newelty

#4. The Fugitive (1993)

Chicago.

The first time I remember ever paying attention to it as something distinct (unlike, say, St. Louis), was when I saw The Fugitive, and Harrison Ford made a phone call from some skyscraper-heavy downtown…that didn’t look like NYC. It looked just as it does in this photo above–which I took a year ago, on my first visit to the city.

Chicago wasn’t a key element in the showy way that New York is for Sex and the City. It’s just kind of quietly, ruggedly….there. I don’t love Chicago as well as I love London and Amsterdam. But it was a perfect setting for a no-nonsense doctor who had to clear his name in order to survive.

Check out the first 90 seconds of the clip below. The director gives major screen space to the city, between the 360-degree turn while Dr. Kimble is on the phone to the panoramic windows in the Feds’ offices.

I want to spend more time in Chicago. I was only downtown long enough to snap that top photo, but the square solidity of those buildings intrigued me. They made me think of one of my favorite poems, “Skyscraper” by Carl Sandburg.

Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the
earth and hold the building to a turning planet.
Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and
hold together the stone walls and floors.

…

Behind the signs on the doors they work and the walls
tell nothing from room to room.
Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from
corporation officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers,
and tons of letters go bundled from the building to all
ends of the earth.
Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of
the building just the same as the master-men who
rule the building

….

By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars
and has a soul.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Just one note about The Fugitive: When I first mentioned including this flick to Betty, she gave me one of her patented “you’re kidding, right?” looks. At first, I thought of including it because our list is so damn girly (and some Jane Austen is around the corner). But the truth is it’s just an incredible action-packed film. If I come across it on cable and there’s only an hour left, I will watch it anyway because it’s so darn good.