Screenshot of Wings of Desire, by Wim Wenders
The overlap between cinema and architecture is a topic that has already been debated and even addressed in several articles published in ArchDaily. It is difficult to imagine a film that is not related in any way to the architecture, either through the construction of scenarios, the locations, or even the compositions within each plane and sequence – that make use of light, shadow, varied scales, and characters.
In many films, architecture and the city play a much more decisive role than the mere backdrop or stage for the narrative, acting as crucial elements or even characters. Next, we selected five films in which landscape and urban spaces are essential for the construction of the plot.
Wings of Desire, by Wim Wenders / Berlin, Germany
Manhattan, by Woody Allen / New York, EUA
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Terry Gilliam / Las Vegas, EUA
Bicycle Thieves, by Vittorio De Sica / Rome, Italy
Oldboy, by Chan-wook Park / Seul, Korea
How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema
“There are several ways of making films. Like Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson, who make music. Like Sergei Eisenstein, who paints. Like Stroheim, who wrote novels spoken in the days of silent film. Like Alain Resnais, who sculpts. And like Socrates – I mean Rossellini, who creates philosophy.