Scenographies of Urban Desire. The display window as the border between reality and the ghostly space of desire in the 20’s Avant-garde cinema

  • Mª Soliña Barreiro Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Keywords: display window, electric lights, Avant-garde cinema, fetishism, Berlin, Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt

Abstract

Display-windows and electric lights are capital in the set design of 20’s cinema. They defy material needs and night darkness; they foster an inconsumable desire night and day. The cinema of the 20s, especially Avant-garde cinema, filled up their images with glass, lights and merchandise, this feature can be analyzed as a critical metaphor of cinema itself. The screen as interactive membrane projects a kind of desire and lifestyle that are apparently achievable: mechanical image does not lie; it is transparent as the display-windows. But often fiction cinema fetishizes the social conditions of existence. This paper studies the display-window and cinema as an ephemeral urban set through 20’s film, texts and projects from an aesthetic and ideological point of view.

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Published
2014-12-19
How to Cite
Barreiro M. S. (2014). Scenographies of Urban Desire. The display window as the border between reality and the ghostly space of desire in the 20’s Avant-garde cinema. Ángulo Recto. Revista de estudios sobre la ciudad como espacio plural, 6(2), 65-83. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_ANRE.2014.v6.n2.47584
Section
Articles