Windshield : A Vanished Memory
Directed by Elissa Brown
2016 / 46 min / USA / NY Premiere
Windshield: A Vanished Vision lands us in the 1930’s to reveal an intimate portrait of a patrician
couple, a leading modern architect, and the story of the ill-fated house they
create. John Nicholas Brown's fascination with modernism, innovation and the
rapidly-evolving American building scene spurs him to commission what he hopes
will be a “distinguished monument in the history of architecture.” Brown and
his wife Anne, herself a daring and eccentric figure, select the young and
ambitious Richard Neutra to build them a house that they name “Windshield.”
Through an enormously detailed correspondence, patron and architect discuss
every detail of the house’s design and together pursue cutting-edge technology,
much of which had only previously been used in commercial architecture. Then, just
weeks after the Browns move in, tragedy strikes. Windshield: A Vanished
Vision explores the pivotal impact of the house on Neutra’s career and
takes us on a journey with a couple caught between the values of their
upbringings and their evolving social ideals. Visually supported by John
Nicholas Browns’ evocative home movies, the film features J. Carter Brown’s
inspiring lecture about the summer house of his youth and voices of
architectural historians such as Thomas S. Hines and Dietrich Neumann.
