City Planning, Hollywood Style

“My father called Johnny DeCuir the ‘city planner.’ He was told to build the forum three times its size, as it was thought the real Roman Forum was not impressive enough.” —Tom Mankiewicz, son of Joseph Mankiewicz, director of Cleopatra?

Movies are nothing but illusion. After all, we’re not really seeing things, but only light projected onto a white screen. Second, the technology itself creates an illusion by running still images past our eyes so fast—at 24 frames per second—that they look like continuous moving images. Third, in fiction films, everyone we see is pretending to be someone else, in a story that someone made up, with everyone involved supporting this pretense. And finally, sometimes even what we think is physically present with the actors isn’t really there. For example, when we see Cary Grant and Eva Sainte Marie climbing down Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest, the rocks in the foreground, the ones they’re touching, are real (well, probably plaster rocks, but real plaster), but the huge heads of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln are a 40-foot-tall by 100-foot-wide painting [1]. It’s all illusion.

Except sometimes, when it isn’t. In an earlier article [2], I wrote about how a movie’s production designer can be like an architect, designing spectacular—and very real—interior sets, as architectural as any building. In this article, we’ll look at movie sets from the other side―the outside―when production designers build enormous, highly detailed urban spaces for us to enjoy. 

These sets were all designed and built specifically for their movies. Thus, we won’t talk about The Truman Show, whose fictional town of Seahaven was the planned community of Seaside in Florida; or Blade Runner, whose Los Angeles of 2019 was mostly small, highly detailed physical models; or Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace, whose planet-city of Coruscant was a digital creation. Now, let’s begin with one of the earliest Hollywood movie spectacles.

Intolerance (1916), Babylon set design by Frank Wortman and Walter Hall.

During its three-hour-plus running time, Intolerance tells four parallel, intercut stories. The one that’s remembered most takes place in ancient Babylon, and to depict that city, designers Wortman and Hall built an enormous set on the northeast corner of Sunset Blvd. and Virgil St. in Hollywood, within walking distance of the future site of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. Moviegoers at the time had seen nothing like this on film. The Babylon set made the movie’s 3,000 extras and dozens of live elephants look tiny. Intolerance was billed as “D.W. Griffith’s $2,000,000 Spectacle,” [3] but it ended up being Griffith’s downfall. The movie was a flop, and down the drain with it went all of Griffith’s Birth of a Nation profits. Of the set itself, no trace remains—by 1919, after having mostly fallen apart, it was demolished—but a full-size replica of part of the Babylon gate, complete with archway and elephant-topped columns, can be seen at the Hollywood & Highland Center, a Hollywood shopping center that opened in 2001 [4].

The Ten Commandments (1923), Pharaoh’s City set designed by Paul Iribe.

Silent movies had some illusions up their sleeves, such as combining matte paintings and scale models with live-action cinematography. But often, when you see a spectacular set in a silent movie, it was a real set. With The Ten Commandments, what we see was actually there. Designer Iribe built a full-size wood-and-plaster Egyptian city on the Guadalupe Dunes north of Santa Barbara. Its 120-foot-high city walls and 35-foot-tall sphynxes equaled the extravagance of Intolerance’s Babylon. After filming, shifting sands slowly buried the abandoned set. In the 1990s, beachcombers began finding small artifacts—tobacco tins and cough medicine bottles—that the film crew had left. Archeologists became interested, and in 2012, one of the movie’s sphynxes was uncovered, followed by more such discoveries. Because of its historical significance, the old movie set has been recognized as an official archeological site by the state of California. [5]

Sunrise (1927), City set design by Rochus Gliese. Academy Award nominee.

When film historians say that silent movies had reached a pinnacle of artistic achievement just at the moment when talkies made them obsolete, it’s usually Sunrise they’re talking about. In the first Academy Awards ceremony, it became the first―and so far only―movie to win an Academy Award for “Best Unique and Artistic Picture.” This was Gliese’s first American production; his background was German Expressionism, and it’s obvious in his design of The City, which took up a large part of the Fox Studios backlot. [6]

Arizona (1940), Tucson set design by Lionel Banks and Robert Peterson. Academy Award nominee.

