The Cinematic Cartography of Los Angeles: Outsiders, Tourists, and the Myth of the City
By Thom Andersen
This essay serves as a retrospective analysis of how cinema has shaped, distorted, and occasionally captured the elusive identity of Los Angeles. Drawing from the author’s long-standing research into the intersection of urban space and film, this piece explores the dichotomy between the "High Tourist" and "Low Tourist" gaze.
I. Main Facts: The Outsider’s Gaze
For decades, Los Angeles has been defined on screen not by its residents, but by those passing through. The directors who most effectively transformed Los Angeles from a mere setting into a character—figures like Wim Wenders and Billy Wilder—were fundamentally outsiders. They did not seek to understand what made Los Angeles function as a city; rather, they were obsessed with its alien quality, its sharp departure from the urban centers of Europe or the American East Coast.
In the realm of film theory, we can categorize these directors as either "High Tourists" or "Low Tourists." The distinction is one of appreciation: the high tourist finds aesthetic and philosophical value in the city’s sprawl, while the low tourist, often yearning for the picturesque familiarity of San Francisco or the European aesthetic, views Los Angeles with disdain.
II. Chronology of Disdain: From Transformers to Dirty Harry
The low tourist’s trajectory in Los Angeles is marked by a refusal to engage with the city’s texture. Consider the work of Michael Bay and Clint Eastwood, two filmmakers who have notoriously struggled to find inspiration within the Los Angeles basin.
In 2007’s Transformers, Michael Bay treated downtown Los Angeles as a disposable backdrop. His approach to the city’s "historic core" was one of literal destruction, framing the urban landscape as an obstacle to be pulverized by CGI combat. This was not a filmmaker engaging with a city’s history, but an "international tourist" utilizing a location as a stand-in for other, more "valuable" metropolises like New York.
Similarly, Clint Eastwood has long maintained a cinematic love affair with Northern California. His directorial debut, Play Misty for Me (1971), utilized the Monterey Peninsula as a site of romanticized beauty. When he has brought his camera to Los Angeles—as seen in The Rookie (1990) or Blood Work (2002)—the results have often been criticized as his weakest efforts, lacking the specificity and atmospheric weight he achieves in his Northern California projects. In Bird (1988), Eastwood’s biopic of Charlie Parker, the film famously erases the vibrant, successful history of the bebop scene in Los Angeles, presenting the city as a graveyard for jazz talent, ignoring the thriving reality of Parker’s residency at Billy Berg’s or the Finale Club.
III. Supporting Data: The Hitchcockian Literalism
Alfred Hitchcock, perhaps the most iconic "low tourist" of all, operated on a level of precision that few have matched. While he famously set his most celebrated works—Vertigo (1958), The Birds (1963), and Shadow of a Doubt (1942)—in Northern California or small-town Americana, his avoidance of Los Angeles was intentional.
Hitchcock was a literalist. As documented by Stephen Rebello in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the director demanded exhaustive research into the minutiae of his settings. He sent scouts to photograph used car salesmen in the Central Valley to ensure authenticity, yet he remained stubbornly detached from the Los Angeles he inhabited. When he did film in L.A., he frequently utilized the studio system to "recreate" reality rather than capture the city itself. His work suggests that for a certain type of filmmaker, Los Angeles is a vacuum—a place where one builds sets to simulate the world rather than acknowledging the city existing outside the studio gates.
IV. The Cultural Clash: New York vs. Los Angeles
The tension between New York and Los Angeles has been a recurring theme in mid-cult cinema. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) remains the definitive text of this rivalry. Allen’s disdain for the West Coast—famously citing the ability to "turn right on a red light" as the only cultural advantage of L.A.—encapsulates a specific type of New York narcissism.
This narrative of "Los Angeles as an architectural wasteland" is echoed in Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust and the critiques of architect Richard Neutra. They view the city’s eclectic mix of styles—the "Mexican ranch house" next to the "Swiss chalet"—as evidence of a lack of character. Yet, this critique ignores the reality of Los Angeles. As local observers have noted, the Los Angeles Times often fails to capture the "true" city, frequently falling into the trap of clichéd, dismissive reporting that treats our vibrant, multicultural neighborhoods as mere backdrops for "useless" commerce.
V. Implications: The Persistence of the "Clipper Curse" and Real Estate
The parallel between New York’s Donald Trump and Los Angeles’s Donald Sterling serves as an unintentional, yet striking, study in regional power dynamics. Both figures built empires on discriminatory real estate practices and both sought validation through the ownership of sports franchises.
The history of the Los Angeles Clippers, particularly under Sterling’s ownership, became a dark reflection of the city’s reputation for being "haunted" by failure—the "Clipper Curse." Yet, when the collapse of these empires occurred, the outcomes differed. Sterling’s racist remarks in 2014 led to a forced sale that arguably enriched him, while Trump’s political rise demonstrated a pivot toward a national, populist branding that transcended the local real estate politics of New York. The contrast between these two "Donalds" suggests that Los Angeles, for all its perceived chaos, often forces a more brutal, public confrontation with the moral failings of its elite than the insulated power structures of the East Coast.
VI. The Graduate and the Mirage of California
Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967) stands as a "poisoned arrow" aimed at the heart of West Coast culture. By portraying Benjamin Braddock as an alienated hero drifting through a world of swimming pools and suburban malaise, Nichols successfully turned Los Angeles into a state of mind—a place where "nothing can really happen."
The film’s success rested on a strategic misunderstanding: it sold the image of a generation in revolt to a middle-class audience that was, in reality, quite comfortable with the status quo. The irony, as noted by film scholars, is that while Nichols claimed to be dissecting a "stratum of vulgar new-money culture," he was simultaneously participating in the creation of a myth that has defined the outsider’s perception of Los Angeles for over fifty years.
VII. Conclusion: The Value of the High Tourist
Despite the persistent, often condescending, gaze of the low tourist, directors like Jim Jarmusch and John Cassavetes have offered a different perspective. Jarmusch’s Night on Earth (1991) does not rely on the Hollywood sign or the standard postcard geography. Instead, he focuses on the "seedy" but ordinary structures of the city—the takeout stands and the strip malls that actually constitute the day-to-day existence of Los Angeles residents.
These filmmakers recognize that the true geography of Los Angeles is not found in the monuments of the wealthy, but in the transit corridors, the taxi rides, and the quiet spaces between the icons. As we look back on the cinematic history of this city, it becomes clear that the most enduring portrayals are not those that try to solve the "mystery" of Los Angeles, but those that accept it for what it is: an endless, evolving, and often misunderstood expanse that defies the easy narratives of both New York intellectuals and Hollywood tourists.
Los Angeles will continue to be a site of projection for the outsider, but for those willing to look past the "historic cores" and the "bungalow heavens," the city reveals a complexity that no camera can ever fully capture. Perhaps, as some residents hope, the world will never truly grasp the "true Los Angeles." In that failure to define us, we remain free.
