Views on the european functional city and the north american gated city on celluloid’s imagery

Abstract

Filmmakers offer their view of the city and the citizen’s values and attitudes. Two cases are analysed: the critical stance regarding 60s modern rationalist Paris and a series of thoughts on the North American gated city, using a real setting (Seaside, Florida) and a hypothetical setting (Suburbia). Tativille, the city that plays the leading role in the film “Playtime”, gives director Jacques Tati the opportunity to satirize the rationalist Modern Urbanism’s urban excesses and its inconveniences derived from the strict zoning of uses. We believe that the other films, “The Truman Show” and “Edward Scissorhands”, present the most ill-fated, harmful side of so-called New Urbanism, which is its instrumentation to build the exclusive Gated Cities; refuge-fortresses reserved for those privileged people who desert from the real city.