There is an intriguing duality to how film shapes our sense of place even as a filmmaker's own unique understanding of a place shapes the cinematic rendition of it. In Street Smart: The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee, film critic Richard Blake thoroughly explores this intersection as he examines how for many of us our impressions of America's first city have been fashioned by thousands of celluloid dreams and visions - and how four distinct filmmakers have each reshaped cinematic perceptions because of their own sense of place within the teeming metropolis.
For Blake, these four directors - each in their own way representative of some of America's finest filmmaking - are essentially incapable of escaping their own roots. He believes that the neighborhoods each man grew up in is far more important in understanding their films than the neighborhoods actually portrayed in their films. As he notes, "Growing up in a closed ethnic neighborhood gives one, often unconsciously, a stereotypical, often romantic view of one's own group, and it can lead to some nasty stereotypes of others. Ethnic awareness is part of the fiber of New York neighborhoods. That's where the realism comes in. Even when these four directors have no desire to make a sociological observation, their stories gain a depth of texture by showing the racial and ethnic complexities that their characters face as a realistic part of their lives."
Instead of focusing upon the visual "style" of each director, Blake focuses on the context and content of the stories they present. The slice of perspective each offers often mirrors (even if unconsciously) the culture they were immersed in while growing up. For example, Blake notes that Woody Allen's characters generally reflect family as a secondary concern (if not a primary irritant); there is a manifestation of individuality which he thinks springs not simply from the intellectual and artistic subjects of Allen's films, but instead from the neighborhood of his youth.
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