the social life of cities, equanimity, abundant insights, and friendship.
Much appreciation too goes to James Peltz and Rafael Chaiken at SUNY Press for shepherding this book into publication.
I am grateful for the conversations I have been able to have over the years, often at Society for Cinema and Media Studies conferences, with scholars also inquiring into film, urbanism, and cultural spaces: Merrill Scheleir, Josh Gleich, Lawrence Webb, Erica Stein, Pamela Robertson-Wojcik, Mark Shiel, Malini Guha, Josh Glick, Sabine Haenni, Will Straw, Patrick Keating, and many others.
A portion of this book was supported by a Michigan-Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship on Egalitarianism and the Metropolis, and I was very happy to have the chance to discuss my work at the University of Michigan with Johannes Von Moltke, Caryl Flinn, Dan Herbert, Matthew Solomon, Benjamin Strassfield, and the wonderful Corina Kessler.
I am happy to have many colleagues who have become friends (and friends who have become colleagues), whom I can count on for new perspectives and discerning comment. Erika Balsom and Daniel Morgan were always up for reading a draft and offering their thoughts. Ongoing conversation about deception and revelation with Colin Williamson has been fundamental to my thinking in this book, and moving image media in general. For their always engaging observations and advice I want to thank Scott Preston, Jennifer Wild, Tim Kaposy, Andrew Pendakis, Kemi Adeyemi, Matt Croombs, and Owen Lyons. Cheers as well to Beth Woodward for coming through at the last moment with some important scans!
Perhaps the most significant friendship to the formation and evolution of this book has been Matt Hauske, the one person who has read, talked about, and re-read my work in all its iterations more than anyone else. It is impossible for me to think of this book ever happening without discussing film history and method with Matt over lunches at Salonica, or in the stuffy group workrooms of the Regenstein library.
Thanks go to my mother Janice and my father Mark, as well as Eben and Kahlin, who have always cheered me on. Finally, the true story behind this book is the support and dedication of Kristin Groff, and the love that continued to grow between us as I wrote and wrote.
Introduction
Crime Film and the Messy City
Many a commercial film or television production is a genuine achievement besides being a commodity. Germs of new beginnings may develop within a thoroughly alienated environment.
—Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film

I N 1974, V INCENT C ANBY WROTE A piece for the New York Times , titled “New York Woes Are Good For Box Office,” that puzzled over the spate of films that had been made in the city over the last few years. What confused Canby was why so many recent films that portrayed New York so unfavorably—he cites Serpico (1973), The Super Cops (1974), Law and Disorder (1974), Mean Streets (1973), Death Wish (1974), For Pete’s Sake (1974), and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)—were seemingly so popular:
New York is a mess, say these films. It’s run by fools. Its citizens are at the mercy of its criminals who, as often as not, are protected by an unholy alliance of civil libertarians and crooked cops. The air is foul. The traffic is impossible. Services are diminishing and the morale is such that ordering a cup of coffee in a diner can turn into a request for a fat lip. (1