IMDb RATING
7.8/10
2.9K
YOUR RATING
A documentary on how Los Angeles has been used and depicted in the movies.A documentary on how Los Angeles has been used and depicted in the movies.A documentary on how Los Angeles has been used and depicted in the movies.
- Awards
- 3 wins & 1 nomination
Photos
Encke King
- Narrator
- (voice)
Ben Alexander
- Officer Frank Smith in Dragnet
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Jim Backus
- Frank Stark in Rebel Without A Cause
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Brenda Bakke
- Lana Turner in L.A. Confidential
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Gene Barry
- Dr. Clayton Forrester
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Richard Basehart
- Roy Morgan
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- …
Hugh Beaumont
- George Copeland in The Blue Dahlia
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
William Bendix
- Buzz Wanchek in The Blue Dahlia
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Ann Blyth
- Veda Pierce in Mildred Pierce
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Jim Bouton
- Terry Lennox in The Long Goodbye
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Grand L. Bush
- FBI Agent Little Johnson in Die Hard
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
James Cagney
- Tom Powers in The Public Enemy
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Lon Chaney Jr.
- Charles 'Butcher' Benton in The Indestructible Man
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
John Considine
- Doctor Crawford
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- …
Bill Cosby
- Al Hickey in Hickey & Boggs
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Robert Culp
- Frank Boggs in Hickey & Boggs
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Howard Duff
- Dave Pomeroy in Panic in the City
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Deanna Durbin
- Penny in Three Smart Girls
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsThe narration describes architect John Lautner's famous Chemosphere house as "a hexagon of wood, steel, and glass." The Chemosphere is octagonal.
- ConnectionsFeatured in MsMojo: Top 10 Movies to Watch if You Liked La La Land (2017)
Featured review
This is one of the most interesting projects about cinema (as the filmed frame) that I know of. It is about the city as background, as character and subject. They were making as far back as the 1920's films as hymns to the cityscape and what life in it, 'city symphonies' they called them, but here it is about the most photographed city in the world. A place that was nothing more than a small town when the dream factories rolled in and shaped it into a myth that sustains itself. And it's entirely in terms of cinematic history, entirely cobbled together from other peoples' vision of that place.
So the essay is about the history of a city as reflected in cinema and shaped by it, about Hollywood's idea of Los Angeles overlapping with the actual place where real people live. The filmmaker has compiled clips from a large array of films; from silents and noir to 80's action and modern blockbusters. The idea is that we're looking at the background of these shots, at the actual reality and place over which is superimposed the movie fantasy.
Various insights here, ranging from the stridently interprative to the intuitively discerning. It amuses the narrator for example, how modernist architectural houses built to signify transparence are turned by movies into the dens of iniquity of shady characters simply because they look weird from the outside. How the same building could substitute as a hotel, a police station, and a newspaper office depending on the movie. How the disappearance of entire neighborhoods can be actually traced in the footage of movies filmed there. Bunker Hill was a busy, homely district where pensioners and poor immigrants lived in the late 50's, but in '84 it substitutes well as a desolate urban wasteland in Night of the Comet.
And a more interesting one. How cinema imagined in Chinatown or Who Framed Roger Rabbit, perhaps reflecting public opinion, devious schemes by shady groups of plutocrats to usurp control of the water or public transport, while the actual reality was banal; these things happened, or efforts towards them, but in the public eye and with its support.
So the essay is about the history of a city as reflected in cinema and shaped by it, about Hollywood's idea of Los Angeles overlapping with the actual place where real people live. The filmmaker has compiled clips from a large array of films; from silents and noir to 80's action and modern blockbusters. The idea is that we're looking at the background of these shots, at the actual reality and place over which is superimposed the movie fantasy.
Various insights here, ranging from the stridently interprative to the intuitively discerning. It amuses the narrator for example, how modernist architectural houses built to signify transparence are turned by movies into the dens of iniquity of shady characters simply because they look weird from the outside. How the same building could substitute as a hotel, a police station, and a newspaper office depending on the movie. How the disappearance of entire neighborhoods can be actually traced in the footage of movies filmed there. Bunker Hill was a busy, homely district where pensioners and poor immigrants lived in the late 50's, but in '84 it substitutes well as a desolate urban wasteland in Night of the Comet.
And a more interesting one. How cinema imagined in Chinatown or Who Framed Roger Rabbit, perhaps reflecting public opinion, devious schemes by shady groups of plutocrats to usurp control of the water or public transport, while the actual reality was banal; these things happened, or efforts towards them, but in the public eye and with its support.
- chaos-rampant
- Jul 13, 2011
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Los Angeles Kendini Oynuyor
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $6,945
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $5,005
- Aug 1, 2004
- Gross worldwide
- $8,218
- Runtime2 hours 49 minutes
- Color
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By what name was Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) officially released in India in English?
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