Top 6: Movies With a Strong Sense of Place
For Episode 36, our Top 6 segment is about movies with a strong sense of place. As often happens, we each interpreted the topic a little differently. Stephen took a broader view, selecting films that are evocative of larger areas and times -- Los Angeles in the 1980s, for example -- while Sam thought more in terms of individual sets that create a specific mood. Either way, the point is that the setting of the story must be so compelling and crucial to the film that the story could not be transplanted anywhere else without fundamentally changing its feel. In such cases, sometimes it is said that the setting, whatever it is, is a character in the story.
Do you have favorite movies that are inextricably tied to their settings? Let us know!
As always, we recommend listening to the episode before reading further.
Stephen
- The Third Man (1949)
- Open City (1945)
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
- Ikiru (1952)
- Network (1976)
- Short Cuts (1993)
Sam
- One, Two, Three (1961)
- The Battle of Algiers (1966)
- Fargo (1996)
- Mimic (1997)
- A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
- Sleuth (1972)
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