DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2022-1(2)-43-74

Sergey S. Avanesov
Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University, Russia
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-1081-4871

Abstract

The question of the possibility of exploring the city by means of cinematography is investigated in this article. I am making a preliminary description and structuring of the on-screen presentation of the city here, showing that this presentation is carried out through the formation of its non-verbal image. Using the example of three Soviet films of the“thaw” period, I show how it is possible to comprehend the city in its human dimension with the help of cinematographic tools. Combinations of a general plan and immersion in the thick of events, documentary and utopian character, structure of urban space and spontaneous movement of heroes, individual mood and social “atmosphere”, place and time form an integral artistic image of the city on the screen. The cinematic image of the urban space appears as a visual projection of the complex inner life of its inhabitants. Urban modernity contains and represents the history of a place, and the characters of films in such a multidimensional modernity gradually become themselves: their life turns into a biography. At the same time, the city is enriched with these biographies, forever incorporating them into its history. The mutual dependence of the city and the person is conveyed using optical metaphors, the construction and design of mise-en-scenes, the location and movement of the camera, visual allusions to mythological and ideological constructs, the mutual recall of verbal and non-verbal texts and other artistic techniques, which together form a kind of cinematic language for presentation and analysis of urban space as a special cultural chronotope. Thus, “urban” cinema acts as a specific paradigm of urban studies that allows one to explore the city by constructing its screen image.

Keywords: city in the fiction cinema, semiotics of the city, urban studies, Soviet cinema, Moscow at the cinema, Marlen Khutsiev, Georgiy Daneliya.

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About author

Sergey S. Avanesov
Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University, Russia

E-mail: [email protected]

For citation:

Avanesov S. S. Cities in Fiction Cinema: Their Roles. Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City.
2022. 1 (2). P. 43-74.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2022-1(2)-43-74