The City on Film

Paris:

"There comes a time in almost all film-makers' lives when they want to take on Paris. Strangely, 'getting Paris right' is not necessarily a question of filming in the French capital, but rather of being true to the 'idea' of Paris."

Moscow:

"Film critics complain that the Hollywood depiction of Moscow rarely goes beyond the cliches of mafia, prostitutes and KGB killers. 'It's unrealistic and wrong,' Anna Franklin, a Russian-based film critic, says. 'The way Russian and foreign films portray Moscow is very different. It's often Hollywood fantasy using the streets of Moscow as a background.'"

Rome:

"[R]ealistic portrayals of contemporary Rome are few and far between. Roma was a deliberate caricature - a lyrical (though essentially faithful) representation of the spirit of the place. Dear Diary was realistic to the point of being a travelogue in places, but the capital it portrays is an abnormal one - Rome in August, without the people, the noise and the traffic."

Los Angeles:

"Since Los Angeles is the world capital of the movie business and a city you are duty-bound to despise, it's not surprising that its most indelibly famous civic movie chronicles, in the most self-hating manner, its own municipal creation-myth: Roman Polanski and Robert Towne's Chinatown."