Who doesn't love movies about New York? In a city that's been consistently evolving, it's always a pleasure to not just see a snapshot of a period of time in the Great Apple, but get lost into a world of that time period with a filmmaker and/or a film's characters. I was wandering around the city on my birthday recently thinking about how there are so many definitive 'lists' about what is considered the 'best' movies about New York. Scrolling through, all of the movies are so.....academic: Woody Allen's Manhattan. William Friedkin's The French Connection. Billy Wilder's The Apartment.
I realized a list of one's favorite NYC films is going to be as personal as one's experience with the city. In a cultural metropolis of that size, no two people are going to have the same experience, right? The same goes for what glimpses of NYC past people choose to celebrate. So, ranked with the best for last, here are my top five films about New York that I'd love to share with you today.
5) Go Go Go, Marie Menken
Experimental filmmaker Marie Menken, who was the basis for the character Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, made this tiny film on her 8mm camera between 1962-1964. It's rumored that because of her large frame, Menken could hold the camera steady in the palm of her hand as she swept through the city. What's so wonderful about this silent 11 minutes is that it captures quite a few things about New York other films can't. First off, it's silence makes one focus simply on the rich images. The images rush through the camera because of the low frame rate in which it was shot. This gives the viewer that Go Go Go feeling of the city, as Menken takes her audience on a journey through city streets, a theater, and Coney Island to name a few.
Also, the time period makes this film stand out because it is right on the cusp of when a gritty recession started to permeate the air of the city. Some shots illustrate this as the camera flies through more industrial neighborhoods, while other sections of the film show a more wealthy and post-war America version of the city with images similar to a 1950s Hollywood portrayal. My absolute favorite part of this film is the section shot in Coney Island, which parallels something out of the opening of Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life.
4) Fame, Alan Parker
An ensemble piece about kids at the New York High School of the Performing Arts from 1976-1980, the gritty recessed 70s version of the city of New York plays an important character in this piece. An NYC long gone, we see everything from characters eating cheap hot dogs in a run down Times Square with the old Coke sign, street fights as they exit the subway, the original Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Roxy Theater, and run down elevators leading into luxury apartments. Its portrayal reminds us of what type of city NYC was for a young person during this period, if not through the images than through the dialogue-- several characters in the film talk about going to the performing arts school because of their fear of violence in New York public schools at the time.
3) On the Town, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
MGM recycled many storylines in their musical department, and sexually charged servicemen on leave for one day in a big city like New York was one of them. They all stemmed from the 1945 Broadway musical version of On the Town with music by Leonard Bernstein. Ironically, a similar film Anchors Aweigh which takes place in Hollywood was released in 1945, 4 years before this film version of On the Town was released. This film gloriously captures 1940s New York in 3-Strip Technicolor, and while only four of the songs and a sliver of the original script of the Broadway show remain, the film's use of color and cinematography do a great job of making a post-war New York bounce to life and for 97 minutes the audience gets to join the sailors in the excitement of what visiting New York at that time would have been like. True, a lot of the film is shot on a Hollywood soundstage, but a great deal of footage exists in subways and outdoor locations as well. The opening number "New York, New York" is a great example of this.
2) Oliver & Company, George Scribner
How did an animated film about New York make this list?! Truthfully, all of the films on this list are artistic representations of the city, and this example is no more abstract of an example than the experimental film Go, Go, Go that I listed earlier. A 1988 take on Oliver Twist, featuring cats and dogs as the main characters, this movie always makes my heart smile. The animation and color choices bring 1980s New York to life and while it may be an animated movie, whenever I'm walking around midtown or the upper east side of the city, the images of this film always come to mind for me. Whether it's seeing the animated dogs and cats running through a construction site, hanging out in an alley, sitting in the window of a 5th Avenue apartment, or stealing hot dogs from a cart vendor, we as the audience are surrounded by the city as much as any of the other films on this list. I will always remember being in a theater at 4 years old and hearing Billy Joel sing "Why Should I Worry?" and strolling through the city. Watching it again recently, I found myself noticing how even though this was only 8 years after Fame, the New York shown here from 1988 is so different than the New York of 1980-- more wealth, less grit. And the hustle and bustle of the city can still be seen through the minimalist animation used throughout the movie.
1) One Fine Day, Michael Hoffman
My absolute favorite New York movie. It is funny, adorable, flawed, and too cute to care about these flaws. Two successful single parents of young children are forced to cooperate and coparent for the day when the kids miss their field trip and off we go into a day long adventure in Rudy Giuliani's 1996 New York. The zany antics take them all over the city: Central Park, Rockefeller Center, and the Lower East Side just to name a few. A suspension of disbelief needs to be adopted for anyone who knows New York geography, but once this happens, the viewer can sit back and enjoy this homage to a modern New York and fall in love with the characters as they fall in love with each other. Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney were at the top of their stardom when this film came out, and while the film was given lukewarm reviews by critics at the time and wasn't the box office hit that 20th Century Fox anticipated, the film is a cult classic today.