October 12, 2005
Best Decade For NYC Movies: 1970s
After all the comments on yesterday's post about books set in NYC, we got to thinking, has anyone bothered to come up with a list of all the movies set in the city? The answer, of course, is yes-- at Wikipedia, of course. What an amazing site-- it's like having a genie who's only job is to distract us with useless NYC trivia! They've probably missed a couple of movies here and there, but the list looks fairly comprehensive. Absolute, undisputable fact: the 1970s was far and away the most interesting time for NYC movies-- check these out:
* Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) * The Out-of-Towners (1970) * The French Connection (1971) * Klute (1971) * The Panic in Needle Park (1971) * Plaza Suite (1971) * Shaft (1971) * The Godfather (1972) * The Hot Rock (1972) * Godspell (1973) * From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1973) * Live and Let Die (1973) * Mean Streets (1973) * Serpico (1973) * The Seven-Ups (1973) * Soylent Green (1973) * The Godfather: Part II (1974) * Death Wish (1974) * Harry and Tonto (1974) * The Lords of Flatbush (1974) * The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) * Three Days of the Condor (1975) * Dog Day Afternoon (1975) * The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) * Deadly Hero (1976) * King Kong (1976) * Network (1976) * Next Stop Greenwich Village (1976) * Taxi Driver (1976) * Annie Hall (1977) * The Goodbye Girl (1977) * New York, New York (1977) * Saturday Night Fever (1977) * All That Jazz (1979) * Hair (1979) * Manhattan (1979) * The Warriors (1979)
We're not entirely sure why people even bother making movies anymore-- because there is no way they are going to top Manhattan, The Warriors, or Taxi Driver. Hell, even bad movies in the 1970s rocked-- they had Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and we get The Dukes of Hazzard? We are really living in the wrong decade, man.
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The Taking of Pelham 123: Best. Movie. Ever.
Yeah, those movies from the 70s were the real deal. Now, almost every film shot here is about a white girl falling in love in "white" Manhattan.
Someone needs to go add some Cassavettes movies to that list, including the best movie about New York, Gloria.
i was surprised to see "the landlord" not mentioned in the 70s. it's not the best, but it's still ashby, and back when park slope was a slum, too.
It's great to see the "gritty" neighborhoods in "Taxi Driver" and "The French Connection" and realize those are the same neighborhoods I go for drinks and brunch.
Yes, I love how ominous Soho is in Hannah and Her Sisters.
Looking at this list you start to realize how twee, precious, and ultimately irrelevant contemporary movies like 'The Squid and The Whale' and 'Little Manhattan' are.
Anyone saying they are coming to NYC to get the so-called "New York Experience" should really watch this stuff to realize what made this city important and unique. Magnolia muffins and Jimmy Choos don't count, folks.
Indie movies today show the real Manhattan... like Pi or Girlfight.
My favorite NYC 70s movie is Serpico - Al Pacino wears some tough clothes!
So if the 70's had Taxi Driver and Annie Hall, and the 80's had Wall Street and Bright Lights, Big City to define the times, then what has defined our current cultural moment, Sex and the City and Sopranos, maybe? New York by HBO? Even in the 70's, we knew the networks would eventually control our minds. We just didn't know it would be that clever...
"Indie movies today show the real Manhattan... like Pi or Girlfight."
Yes, but what's very sad is that virtually all of the films listed in this post from the 1970s were released by major studios without precious indie-film tweeness.
Indie films nowadays are too indie 'attempting to be mainstream' than being truly independent. No disrespect to indie films or penguins, but when 'March of the Penguins' is the most sucessful indie film of 2005, something is out of whack.
And outside of indie films it's quite insipid.
iPod video please save us all.
Noah - I was thinking Law & Order and all its spinoffs offer a decent, if limited, look into the less glamorous side of life in NYC. I wish they'd do less "ripped from the headlines" episodes, but I guess the NY Post sensationalism is part of New York's character too.
