Cinematic Spaces of Istanbul Through the Foreign Lens: Hollywood Studio Era, Spy Films and Touristic Experience

Abstract

As a connecting point between the Orient and the Occident, the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul has inspired foreign filmmakers for decades. Hollywood studio films from the 1930s to the 1950s fabricated the image of Istanbul as an exotic city of espionage. These films were produced in Hollywood studios which later added landscape stock footage during editing. With analyzing five films: Stamboul Quest (1934), Background to Danger (1943), Journey into the Fear (1945), Flame of Stamboul (1951), and 5 Fingers (1952), this study intends to show how foreign filmmakers created the image of Istanbul in Hollywood studio era and continued to use the same images later in films produced on location. Selected films which use Orientalist imagery offer the spectators a virtual touristic experience. Similar to the immersion of the tourists within the cultural authenticity that is staged and performed for them, cinema can offer a “distant immersion” for the spectators (Corbin, 2014). Although the city’s representation transformed to a certain degree depending on the dominant ideological views of the international setting, the iconic images of Istanbul in early spy films from the 1930s continue to appear in contemporary productions of the genre in an attempt to offer a familiar pleasure in a new context.