Imagining Ancient Cities in Film From Babylon to Cinecitt}} [Hardcover]

In film imagery, urban spaces show up not only as spatial settings of a story, but also as projected ideas and forms that aim to recreate and capture the spirit of cultures, societies and epochs. Some cinematic cities have even managed to transcend fiction to become part of modern collective memory. Can we imagine a futuristic city not inspired at least remotely by Fritz Langs Metropolis? In the same way, ancient Babylon, Troy and Rome can hardly be shaped in popular imagination without conscious or subconscious references to the striking visions of Griffiths Intolerance, Petersens Troyand Scotts Gladiator, to mention only a few influential examples. Imagining Ancient Cities in Film explores for the first time in scholarship film representations of cities of the Ancient World from early cinema to the 21^stcentury.

The volume analyzes the different choices made by filmmakers, art designers and screen writers to recreate ancient urban spaces as more or less convincing settings of mythical and historical events. In looking behind and beyond intended archaeological accuracy, symbolic fantasy, primitivism, exoticism and Hollywood-esque monumentality, this volume pays particular attention to the depiction of cities as faces of ancient civilizations, but also as containers of moral ideas and cultural fashions deeply rooted in the contemporary zeitgeist and in continuously revisited traditions.

1. Introduction: Cinematic Cityscapes and the Ancient Past Marta Garc?a Morcillo and Pauline Hanesworth2. The Babylon of D. W. Griffiths IntoleranceMichael Seymour3. City of God: Ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land In Cinema Leonardo Gregoratti4. From Ithaca to Troy: The Homeric City in Cinema and Television Francisco Salvador Ventura5. Utopia: Cinematic Sparta as an Idea (Not A City) Tl“±