I’ve never seen Arizona, and I’m fairly sure most of you haven’t either. But we probably have seen its set many times. In itself, what Banks and Peterson built in the Sonoran Desert depicting 1861 Tucson wouldn’t be memorable. But unlike most movie sets, it was left standing and became “Old Tucson Studios,” where dozens of westerns and other movies and TV shows were filmed, including The Bells of St. Mary (1945), Winchester ’73 (1950), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Rio Bravo (1959), Lilies of the Field (1963), El Dorado (1966), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), The Cannonball Run (1981), Three Amigos (1986), Young Guns II (1990), and Tombstone (1993). When movies weren’t being shot there, the town was a theme park open to the public. In 1995, an arson-caused fire destroyed part of the set, but the town/studio has since been rebuilt and reopened to the public. 

The Alamo (1960), Alamo Mission set design by Alfred Ybarra.

To depict the famous mission, Ybarra and his crew spent two years building a full-size (or three-quarters-scale, depending on the source) replica of the mission compound, using more than a million hand-made adobe bricks, and including a recreation of the village of San Antonio de Béxar. Located near Brackettville, Texas, the set is now a theme park called Alamo Village. Later movies filmed there include Bandolero! (1968), Lonesome Dove (1988), and Bad Girls (1994).

Cleopatra (1963), Roman Forum set design by John DeCuir. Academy Award winner.

Seeing Cleopatra is like traveling into the past―not to first-century-BCE Rome and Alexandria, but to 1950s and 1960s Hollywood moviemaking. In terms of pure spectacle, few of today’s blockbusters can compare with movies such as Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, and Cleopatra, which were shot in 70mm, and had overtures, intermissions, exit music, and reserved seating in their first runs [7]. And they had enormous sets. Cleopatra’s sets were originally built outside London, but―surprise!―London’s weather is almost always crappy, not at all like Rome’s or Egypt’s. So the sets were moved, at great cost, to Cinecittà, the vast movie studio built by Mussolini outside Rome. The results are stunning: The scene when Cleopatra is brought into the Roman Forum on a 35-foot-tall, 70-foot-long sphynx would today be done with CGI. The huge urban spaces and cast of thousands really were huge urban spaces―the forum set was 1,640 feet long and 1,115 feet wide―and a cast of thousands. When people say, “They don’t make movies like they used to,” this is what they mean.

Playtime (1967), Paris set design by Eugène Roman.

In general, big budgets and funny comedies don’t mix; the more money spent on a comedy, the less funny it usually is. For every Ghostbusters, we have dozens of 1941s and Ishtars. But then there’s Playtime. Shot in 70mm over three years for 17 million francs (which, in today’s U.S. dollars, I calculate to be … well, a lot of money), this mostly dialogue-free movie was a commercial failure. But it’s a comic masterpiece, a rare great movie that’s also funny. And its sets are amazing. Designer Roman built not the historic, romantic Paris that tourists go to see, but a sterile, modernist version of the city. Chicago Яeader movie critic Dave Kehr called it “certainly the last word on Mies van der Rohe,” as well as “the most visually inventive film of the 60s” and “one of the funniest.”

Once upon a Time in the West (1968), Flagstone set design by Carlo Simi.

Most of this movie’s interiors were filmed at Cinecittà, but Carlo Simi built the town of Flagstone near Gaudix, in Spain. The set is used for several scenes, but most memorably early in the movie, when Claudia Cardinale arrives at the town’s train station. She stands on the deserted station platform, waiting for her husband to meet her. After what could be hours, she enters the train station. We watch through the station window as she talks to a clerk. Then, while Ennio Morricone’s romantic music swells, the camera glides up the wall and across the tile roof to reveal a bustling town beyond the station. It’s a stunning, rarely equaled cinematic moment. [8]

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Presbyterian Church set design by Leon Ericksen.

