Yabancı Gözüyle İstanbul’un Sinemasal Mekânları: Hollywood Stüdyo Dönemi, Casus Filmleri ve Turistik Deneyim

Year 2022, Volume: 25 (2) Issue: 50, 475 - 496, 26.09.2022

Sezen Kayhan , Ayşegül Kesirli Unur

https://doi.org/10.18691/kulturveiletisim.1102258

Abstract

Şark ve garp arasında bir bağlantı noktası olarak görülen İstanbul, yıllardır yabancı sinemacılara ilham vermektedir. 1930'lardan 1950'lere kadar çekilen Hollywood stüdyo filmleri, İstanbul'u egzotik bir casus şehri olarak resmetmiştir. Bu filmlerin neredeyse tamamı Hollywood’daki stüdyolarda çekilmiş, daha sonra gerçeklik etkisini artırmak için kurguda manzara görüntüleri eklenmiştir. Bu çalışma, İstanbul Görevi (1934), Tehlikenin Ardı (1943), Korku Ülkesine Yolculuk (1945), İstanbul Alevi (1951) ve Ankara Casusu (1952) isimli beş filmi analiz ederek, yabancı film yapımcılarının o dönemde bu filmlerle nasıl bir İstanbul imajı ürettikleri ve daha sonra bu imajın nasıl kalıcı hale geldiğini keşfetmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Oryantalist imgelerin kullanıldığı bu seçilmiş filmler, izleyicilere sanal bir turistik deneyim sunmaktadır. Turistlerin kendileri için sahnelenen kültürel otantikliğe kapılmalarına benzer şekilde, sinema da izleyicilere “uzaktan mekâna çekilme” tecrübesi sunmaktadır (Corbin 2014). Bu filmlerde yer alan İstanbul imajı yıllar içinde, uluslararası egemen ideolojik görüşlere bağlı olarak belirli ölçüde değişse de, 1930’ların erken dönem casus filmlerindeki İstanbul'un ikonik görüntüleri, günümüzde Batılı izleyiciye tanıdık bir turistik zevk sunmak için kullanılmaya devam edilmektedir.

Keywords

Sinemasal şehir, casus filmi, İstanbul, Hollywood stüdyo dönemi, Oryantalizm.

Cinematic Spaces of Istanbul Through the Foreign Lens: Hollywood Studio Era, Spy Films and Touristic Experience

Abstract

As a connecting point between the Orient and the Occident, the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul has inspired foreign filmmakers for decades. Hollywood studio films from the 1930s to the 1950s fabricated the image of Istanbul as an exotic city of espionage. These films were produced in Hollywood studios which later added landscape stock footage during editing. With analyzing five films: Stamboul Quest (1934), Background to Danger (1943), Journey into the Fear (1945), Flame of Stamboul (1951), and 5 Fingers (1952), this study intends to show how foreign filmmakers created the image of Istanbul in Hollywood studio era and continued to use the same images later in films produced on location. Selected films which use Orientalist imagery offer the spectators a virtual touristic experience. Similar to the immersion of the tourists within the cultural authenticity that is staged and performed for them, cinema can offer a “distant immersion” for the spectators (Corbin, 2014). Although the city’s representation transformed to a certain degree depending on the dominant ideological views of the international setting, the iconic images of Istanbul in early spy films from the 1930s continue to appear in contemporary productions of the genre in an attempt to offer a familiar pleasure in a new context.

Keywords

Cinematic city, spy film, Istanbul, Hollywood studio era, Orientalism.

