Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, USA)

Disclaimer – I love Los Angeles. I lived there for six years, through college and my early twenties, and no one who knows me will be surprised if I turn up there again at some point in the future. Thom Andersen, director of Los Angeles Plays Itself, clearly loves the city, too – enough so to compose a painstakingly-researched clip reel of film history, all about how the movies treat his home.

Andersen’s bias is actually quite refreshing – this is HIS vision of how cinema deals with Los Angeles (don’t call it “L.A.”!), and as he moves through his topics – the city as backdrop, character, subject, and so many more – he treats the city and the movies with care, if not always with praise.

I found the section on the symbolism of architecture (for example, how villains in such films as L.A. Confidential and To Live and Die in L.A. reside in modernist works of art) and revisionist histories (Chinatown, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and again, L.A. Confidential) to be the most interesting. Both subjects are likely rich enough to deserve their own full-length treatments. I was less satisfied with Andersen’s theory of “high-tourist” and “low-tourist” filmmakers, which essentially separates movies made by outsiders (be they New Yorkers, like Woody Allen, or Europeans, like Michelangelo Antonioni or Roman Polanski) into two categories. “High-tourist” films celebrate the city, even if they don’t always like it, while “low-tourist” films wallow in common stereotypes, like Allen’s (in)famous quote from Annie Hall – “why would I want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that I can make a right turn on a red light?” This dichotomy is reductive at best, and seems to work at cross-purposes to Andersen’s overall goal of expanding and exploring the topic of how movies treat Los Angeles.

Despite the film’s length, I felt as if there was a wealth of material not covered (only one mention apiece for Clueless and The Big Lebowski? Nothing at all about Mulholland Drive or Mulholland Dr.?), but then, it’s a pretty exhaustive subject, and anyone who loves both Los Angeles and the movies could probably come up with their own personal versions without much trouble. Los Angeles Plays Itself might bite off more than it can chew, and the final section on Black filmmakers, while appropriate, felt a bit odd as a capstone, but Andersen’s take is, on the whole, fascinating, funny, and quite thoughtful – I would love to pick his brain, and get his take on such recent films as Crash and Inland Empire. Until the city falls into the sea, the subject of Los Angeles and the movies will continue to grow and expand into new territory.