The New Yorker:

Ten lesser-known films from the past century have captured the city just as indelibly as modern classics by the likes of Martin Scorsese or Spike Lee.

By Richard Brody

This magazine’s ongoing centenary celebration has included a cinematic component: a series at Film Forum, “Tales from The New Yorker,” which featured movies connected to The New Yorker’shistory, whether because the source material was published here or because contributors to the magazine were involved with the movies in question. But the series left one crucial aspect of The New Yorker’sidentity unheralded—its place in the city—and, because the current centenary issue is focussed on New York, this list of some favorite New York-centric films is a timely garland.

Ten is an apt number for a centenary celebration, and I’ve chosen one movie for each decade since the magazine’s founding—from 1925 to 1934, and so on. But I could have doubled or tripled the list with little effort, so wide is the variety of films about the life of the city; what’s more, some of my favorite New York movies (such as “An Unmarried Woman”) are unavailable to stream. I’ve deliberately avoided the modern classics that are instantly associated with the city, whether by Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, James Gray, or Woody Allen, and have skipped such familiar titles, however exhilarating, as “Saturday Night Fever” and “The Apartment.” Instead, I’ve picked dramas shot on location in fervent detail; a comedy set in a gin-and-whipped-cream New York that existed only in movies; one documentary that delves deep into private lives and public activism in a single neighborhood; and another that meshes cityscapes with the filmmaker’s family story. Many of my favorite New York movies don’t even depict the city—not literally, at least—but, rather, reproduce some version of it in the studio. They capture New York states of mind, of which there are far more than there are residents. New York is a realm of fantasy and myth, obsession and resentment, fear and bewilderment for many who’ve never set foot in it; and many who live here also purvey and perpetuate some version of the imaginary city.

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