References

• Akser, Murat (2014). “From Istanbul with Love: The New Orientalism of Hollywood.” In Whose City Is That? Culture, Design, Spectacle and Capital in Istanbul. Dilek Özhan Koçak and Orhan Kemal Koçak (Ed.) in. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 35-46.
• Barber, Stephen (2002). Projected Cities: Cinema and Urban Space. London: Reaktion Books.
• Background to Danger. (1943). Directed by Raoul Walsh. Warner Bros.
• Bazin, Andre (2005). What is Cinema? Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Behlil, Melis, Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado and Jaap Verheul (2020). “The Dead Are Alive: The Exotic Non-Place of the Bondian Runaway Production.” The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007. Verheul, J. (Ed.) in. Amsterdam University Press. 81-102.
• Booth, Alan R. (1990). “The Development of the Espionage Film.” Intelligence and National Security, 5(4). 136-160.
• Bruno, Guiliana (1997). Site-seeing: Architecture and the moving image. Wide Angle 19 (4), pp. 8-24.
• Bruno, Guiliana (2007). Film and the geography of modernity. A. Marcus & D. Neumann (Eds.) in. Visualising the city (pp. 13-30). Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge.
• Buscombe, Edward (1995). “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema.” Film Genre Reader II. Barry Keith Grant (Ed.) in. University of Texas Press.
• Conley, Tom (2007). Cartographic Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Corbin, Amy. (2014). “Travelling through Cinema Space: The Film Spectator as Tourist” Continuum, 28(3). 314–329.
• Dodds, Klaus (2003). “Licensed to Stereotype: Geopolitics, James Bond and the Spectre of Balkanism” Geopolitics, 8(2). 125-156.
• 5 Fingers (1952). Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. 20th Century Foz.
• Flame of Stamboul (1951). Directed by Ray Nazarro. Columbia Pictures.
• From Russia with Love (1963). Directed by Terence Young. Eon Productions.
• Gürata, Ahmet (2012). “City of Intrigues: Istanbul as an Exotic Attraction.” World Film Locations: Istanbul. Özlem Köksal (ed.) in. London: Intellect. 24-25.
• Journey into the Fear (1945). Directed by Norman Foster. Mercury Productions.
• Keyder, Çağlar (1999). “The Setting.” Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local. Çağlar Keyder, (Ed.) in. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 3-29.
• Khatib, Lina (2006). Filming the Modern Middle East: Politics in the Cinemas of Hollywood and the Arab World. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.
• López, Ana M. (2002). “Are all Latins from Manhattan? Hollywood, ethnography, and cultural colonialism”. A. Williams (Ed.) in. Film and Nationalism (pp. 195-205). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Mennel, Barbara (2008). Cities and Cinema. London and New York: Routledge.
• Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (2001). “Cities: Real and Imagined.” Cinema and the City. Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context. Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice (Ed.) in. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Pamir, Alican (2015). “Representations of Istanbul in Two Hollywood Spy Films About World War I and World War II.” MPhil Thesis. University of Southampton.
• Raw, Laurence (2012). “Hollywood’s Turkish Films 1930–1960: A Nation Looks at Itself.” The Transnational Turn in American Studies: Turkey and the United States. Tanfer Emin Tunç and Bahar Gürsel (Ed.) in. Peter Lang Publishing: 207-224.
• Rose, Gillian (2016). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. London: Sage.
• Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Fitzmaurice, Tony (2001). “Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context”. Cinema and the city: Film and urban societies in a global context. Shiel, Mark and Tony Fitzmaurice (Eds.) in. Oxford: Blackwell
• Seed, David (2003). “Spy Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. Martin Priestman (Ed.) in. Cambridge University Press: 115-134.
• Schatz, Thomas (1981). Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and The Studio System. New York: Random House.
• Schatz, Thomas (1995). “The Structural Influence: New Directions in Film Genre Study.” Film Genre Reader II. Barry Keith Grant (Ed.) in. University of Texas Press.
• Skyfall (2012). Directed by Sam Mendes. Eon Productions, MGM, Columbia Pictures.
• Stamboul Quest (1934). Directed by Sam Wood. MGM.
• Taken 2 (2012). Directed by Olivier Megaton. EuropaCorp, M6 Films, Grive Productions
• The International (2009). Directed by Tom Tykwer. Columbia Pictures, Atlas Entertainment.
• The World is Not Enough (1999). Directed by Michael Apted. Eon Productions, MGM.
• Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell. (2019). Film Art: An Introduction. McGraw-Hill Education.
• Two Faces of January (2014). Directed by Hossein Amini. StudioCanal, Working Title Films.
• Urry, John (1995). Consuming Places. New York: Routledge.