The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part I: Filters
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2
53
M. Christine Boyer
29 Voice-over enables the audience to hear
someone, although never seen on the screen, narrating
a story. The voice comes from another time
and space than that of the film; as an overlay, it can
comment and draw together parts of the story.
Sarah Kozloff, Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration
in American Fiction Film (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1988), pp. 2–3, 82.
30 Added during postproduction, voice-over
allows the filmmaker to include important exteriors
or scenes shot in the noisy streets of New
York without the background interference. See
Kozloff, Invisible Storytellers, p. 22.
31 For comments on location shooting, see
Malvin Wald, “Afterword: The Anatomy of a
Hit,” in The Naked City: A Screenplay by Malvin
Wald and Albert Maltz, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1949), pp. 137, 144.
32 Quoted in Richardson, Autopsy, p. 90.
33 Ibid., pp. 89–91.
34 Ibid., p. 88.
35 Nicholas Christopher, Somewhere in the
Night: Film Noir and the American City (New
York: Free Press, 1997), p. 9.
36 Wald, “Afterword,” p. 140.
37 Wald and Maltz, The Naked City, p. 3.
38 Richardson, Autopsy, pp. 4–5.
39 Sarah Kozloff observes, “by the film’s end,
we have a very clear sense of the narrator’s personality—his
self-aggrandizement, his cynicism,
his sentimentality, his devotion to The City and
its inhabitants. This narrator combines both authority
and the voice of one man, part lecturer,
part tour-guide, part barside raconteur.” See Invisible
Storytellers, pp. 86–96; quotation, p. 96.
40 Wald and Maltz, The Naked City, p. 31.
41 Ibid., pp. 126–127.
42 Richardson, Autopsy, p. 93.
43 Parker Tyler, The Three Faces of the Film
(1960), quoted by Wald, “Afterword,” p. 148.
44 Hellinger bought the rights to the title for a
thousand dollars. See Wald, “Afterword,” p. 144.
45 Thomas McDonough, “Situationist Space,”
October 67 (winter 1994): 61, and Simon Sadler,
The Situationist City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1998), p. 60.
46 McDonough, “Situationist Space,” pp. 62–66.
47 Ibid., p. 75.
48 Dimendberg, “Film Noir and Urban Space,”
pp. 143, 154, 160.
49 Ibid., p. 162.
50 This latter is the intention specified in the
planning report for Times Square, produced by
Robert A. M. Stern and M & Co., “42nd Street
Now! A Plan for the Interim Development of
42nd Street,” in Executive Summary (New York:
42nd Street Development Project, New York
State Urban Development Corporation, New
York City Economic Development Corporation,
1993).
51 Vanessa R. Schwartz, “Cinematic Spectatorship
before the Apparatus,” in Viewing Positions:
Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williams (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1994), pp. 94–105.
52 The following account draws a distinction
between representation and simulation. It
closely follows the work of Don Slater, “Photography
and Modern Vision: The Spectacle of ‘Natural
Magic,’” in Visual Culture, ed. Chris Jenks
(London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 218–237.
53 This phrase was used by Oliver Wendall
Holmes to describe the daguerreotype in 1859.
Quoted by Slater, “Photography and Modern Vision,”
p. 218.
54 Ibid., p. 222.
55 Ibid., pp. 218–237.
56 Stern and M & Co., “42nd Street Now!” p. 2.
57 Herbert Muschamp, “The Alchemy Needed
to Rethink Times Square,” NYT, 30 August
1992, sec. 2, p. 24.
58 Stern and M & Co., “42nd Street Now!”
59 Muschamp, “42nd Street Plan,” p. 33.