“Decent People Shouldn’T Live Here”: The American City in Cinema

:This paper explores how the cinema uses the US urban scene as a landscape of the imagination. The essay is an exploratory look at the reactions to the US city by some of our most acute and sophisticated observers, American moviemakers. The assumption underlying this effort is that films help structure the context within which urban affairs take place, are perceived, and are studied. Movies can tell us much about our urban pasts, presents, and futures and provide insights into our collective hopes, fears, fantasies, and phobias. The essay focuses on a number of complementary and competing images of our cities in US cinema over the last quarter century.