ABSTRACT
All film takes place somewhere and, especially in the past decade, film scholars
have paid particular attention to the landscape of film from diverse points
of view. It has been looked at as a subject, most often in the documentary
tradition; as a setting, the backdrop and atmosphere of a story; it has been
analyzed symbolically; and it has been described as an actual character in the
film, an anthropomorphizing of the landscape that interacts with its human
In certain genres, most dramatically the Western, the landscape is central to
the film’s characterization and identity. The examination of the complex and
changing meanings of wilderness and civilization has also been a particular
concern. (Although “Westerns” now take place as far afield as outer space,
they still partake of the meanings accrued in the landscapes of the American
West.) The presentation of the city in film has also been the subject of much
discussion. In 1994, the Getty Museum held a month-long symposium on
exactly that topic, and there is a burgeoning literature on the subject by film
scholars, architects, and cultural historians.2 For example, architect James
Sanders’ book, The Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies (2001) addresses
the co-evolution of the building of New York and its portrayal in film.3 But
despite this increasing attention to the landscape in recent scholarship and
critique, there has been little explicit discussion of our topic, the designed
landscape-although questions of representation are fundamental to any
discussion of film, its methods and its meaning. Yet there are films in which
garden imagery is fundamental to the director’s vision and some of these
have become part of the story of both film and garden histories.
