Cinematography technique · used in 6 films

Urban Gothic Cinematography

Shooting a city with washed-out color, heavy shadow, rain-slick streets and decaying buildings, often at night. The city looks corrupt and threatening, and it dwarfs the people in it.

Examples

6 films that use it

  1. The French Connection (1971) poster

    The French Connection

    William Friedkin · 1971

    Roizman's photography turns 1970s New York into a grey, cold and hostile place. You see it in the Brooklyn stakeouts, the subway and the dark streets. The look of the city tells you that the world Doyle works in produces exactly the kind of moral damage you see in him.

    Where to see it: The opening French connection. The heroin is hidden in a car in Marseilles. The golden Mediterranean light contrasts with the grey New York winter the drug is traveling toward.

  2. The Terminator (1984) poster

    The Terminator

    James Cameron · 1984

    Adam Greenberg shoots 1984 Los Angeles at night, in rain and under neon. The city is a dark, hostile place where the Terminator's chrome body is at home and Sarah Connor is always exposed. This gothic look, all gloom and menace, makes an ordinary city feel like a landscape designed for the machine.

    Where to see it: The night streets of Los Angeles. With the rain-wet surfaces, the orange streetlight and the industrial spaces, the city looks like the future the film is warning about.

  3. Akira (1988) poster

    Akira

    Katsuhiro Otomo · 1988

    Otomo's Neo-Tokyo is a masterpiece of animated urban gothic, which means a city drawn as dark and threatening. It's neon-soaked, rain-slicked and under military curfew. The city's infrastructure is spectacular and menacing at the same time. The whole place is a portrait of a society that has rebuilt without healing.

    Where to see it: The opening motorcycle chase through Neo-Tokyo. You see the city's neon and darkness, its controlled zones and its lawless back streets. The layout of the city matches the politics of a society 31 years past catastrophe.

  4. Se7en (1995) poster

    Se7en

    David Fincher · 1995

    Cinematographer Darius Khondji used a bleach bypass process, which drained the colors and raised the contrast. It gives the city a permanently grimy, overcast look, and it never stops raining. The look is the film's argument. This is what a world that has already failed looks like.

    Where to see it: Every exterior sequence. The city is filmed as a place beyond saving.

  5. Heat (1995) poster

    Heat

    Michael Mann · 1995

    Dante Spinotti photographs Los Angeles at night with the kind of awe usually saved for natural landscapes. He shoots the freeways, the ocean and the airport as grand architecture. Mann's criminal world sits inside this landscape. That stops it from feeling sleazy and makes it feel epic.

    Where to see it: The nighttime freeway sequences. You see Los Angeles at speed. Against the city's roads and structures, the characters feel important and short-lived at once.

  6. Nightcrawler (2014) poster

    Nightcrawler

    Dan Gilroy · 2014

    Robert Elswit shoots Los Angeles at night as Lou's natural habitat: the freeway, the crime scene, the news van. The nighttime city looks like a Gothic landscape, dark and menacing, and it's exactly the kind of place that produces a creature like Lou.

    Where to see it: Lou's car on the freeway at 3 a.m., with the scanner going and the city a grid of orange light. The film shows the nighttime map of a city that never sleeps as the environment that made him.

Questions

Quick answers

What is urban gothic cinematography in film?
Shooting a city with washed-out color, heavy shadow, rain-slick streets and decaying buildings, often at night. The city looks corrupt and threatening, and it dwarfs the people in it.
Which films use urban gothic cinematography?
The French Connection (1971), The Terminator (1984), Akira (1988), Se7en (1995), Heat (1995), Nightcrawler (2014).
What kind of technique is urban gothic cinematography?
It is a cinematography technique. Related cinematography techniques include Handheld Cinema Vérité, Tracking Shot Choreography, Tracking Shot as Mechanical Dread.

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