Locating the City-in-Film

Pitch the words ‘Liverpool’ and ‘film’ to the casual cineaste and you will more than likely solicit a response ranging from general blankness to a list that includes perhaps half a dozen or so features shot in, or in some way associated with the city. With the notable exception of the documentary Of Time and the City (2008), Terence Davies’ eulogy to the city in which he grew up (and, as with many in the post-war period, was destined to leave), for the most part the extent to which the city has left its cinematic imprint on the wider cultural imaginary can be gauged by reference to a handful of fictional dramas in which Liverpool is perceived to be in some way ‘playing itself’. Leaving aside for a moment what might actually constitute the ‘city-film’ (a neologism in which, as we will see, the constituent parts themselves demand closer scrutiny and theoretical unpacking), films such as Nowhere Boy (2009), The 51st State (2001), Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), Letter to Brezhnev (1985), Gumshoe (1970), Ferry Cross the Mersey (1965), Violent Playground (1958), The Clouded Yellow (1950) or Waterfront (1950) – to cite some of the more prominent Liverpool features – represent the typical starting points by which a mapping of the city's filmic heritage might begin to unfold; ‘typical’, that is, inasmuch as the navigations of the would-be cinematic geographer are oriented towards some of the well-worn pathways of least resistance that have inhibited deeper, critical understandings of film, place and space in an urban context.

Yet if a quick trawl through, for example, the location search on Internet Movie Database (IMDB) seems a rather inadequate method by which to mine the cinematic accretions of place and urban memory, it is illustrative of a certain orthodoxy that is governing the role of film (or rather film locations) in the construction and consumption of ideas of heritage in both cities and rural destinations (‘destinations’ here denoting the fact that the overarching rationale for much of the commercial developments in this area is pegged to the growing dependence on film and cultural tourism as a mechanism of regeneration and economic growth).