For most movies, the sets are finished before filming begins. Two exceptions come to mind: Moonlighting (the movie, not the TV show), during which, over the course of the movie, a London townhouse gets a complete renovation; and McCabe and Mrs. Miller [9]. When John McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides into the Pacific Northwest town of Presbyterian Church, the town’s only buildings seem to be a tavern and the church itself. While the movie’s story unfolds, more buildings are built on the set as the town becomes a real town. Located near West Vancouver, Canada, the set was built by local carpenters, many of them American Vietnam War draft resisters. As the buildings were finished, the workmen and even some of the crew members lived in them.

Popeye (1980), Sweethaven set design by Wolf Kroeger

At the northern tip of the island of Malta, around 50 miles south of Sicily, you can visit an unusual town. Consisting of 19 oddly shaped buildings hugging the shore of a small cove, it’s a tourist attraction called Popeye Village. For over seven months in 1979, more than a hundred construction workers built Sweethaven, the set of Popeye. The movie― Robin Williams’s first―is either very strange or very bad―or maybe both―but the Sweethaven set is amazing. Popeye Village may be more popular today than Popeye was in 1980.

Full Metal Jacket (1987), Hue set design by Anton Furst.

When travel-averse director Stanley Kubrick decided to make a Vietnam War movie, the challenge was recreating the city of Hue within driving distance of his home northwest of London. The solution: Use the abandoned Beckton Gas Works in east London. With a little artful demolition, and the addition of appropriate architectural features, such as latticework, signage, and a pagoda, designer Furst transformed a square mile of industrial wasteland into the French-colonial Vietnamese city. All the action in the last hour of the movie takes place within an easy walk to the Thames River. [10]

Batman (1989), Gotham City set design by Anton Furst. Academy Award winner.

Batman’s Gotham City is the New York that people who’ve never been to New York imagine it to be: dark, dirty, and dangerous. Occupying 18 soundstages and 95 acres of London’s Pinewood Studios, and taking 400 carpenters six months to build, the set was a crazy mixture of architectural styles, and possibly the largest movie set since Cleopatra. While the set was vast, it wasn’t tall; most of what we see above the second floor are matte paintings (not CGI).

Schindler’s List (1993), Plaszów set design by Allan Starski. Academy Award winner.

The real Plaszów concentration camp, outside modern Kraków, is now a memorial and off limits to filming, so a replica of the camp was built in nearby Liban Quarry. The set consisted of 34 barracks and seven watchtowers, and the road into the camp was paved with fake Jewish tombstones. It’s said to be the largest movie set built in Poland.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Hobbiton set design by Grant Major and Dan Hannah. Academy Award nominee.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.” Those opening lines of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit were about all that designers Major and Hannah had to work with to design and build Hobbiton on 14 acres of New Zealand countryside. The hobbit village included 37 hobbit holes, an inn, and a bridge. The set was finished a year before filming began so that mature landscaping could cover all signs of construction and make the place look properly lived in.

Gangs of New York (2002), Manhattan set design by Dante Ferretti. Academy Award nominee.

To depict the Five Points neighborhood, lower Broadway, upper Manhattan, and the New York harbor in the 1850s and 1860s, Ferretti built a mile of old New York streets on Cinecittà’s backlot. The set was so large and detailed, visitors to the set felt as though they had slipped back in time. Ferretti’s approach to movie design: “I try to be like an architect living in that period. … The audience has to believe what they see. I don’t want them to feel like they’re in a movie, but rather that they’re in reality.” As big as the sets were, they weren’t quite big enough; many shots had faraway details and panoramic vistas added by CGI.

Jurassic World (2015), Theme Park set design by Ed Verreaux.

Among the victims of Hurricane Katrina was Six Flags New Orleans. Originally opened as Jazzland in 2000, the park survived until August 21, 2005. Katrina flooded the park and destroyed the rides, and the park never reopened. But it has been used for a number of movies, including Jurassic World. The movie theme park’s main street was built on the old theme park’s parking lot.

