![]() grid, is featured twice in the film as an important spot for the three friends. L.A.’s Griffith Observatory, overlooking the L.A. We see authentic locations in Los Angeles. Unlike many films made during the 50s, this film ventures out of the studio. The three become confidants after a teenage punk is killed racing Jim to the edge of a bluff in a game of “chicken.” On the run from a group of punks who believe Jim snitched to the police, the three friends hide out in an abandoned mansion in the Hollywood hills. He meets Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo), both also frustrated and upset at their unaffectionate and absent parents. Upset at his parents’ constant arguing as well as the feeling that his father is being emasculated by his mother, Jim has no one to connect with. He is brought into the local police station for being drunk and disorderly while his parents are out at a party. Set in the Los Angeles suburbs, Ray’s sensitive story depicts three middle-class teenagers and their chaotic emotional turmoil.Ī teenage misfit, Jim Stark (James Dean), is new to a suburban L.A. This innovative film is recognized as one of the first mainstream movies to depict teenage angst. Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) Artists like Norma or Joe Gillis crumble in this place that values novelty and youth.Ģ. This film’s focus is Hollywood and ways in which artists are affected by the superficial and changeable nature of the movie business. Gillis becomes prisoner to the lonely and delusional Norma, who cannot come to terms with her faded celebrity.īoth characters have been cast out of the Hollywood industry: Norma because of her age and her inability to keep up with the changes of modern Hollywood Gillis because his story ideas don’t seem to adhere to the unstable demands of Hollywood’s production companies. Upon discovering Gillis is a writer, Norma takes him on as a ghost writer to her epic “come-back” film story idea. He stumbles into the driveway of an enormous dilapidated mansion on Sunset Boulevard, home to aging glamor queen of the 1920s, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), and her live-in servant Max (Erich von Stroheim). ![]() ![]() With rent on his studio apartment behind by three months and his car threatened of getting repossessed, he is desperately in need of a job. Set in Hollywood, where the movie industry is of central concern for the characters, the film highlights the characters’ desire to work within a business that doesn’t have room for them.Ī struggling screenwriter, Joe Gillis (William Holden), labors away at screenplays that aren’t selling. The following films not only take place in the city of dreams, but offer some sort of commentary or history about life within this expansive, crime filled, smog-ridden, movie making desert city by the beach.īilly Wilder’s classic film dramatically depicts the tragic lives of the artists Hollywood has rejected. truly depict what it’s like to live in L.A. with the hopes of “making it” in the movie industry. People from all over the world flock to L.A. Los Angeles is also home to Hollywood, one of the biggest filmmaking capitals in the world. As disparate as all these communities may be, Angelinos share many commonalities: the complex and often overcrowded freeway system, smog, constant construction, dry desert weather, and a thriving car culture, to name a few. Los Angeles County, on the other hand, is the 4,083 square mile region in Southern California which incorporates 88 official cities and 76 unincorporated communities, making it one of the most diverse areas in the world.Īreas such as the San Fernando Valley, South Central, Hollywood, Malibu, and Pasadena all fall under the blanket of Los Angeles County. When people refer to Los Angeles, most of the time they refer to downtown L.A., a central urban area populated by skyscrapers.
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