Visual Acoustics is about Julius Shulman, a Southern California architectural photographer who died last year at the age of 98, and also about a bad dream he outlived—postmodern architecture. The 1970s gave us great cinema (from The Conversation to Taxi Driver) but very bad economics (neoliberalism) and architecture (Venturi-ism). Shulman photographed the best of Southern California modernism, a branch initiated by his first and very famous clients, Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler. What Shulman captured was the essence of the utopian movement, its effort to reduce living/dwelling to the elements—to efficiency, to light, lines, and space (the "receptacle of becoming"). The documentary is excellent for those who want a quick introduction to the man, the houses he photographed, and the movement he promoted in national magazines.

At the heart of the documentary is Shulman's most famous photograph, a 1960 view of Pierre Koenig's Case Study House No. 22. You have seen the unforgettable image a million times: two slender young women sit in elegant chairs, they are chatting about something fashionable—one has her legs crossed; the other has her hands on her legs—and behind them are the stars of city lights. This was not just the core image of American modernism, but also the space age itself. What the whole world saw in that picture was life on the rings of Saturn, a life that rockets had launched these modern consumers to.

In the documentary, Shulman (age 93) returns to Pierre Koenig's House No. 22 with cinematographer Dante Spinotti—he photographed L.A. Confidential and two of Michael Mann's three most visually impressive films (Heat and The Insider). The cinematographer glides through the modern home effortlessly. His camera swerves smoothly in the living room—he films the lines, the shining glass, the glittering city, and the old photographer's reflection, which is somewhere between space and time. All of this is so wonderful.

Northwest Film Forum, Jan 29—Feb 4 at 7, 9 pm.