IndieWire’s 10 Favorite Movies About Los Angeles

“In a Lonely Place” (1950)

Director Nicholas Ray allegedly spent some time sleeping on the set of the West Hollywood apartment complex that traps Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, however much in love they are, in “In A Lonely Place.” But whether or not Ray had any extra hours to examine all the angles of the studio build based on the real Villa Primavera apartments, rarely has a film of any era used space so evocatively. The openness of the courtyard and the large, Venetian blind windows keep Bogart’s bitter writer, Dixon Steele, and Grahame’s too-smart actor, Laurel Grey, in each other’s lives and at a distance at the same time. Gracious Spanish ironwork completes the prison they can’t bear to leave. “In A Lonely Place” is maybe the noir where it’s Bogart who provides the most darkness, but Ray and DP Burnett Guffey know how to focus light to bring out the mania that’s in Steele, and that might just be in every man. That fear is universal. But the amount of emotional realizations that happen in cars in this movie does feel very specific to LA. —SS

“Sunset Boulevard” (1950)

The tagline of “Sunset Boulevard” is “A Hollywood Story” and it is one in every respect. Of course, much of the film’s bite comes from the bruising reality of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett’s script, which has Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim playing characters with histories so similar to their own silent film careers as well as cameos from the likes of Buster Keaton and Cecil B. DeMille. But Wilder’s camera gets a close-up not just on Norma Desmond’s longing for stardom but on the faded, ultimately empty grandeur and romance of the Hollywood mansion she lives in. At one point, William Holden’s kept-screenwriter Joe Gillis snipes at Norma that she’s playing to an empty house; but the very emptiness of the vine-covered railings of her mansion and hills looming over her starlet’s swimming pool make Norma’s lust for a comeback all the more eerie and poignant. The tragedy for everyone in “Sunset Boulevard” is that their Hollywood dreams are empty, no matter whether or not they’ve come true. —SS

“Rebel Without a Cause” (1955)

Six decades before Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling sang about the “City of Stars,” Natalie Wood and James Dean gazed at the stars at the Griffith Observatory, going there for a high school field trip in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Nicholas Ray’s vivid Technicolor melodrama of teen angst then ends at the iconic Hollywood Hills observatory as well, when Sal Mineo’s anguished “Plato” barricades himself in there in a showdown with the police. The site is so associated with the film that a bust of James Dean now sits on the premises. But other L.A. locations abound in “Rebel” too. Their school is simply Santa Monica High School, with a few exteriors from John Marshall Senior High. And when Dean, Wood, and Mineo hide out in an abandoned mansion and playact that they’re a family, the residence in question is the William O. Jenkins House, which was also used as Norma Desmond’s house in “Sunset Boulevard.” You even see the pool, now drained, where William Holden ends up floating face-down dead. Call it the Los Angeles Cinematic Universe. —CB

“Model Shop” (1969)/”Zabriskie Point” (1970)

Jacques Demy’s “Model Shop” (1969) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point” (1970) were both released within nine months of each other. Both were the first American-set movies of major European auteurs, both substantially set around Los Angeles, both centering on young men somewhat at loose ends involved with a beautiful more exotic woman. Neither glamorizes the city (though Antonioni as usual has a sharp eye for distinctive architecture and the often confused colors of Los Angeles). Each makes extensive use of exteriors, mostly deglamorized and different from the world of palm trees, beaches, and landmarks normally shown.

They both distinctively show an outsider’s view, even if the characters are not newcomers. Each has references to Vietnam — George in “Model Shop” is awaiting his draft notice, Mark in “Zabriskie” a college dropout who may have killed a cop in a protest. Their releases bracketed the Manson killings, and both films unwittingly capture a tense mood in the city (“Zabriskie” more so). Originally, Demy wanted unknown Harrison Ford in the lead (he ended up in a small role) opposite French actress Anouk Aimée (who Demy filmed in “Lola,” the name of her character here). Gary Lockwood (“2001: A Space Odyssey) ended up as George. Antonioni cast stunningly striking unknowns Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin. Neither film was a success, with “Zabriskie” a rare Antonioni failure, though its reputation has grown over the years. It is most famous for its later scenes set in the desert and Death Valley. —TB

“The Long Goodbye” (1973)

