The Displaced City

Although the city of Melbourne began to feature increasingly in Australian films during the 1960s and 1970s, the role of the architectural background in developing the narrative and visual qualities of films, and the ways in which these visions of the cinematic city were shaped by the changes to the urban environment, have largely been ignored by commentators on the cinema. It is my intention in this thesis to examine a range of films made in Melbourne from the late 1950s through to the mid- 1980s, in order to illustrate that filmmakers were increasingly engaging with the built environment around them and were making sophisticated and insightful observations on modern and high-rise architecture that both transfixed them and repelled them. As Melbourne’s high-rise buildings were one of the most public manifestations of modernity, filmmakers responses to and interpretations of the new architecture can provide insights into the ways that modernity, place and identity came together in a debate within the cinematic format.