Some architects will tell you that the only way to represent a building fully is in film, but after seeing the short film that writer Esther McCoy made in 1965 as part of her mission to preserve Irving Gill’s legendary 1916 Dodge House in Los Angeles, I’m not so sure. In black and white photographs the house is a powerful emblem of California modernism: blazing white stucco, punched blank windows, and palm trees swaying behind.
But the film, restored in fulsome technicolor, doesn’t serve the status of the building well, and McCoy’s ordinarily energetic voice well either. The narration, written by McCoy and read by a stentorian male announcer, is ponderous. The film isn’t cinematic at all; it’s muddled and choppy, so that one doesn’t get a sense of moving through the house. And the views are scaled eccentrically, each one too broad or too close to give a good sense of the place. It goes to show how difficult it is to film modern architecture well. And it’s poignant testimony to McCoy’s mission. I’m sorry the house isn’t here to speak for itself.