Classic noir is usually associated with busy New York streets, rainy nights, and towering skyscrapers. But Los Angeles has a rich history of hard-boiled detectives, and none are more famous or more hard-boiled than Philip Marlowe, the down-on-his-luck detective made famous from Raymond Chandler’s pulp fiction. And no film about the icon is more quintessentially Los Angeles than Robert Altman’s scrappy, drugged-out “The Long Goodbye,” which transplants the post-war character to the then-modern ’70s Los Angeles. His crowded apartment buildings are rife with hippies; his quest to uncover the mystery of an old friend’s death takes him to the pristine beachside house of a wealthy Malibu couple. Elliot Gould’s take on the character feels like a Los Angeles local to his core, laid-back but with a cynical wit that shines through his lethargic exterior. The moral rot around Marlowe might be tough to take, but Altman’s affection for his adopted home of LA has rarely been more clear. —WC 

“To Live and Die in L.A.” (1985)

Los Angeles has always been a perfect canvas for the dreams of filmmakers, who often find ways to make the city look even more idyllic than it already is. Case in point, William Friedkin’s crime classic “To Live and Die in L.A.,” which douses the city in enough radiant sunsets and Wang Chung bangers to fill a lifetime’s worth of cocaine-fueled ’80s fantasies. It’s one of the great vibes movies in a decade filled with them, and it props them up with a perfect neo-noir story and some of the most accurate portrayals of L.A. traffic in car chase scenes this side of “Barry.” Counterfeiters have never looked more detestable, and the guys who catch them have never looked cooler. —CZ
 

“Clueless” (1995)

As if any list of the best Los Angeles movies would be complete without “Clueless.” Amy Heckerling’s beloved teen comedy may have its literary roots in Regency-Era England, the setting of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” but it’s been cemented in film history as a sharply satirical (if deeply affectionate) look at ’90s LA teen culture. A very specific subset of that culture, to be exact: to write the script, Heckerling sat in on classes in Beverly Hills High School, where her observations about the pampered valley girl life birthed Alicia Silverstone’s iconic ditzy but sincere heroine Cher. And her misadventures through teenhood, and endearing quest to be a better person, cover a wide swath of iconic Los Angeles landmarks, from the gorgeous Occidental College quad that stands in for the fictional Bronson Alcott High School to the dearly departed Westside Pavilion mall where Cher and her BFFS Dionne (Stacey Dash) and Tai (Brittany Murphy) hang out after classes. “Clueless” might trade on a few LA stereotypes — the fashion! The skateboarding! The Sun Valley parties! — but it knows the city has a heart of gold beneath the glitz. —WC

“Swingers” (1996)

It’s a hack move to call a city a “character” in a film or TV show, but how could you not say that about L.A. in “Swingers” (1996)? “Swingers” filmed at the Dresden, the Los Feliz Golf Club, The Derby, and other Los Angeles landmarks. And then there was that ill-advised road trip to and from Las Vegas that everyone in L.A. either has experienced or has to experience. “Swingers” is a love letter to a very specific city in a very specific time — when Los Angeles was money and it didn’t even know it. —TM
 

“The Big Lebowski” (1998)

To borrow from one of the greatest opening monologues ever written, “They call Los Angeles the City of Angels,” but you won’t find it to be that exactly in the quintessential SoCal cult classic, “The Big Lebowski.” Directed by Joel Coen and co-written with his brother Ethan (both men are from Minnesota, but hey, who’s counting?), this all-timer comedy about overcoming apathy on the west coast defined Jeff Bridges — and the word “nihilism” — for generations of film lovers. It also gifted audiences indelible performances from frequent Coen collaborators John Goodman, Steven Buscemi, and John Turturro alongside roles that let Philip Seymour Hoffman unleash his inner pencil pusher and tasked Julianne More with painting a massive vagina. “The Big Lebowski” is about learning to care for people when you can’t think of anything else in the world worth caring about, a perfect lesson from any tumbling tumbleweed worth their weight in Folgers-branded ashes… or at least Bunny’s pinky toe. —AF

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019)

Maybe more than any of the most recognizable cities, the perception of Los Angeles differs so far from the reality of it. Yes, you can ostensibly sip martinis next to Al Pacino at Musso & Franks, but you just as easily could end up at a random ranch house on the desert outskirts, kicking back with an ultimately nefarious cult. Quentin Tarantino’s epic does an impeccable job of portraying LA as both a hardworking industry town, and a landscape where one can get swept away, finding the magic in walking into a random matinee show at the Regency Bruin Theatre. While the perception is that its residents strive for beauty and success, the true appeal of living in the city is its eccentricity, and the insistence that just about every inch of it holds some sort of historic value worth celebrating. —MJ