New Line Productions, Inc.
Two of my niche film studies interests come together this week with the release of 10 Cloverfield Lane: movie locations and movie titles. The former just goes along with my general love of geography, plus the study of the importance of place and space in cinema, both physically and virtually. The latter is something I just take too seriously, the naming of creative works and how they ought to have real significance to what they’re attached to. I guess it’s related to my experience in both academic and blog writing and needing to establish the work with a clever but pointed title or headline.
10 Cloverfield Lane, of course, is titled after its location, a farm house with that specific street address. Well, it’s the setting, not the place it was shot. There’s a difference. And you need to be careful when naming a movie after a street address. Like having a telephone number not starting with a 555 prefix, it could invite unwanted breaches in privacy for whomever it belongs to in real life. As far as I’ve been able to tell through Google Maps searches, though, there is no actual 10 Cloverfield Lane anywhere in the world. There are plenty of Cloverfield Lanes, but somehow no residences or businesses are at number 10.
And as far as I know before seeing the movie, the address title of 10 Cloverfield Lane has no real meaning other than to tell us it’s set at the fictional place. Also the main part of the title ties it ever so vaguely (and slightly, if at all, narratively?) to 2008’s Cloverfield, the name of which had no substantial meaning to begin with. But the title got me thinking about otherss that are so specific in their street location. Most have greater significance than just the stamp of a random number, name, road type. I’ve tried to classify them all from most meaningful to least below.
The Metaphorical Moniker: A Nightmare on Elm Street
One of my favorite street-named movie titles, albeit without specific number location, is A Nightmare on Elm Street, and admittedly that initially had to do with the fact that I lived on an Elm Street as a kid. But “Elm Street” is a lot more than just a common, easily identifiable yet general place — the 15th most common street name in the US, in fact. It wouldn’t work as well as A Nightmare on Main Street, however, because that’s just too generic. “Elm Street” sounds more suburban, and also there’s a connotation of shadiness. Something going on in the shadows of suburbia.
But why Elm and not the more popular Oak, Pine, Maple or Cedar? That may have to do with the specific Elm Street in Pottsdam, New York. A Nightmare on Elm Street writer/director Wes Craven taught at Clarkson University in Pottsdam and the story goes that his students would film horror spoofs at a particular fraternity house on Elm. But Craven always denied such origins. I’m therefore inclined to accept the metaphorical reasoning for the title, and the reason for Elm specifically would seem to me to be about the other trees having additional, potentially confusing meanings. Elm is more exact, simple.
The Broadly Specific: Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Going more specific than most in its use of an address, Chantal Ackerman’s feminist classic is also quite symbolic in a broader sense. Like the film, it’s long and very precise. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles indicates a certain location, one that actually exists in Brussels. But it’s also an address that’s rather ordinary, much like the activity of its ordinary character for most of the movie’s 200-minute running time. Vincent Canby stated it perfectly at the start of his 1983 review: “Like its blunt title, [Jeanne Dielman] deals in unadorned facts. ”
The Broadly Representational: Wall Street
A lot of non-numbered address location titles are set in either Los Angeles or New York City and they offer an immediate idea of fairly specific setting with an even more specific feeling. We know these streets almost as well as we know the cities themselves. LA’s got Sunset Blvd. and Mulholland Dr., while NYC’s got 42nd Street and anything with Broadway in the name, Pickup on South Street, Across 110th Street, the quite precise Miracle on 34th Street and of course Wall Street. The last refers to a particular spot in Manhattan but also an abstract idea related to what happens there, namely of money and capitalism.
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