With its still-dashing skyline
and its rugged facades, its
mean streets and its swanky
avenues New York is probably
the most filmed city on earth,
or at least the one most
instantly recognizable from
the movies. It would be
fruitless to enumerate them
all; we've just given a small
sampling below of films that
best capture the city's
atmosphere, its pulse and its
style and, if nothing else,
give you a pretty good idea of
what you're going to get
before you get there.
Thirteen great New York
movies
Annie Hall (Woody
Allen, 1977). Oscar-winning
autobiographical comic
romance, which flits from
reminiscences of Alvy Singer's
childhood living beneath the
Coney Island rollercoaster, to
life and love in uptown
Manhattan, is a valentine both
to then-lover and co-star
Diane Keaton if not to the
city. Simultaneously clever,
bourgeois and very winning.
All of Allen's movies are New
York-centric; also don't miss Manhattan
(1979), which with its
Gershwin soundtrack and
stunning black-and-white
photography is probably the
greatest eulogy to the city
ever made.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
(Blake Edwards, 1961). This
most charming and cherished of
New York movie romances stars
Audrey Hepburn as party girl
Holly Golightly flitting
through the glittering
playground of the Upper East
Side. Hepburn and George
Peppard run up and down each
other's fire-escapes and skip
down Fifth Avenue taking in
the New York Public Library
and that jewelry store.
Do the Right Thing
(Spike Lee, 1989). Set over 24
hours on the hottest day of
the year in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuyvesant
section - a day on which the
melting pot is reaching
boiling point - Spike Lee's
colorful, stylish film moves
from comedy to tragedy to
compose an epic tale of New
York.
The French Connection
(William Friedkin, 1971).
Plenty of heady Brooklyn
atmosphere in this sensational
Oscar-winning cop thriller
starring Gene Hackman, whose
classic car-and-subway chase
takes place under the
Bensonhurst Elevated Railroad.
The Godfather Part II
(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974).
Flashing back to the early
life of Vito Corleone,
Coppola's great sequel
re-created the Italian
immigrant experience at the
turn of the century,
portraying Corleone
quarantined at Ellis Island
and growing up tough on the
meticulously re-created
streets of Little Italy.
Midnight Cowboy
(John Schlesinger, 1969) The
odd love story between Jon
Voight's bumpkin hustler and
Dustin Hoffman's touching
urban creep Ratso Rizzo plays
out against both the seediest
and swankiest of New York
locations.
On the Town (Gene
Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1949).
Three sailors get 24-hours'
shore leave in NYC and fight
over whether to do the sights
or chase the girls. This
exhilarating, landmark musical
with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra,
and Ann Miller flashing her
gams in the American Museum of
Natural History was the first
to take the musical out of the
studios and onto the streets.
On the Waterfront (Elia
Kazan, 1954). Few images of
New York are as indelible as
Marlon Brando's rooftop pigeon
coop at dawn and those misty
views of New York Harbor
(actually shot just over the
river in Hoboken), in this
unforgettable story of
long-suffering longshoremen
and union racketeering.
Rosemary's Baby
(Roman Polanski, 1968). Mia
Farrow and John Cassavettes
move into their dream New York
apartment in the Dakota
Building (72nd and Central
Park West) and think their
problems stop with nosy
neighbors and thin walls until
Farrow gets pregnant and hell,
literally, breaks loose.
Arguably the most terrifying
film ever set in the city.
The Sweet Smell of
Success (Alexander
Mackendrick, 1957). Broadway
as a nest of vipers. Gossip
columnist Burt Lancaster and
sleazy press agent Tony Curtis
eat each other's tails in this
jazzy, cynical study of
showbiz corruption. Shot on
location, and mostly at night,
in steely black and white,
Times Square and the Great
White Way never looked so
alluring.
Taxi Driver (Martin
Scorsese, 1976). A long
night's journey into day by
the great chronicler of the
dark side of the city - and
New York's greatest filmmaker.
Scorsese's New York is
hallucinatorily seductive and
thoroughly repellent in this
superbly unsettling study of
obsessive outsider Travis
Bickle (Robert De Niro).
West Side Story
(Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins,
1961). Sex, singing and
Shakespeare in a
hyper-cinematic Oscar-winning
musical (via Broadway) about
rival street gangs. Lincoln
Center now stands where the
Sharks and the Jets once
rumbled and interracial
romance ended in tragedy.
