How a 1950s camera format captured the trauma of post-war architecture
In short: When Brady Corbet directed The Brutalist, he bypassed modern digital convenience for a lost relic of the 1950s. Using the VistaVision format, the film captures the sweeping, heavy textures of mid-century modernism and the harrowing psychological landscape of a Holocaust survivor rebuilding his life in America.
The 2024 epic period drama The Brutalist follows László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Buchenwald survivor who emigrates to the United States. The narrative spans decades, beginning with his arrival in New York and moving through his struggles in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. The film explores the parallel between the immigrant experience and the artistic process, using the brutalist architectural style as a visual allegory for processing post-war trauma.
To achieve historical authenticity, director Brady Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley utilized the VistaVision format. Originally developed in the 1950s, this was the first time the format had been used for a feature film since 1961's One-Eyed Jacks. This choice allowed the crew to capture architecture through a wider field of view without the distortion of wide-angle lenses, effectively rendering the massive, imposing structures of the film's central project, the Van Buren Institute.
The film's production design, led by Judy Becker, drew inspiration from both modernist masters like Marcel Breuer and the grim architecture of concentration camps. This duality is central to the film's climax: an epilogue set at the 1980 Venice Biennale of Architecture. There, László's niece, Zsófia, reveals that the completed Van Buren Institute was intentionally designed to mirror the layouts of Buchenwald and Dachau, serving as a permanent, structural monument to survival and memory.
While the film has achieved significant commercial success, grossing $50.4 million against a $9.6 million budget, it also serves as a technical feat. The production utilized 35 mm film stock, shot horizontally, and featured a score by Daniel Blumberg that was developed over seven years. The film's complex history includes delays caused by the war in Ukraine, COVID-19 restrictions, and even the pregnancy of lead actress Felicity Jones.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Brutalist
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