Nostalgic Architecture in postmodern Movies, using the example of

"The Lord of the Rings", against the background of 19th Centuries`

Historism

Charly Morr (Saarland University, Saarbrücken)

Revival, Retro-Look and „Back-to-the-Roots“. Nostalgia is everywhere. If you look at

fashion, music, the movies or architecture you see „old stuff“. Same in postmodern

architecture. Charles Jencks, author of „The Language of postmodern Architecture“,

speaks of „double-coding“ as an attribute of postmodern buildings. One side means

modern construction methods, the other side recourses to historic design elements,

for example the Sony Building by Johnson. It`s time to pose a question: why do

people go back to the past?

Perhaps we will get an answer if we look back to the historism of the 19th century. In

this time the bavarian palace Neuschwanstein was build, which is a prototpye for a

romantic castle and a highly nostalgic object. For that reason Neuschwanstein was as

a model for Walt Disneys Fairy Tale Castle in Disneyland Anaheim, which is similar to the castle in the animated

movie „The Sleeping Beauty“.

The main topic of my work is nostalgic architecture in postmodern movies. Big-budget movies are the perfect

playground for nostalgic fantasies. I will show you that with the aid of „special-effects“ every vision can be realised.