Neighborhood issues discussed upon Paul Auster’s movie Smoke

Abstract

This article discusses the movie Smoke (1995), by Paul Auster and Wayne Wang. Despite being a work of fiction, it was possible to extract elements to analyze urban dynamics and social relations established around a store in Brooklyn. The arguments used to discuss Smoke were found in the literature, other books from Auster, and also in interviews given by the author, in which he provides three arguments that were used for the development of this text. The listed subjects are: the city of New York, to be presented along with the research on its morphology; the importance of neighborhood relationships established around the dealer, and the relationship between user and place; and finally, the construction of the screenplay, subject of huge importance considering the author scale, discussed from the interweaving of the stories, the relationship between author and character, and the relationship with the original story, Auggie Wren´s Christmas story, published in The New York Times.

Keywords:
Architecture and cinema; Neighborhood; Paul Auster