Lecture - Cities and Film

George Simmel, writer of Metropolis and Mental Life, theorised that the resistance of an individual is levelled and swallowed by the sociological mechanism that is a city.

Louis Sullivan was the architect that designed the Guaranty Building in New York, which was split into different sections to satisfy the needs of different sorts of people.  He's generally accredited as being the "inventor" of the Modern Day skyscraper. After a big fire in Chicago in 1871, Sullivan was asked to help in the redesigning and rebuilding of the town.

Antonio Gramsci theorised that the people working in the city were a part of the cities system, using the term "Fordism" to describe how workers for Ford were earning money only to buy a Ford and but the money back into the company that pays them. This was interpreted by Charlie Chaplin as the film "Modern Times" in 1936.