The Lost City of Melbourne

“From the 1950s to the 1970s, without war or revolution, we destroyed so many of our city centres that, if we tried to explain what happened to an Italian, a German or a French person – people whose countries had suffered through the war – they would be unable to comprehend how we could have committed such cultural suicide of our own free will.” This is how writer Torbjörn Elensky sums up the post-war modernisation of Swedish cities in Frederik Kullberg’s book War on Beauty: the Uglification of Sweden.

The opening film of the 14th edition of MIASTOmovie shows that this reflection, almost without alteration, can also be applied to Australia, which in the middle of the last century joined the search for a new kind of urban beauty.

In The Lost City of Melbourne, Gus Berger draws on an archive of photographs, newsreels and home movies to recreate the capital of the state of Victoria as it appeared in the mid-20th century – a metropolis filled with ornate hotels, lavish theatres, palatial cafés and cinemas, monumental shopping arcades and picturesque cast-iron verandas. The archival material documents the final days of this cityscape: shortly afterwards, its historic buildings were deemed outdated, and mass demolition became a tool of modernisation.

Australia’s “cultural cringe” is regarded as one of the main forces behind Melbourne’s radical redevelopment in the 1950s. Television allowed Australians to glimpse cities around the world, particularly those of North America. Compared with the spacious, modernist metropolises of the United States, Melbourne – weighed down by heavy, dusty buildings from a bygone Victorian era – began to appear as a city failing to keep up with the times. At the same time, it was preparing to host the 1956 Olympic Games: it would have been difficult to find a better pretext for moving with the times.

Decisions made in the name of progress led to the demolition of entire swathes of the city, the loss of distinctive landmarks and, along with them, whole chapters of urban memory. The film confronts two visions of beauty: the one promised by modernisation and the one lost forever. It also raises questions about urban identity and the aesthetics of our shared environment. “Our built heritage cannot be taken for granted. Once it is gone, we cannot get it back,” warns the film’s director. How can we reconcile the protection of the existing urban fabric with the inevitable need for change and the continual search for a new definition of beauty – one that reflects the moment in which it emerges?