[READING RESPONSE] Joseph Rosa and Pamela Robertson Wojcik

Both Rosa and Wojcik demonstrate the way modern domestic architecture helps to construct the film narrative and reflect the phenomenon and problems in modernism and urbanism, with a particular insight into the classical Hollywood movies in the sixties and seventies. In Rosa’s, there is a mutual dynamic between architecture and film in that “Hollywood films have both reflected and shaped American views about modern domestic design.”¹ On one hand, the setting of modern dwellings presents urban life, along with technological and social developments. On the other hand, modern domestic architecture has fallen into a stereotype that arbitrarily and consistently associates its residents with immoralities: modern architecture is unstable and transitory, a place for youngsters, singles, and sinful people like “wealthy, easy women and terminal bachelors.”²

It reminds me of some of Marilyn Monroe’s classical Hollywood romance such as How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). In the former, three young models, as well as “gold-diggers,” move into a luxurious penthouse in Sutton Place, one of the most affluent regions in New York, pretending to be rich and cultivated elite ladies with the aim of marrying a rich man. When their plan failed, they had to move out those lavish domestic decorations and furniture, leaving the huge apartment empty. The film vividly presents the residents in modern dwellings as obsessive and unstable pleasure-seekers, revealing the excessive consumerist culture and money-fetishism in the urban space. In The Seven Year Itch, the male character fantasizes about his stunning neighbour through their daily encounter in the building, which makes modern architecture a place of marital infidelity and sexual indiscretions. Rosa also gives several examples such as Ang Lee’s Ice Storm to suggest the film’s hidden rule, that characters can be encoded by the architecture they reside in — modern architecture for immoral behaviours while traditional house for a happy and stable family — has been shaped and continuously reinforced in the past decades.

Rosa’s argument is echoed by Pamela R. Wojcik. “The apartment plot has been a consistent mode, even a cliche.”³ What interests me more is Wojcik proposes the modern architecture’s positive effect on film’s narrative. The author considers “apartment plot” as a film genre developed from “film cycle,” from “a series of films associated with […] shared images, characters, settings, plots or themes” to a subgenre of the realist works, and next, a “consistent mode” as a particular film style in which apart from a narrative background or an indication of its residents’ characteristics, modern domestic architecture promotes and integrates into the narrative.⁴ In Rosemary’s Baby (1968), a typical apartment thriller, the story begins when the young couple moves into a secondhand apartment, followed by a series of quirky plots based on the structure and myth of the apartment. The modern domestic setting no longer signifies urbanism or social development but strongly contrasts with the film’s cult motif. Moreover, the apartment plot is an emphasis on domestic urbanism, not only relating to the protagonists’ self-identification by tracing its spatial location but also connecting to the typical urban motifs such as gazing and voyeurism which we have discussed in the previous weeks. 

— Vana Wei Yihan 3035637448

Notes:

¹ Joseph Rosa, “Tearing Down the House: Modern Homes in the Movies,” in Architecture and Film, ed. Mark Lamster (New York, United States: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), 159.

² Ibid., 160.

³ Pamela Robertson Wojcik, “Introduction: What Makes the Apartment Complex?,” in The Apartment Complex: Urban Living and Global Screen Cultures (Durham, United States: Duke University Press, 2018), 3.

⁴ Ibid., 2-3.