Where are they now?

Most of these sets are gone. The Cinecittà, Pinewood, and other studio backlot sets were demolished to make room for new productions. The Beckton Gas Works is now mostly residential buildings. The Plaszów set still stands, although the quarry it’s in is now overgrown. Pieces of the Pharaoh’s city continue to be excavated. Intolerance’s Babylon has been partially recreated in Hollywood.

But a few of these sets survive as tourist destinations, and are older than many suburban American communities: Alamo Village is nearly 60 years old, Popeye Village is 40 years old, Hobbiton is 19 years old, and Old Tucson (at least the parts not destroyed by fire) is nearly 80 years old. So not only were they real in the movies, they’re still real today.

Extravagance, Hollywood Style

What was the point of such gigantic sets? Did they have to be that big and that well detailed? It wasn’t just extravagance for the sake of extravagance. (Well, maybe a little. Dante Ferretti, on his Gangs of New York set: “I’m a bit of a megalomaniac. I don’t like restrictions. Cinecittà is a big place, so I like to think big.”) But mostly it was to give actors a sense of being in real places, and to give filmmakers the freedom to know that wherever they pointed their cameras, they would be seeing another part of the set. As Batman director Tim Burton said, “I wanted to create a playground for these nuts to run around in.” And even if these sets are the result of extravagance and filmmakers’ egos gone wild, so what? As the audience for these movies, we are the beneficiaries. Seeing something awesome, in the literal meaning of the word, is always pleasurable. I, for one, am thankful for such rare moments of extravagance.

Follow the author on Twitter @bill_schmwil.

Footnotes:

[1] The artists were Ben Carré, Wayne Hill, Clark Provins, Harry Tepker, and Duncan Spencer; excellent but overlooked work should be recognized.

[2] https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/architecture-movies-william-schmalz-faia

[3] That’s $2,000,000 in 1916 dollars. In 2018 dollars, after a hundred years of inflation, it would be a staggering … $46,000,000! What? That’s a medium-budget Hollywood movie these days. Nonetheless, Intolerance probably was the most expensive movie of its time.

[4] The center also houses the Dolby Theater, home of the Academy Awards ceremonies, and incorporates the landmark Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, of footprints-in-the-concrete fame.

[5] Cecil B. DeMille made The Ten Commandments twice. Before you hurry to see the 1923 version, a warning: Only around 45 minutes of the movie takes place in ancient Egypt. The rest is a fairly dreary modern-day morality play. Trust me: I’ve seen it so you don’t have to. The 1956 version, on the other hand, is big and long and all about Moses and a lot of fun, with state-of-the-art (for 1956) special effects. It was shot in color and VistaVision on location in Egypt. You know those three big pyramids on the Giza plateau? DeMille had them built for the movie. Don’t tell the tourists.

[6] The city is unnamed, as are all the characters, the three main ones being The Man, The Wife, and The Woman from the City. Guess which one is evil.

[7] I find intermissions, even in long movies, distracting. However, among modern movie spectacles, Titanic may be the one most in need of one. With the last of its three hours being filled with cold, gushing water, some audience members (and by “some audience members,” I mean “me”) badly―desperately―need a restroom break, but can’t risk missing five minutes of the movie to take one.

[8] For more on Once Upon a Time in the West, see my article “Sergio Leone, Mies van der Rohe, and the Role of Follies in Film and Architecture.” (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/sergio-leone-mies-van-der-rohe-role-follies-film-schmalz-faia?trk=pulse_spock-articles)

[9] They are also unusual for being shot in sequence—that is, in the order we see it. Another famous example is The Shining (1980). Danny Lloyd was five years old when shooting began, and more than a year older when it ended. Had the movie not been shot in sequence, Danny would have been visibly and randomly getting older and younger from scene to scene.

[10] The gas works were also used for the opening sequence of For Your Eyes Only (1981), in which James Bond finally puts an end to Ernst Stavro Blofeld.