As someone who grew up in NYC, I have to say that I didn't find The Squid and the Whale "irrelevant" at all. I thought it was quite moving, poignant and very well realized. Actually, I think it might be one of the most relevant pieces of work about growing up in NY that I have ever seen. What out of towners don't get, is that NYC is, in many ways, the same as it always has been. Neighborhoods may get facelifts, but essentially, it's still a mix -- from the insanely wealthy to the poorest people. Yes, NY in the 70's was a grittier, dirtier place, but at the same time, the haute bourgeois chic of Sex and the City owes everything to Annie Hall and Manhattan, both of which were made here at the same time as Taxi Driver and The French Connection.
Yeah, but these days the only out-of-towners who can afford to move to the city are from the towns of Princeton, Boston, Poughkeepsie, New Haven, etc. etc.
New York as a gritty weirdo-refuge is pretty dead and buried, at least, unless you consider eccentric blue-bloods, Euro trash, and the children of established professionals as acceptable replacements.
Here's just a few of the great '70s films that aren't on that shortlist:
Cottom Comes to Harlem (1970) / The Wanderers (1979) / Born to Win (1971) / Law and Disorder (1974) / Across 110th Street (1972) / Phantom of the Paradise (1974) / Sisters (1973) / Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) / Black Caesar (1973)...
and my personal favorite (after The Taking of Pelham 123, natch), Larry Cohen's God Told Me To (1976).
At the risk of blatant self-promotion, these films are all fresh in my mind because I've written the first comprehensive illustrated guide to '70s Hollywood, The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane, which will be out any day now--and there's pretty much an entire chapter devoted to life in the big city, specifically New York.
"The Squid and The Whale" is not a bad movie at all. But good lord, how many movies of middle-class/suburbanesque dysfunction do we need? The 'slice of NYC life' that "The Squid and The Whale" portrays is yet another 'surburban household in a brownstone' flick. Todd Solondz has said more than enough about suburban malaise at this point. And it's yet another so-called "Brooklyn" film that only focuses on the small slice of Brooklyn that is Park Slope.
No problems with Park Slope or nearby neighborhoods--have lived in them and enjoy them--but it's an overexposed area and in many ways trivial compared to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn that people barely get a glimpse at.
How about some films set in other parts of Brooklyn. Like Bay Ridge, Eastern Parkway, East Flatbush, Midwood, Bushwick, Greenpoint and others?
Thank the lord Spike Lee and Darren Aronofsky exist and focus their films on neighborhoods often overlooked.
An Unmarried Woman (1978) is good also, if you want to see what SoHo was before Prada and Balthazar. There is other NYC shots, but I was riveted by the downtown footage.
The best thing about Serpico is the one shot of Al Pacino coming over a rooftop, and you see the World Trade Center almost fully completed. I gasped when I realized what it was.
For a great movie from the 90s about life in seedy NYC that's not set in Park Slope, see "Laws Of Gravity" set in Greenpoint & Williamsburg ca. 1991. Keep an eye out for the Ship's Mast, a fine bar on the corner of N.5th and Berry.
"How many tales of middle-class/suburbanesque dysfunction do we need?"
Are you arguing that Baumbach shouldn't be allowed to make his movie -- based on growing up in Park Slope in the 80s -- because his middle-class life isn't legit, or that he should have lied and moved the location to a more "real" New York?
Squid and the Whale got it right. The details had me squirming. And I'd hate to see someone generalize those details away by shoving it into a "dysfunction" droor. It's the movie that's great, not the genre or the location.
No mention of "Joe" or "Hi, Mom"?
"Are you arguing that Baumbach shouldn't be allowed to make his movie -- based on growing up in Park Slope in the 80s -- because his middle-class life isn't legit, or that he should have lied and moved the location to a more "real" New York?"
It's not that middle-class life is not legit. Did you miss the point where I said it was a decent movie? It's just that there are simply (1) too many movies obsessed with portraying middle-class dysfunction and (2) Park Slope is--in general--a very overexposed part of Brooklyn.
That's it.
Did I say that Park Slope life is not "real" New York? No way. But while the light has shined on Park Slope families in films for years, other areas of the borough simply don't get the same exposure.
When Steve Buscemi made a film about his slice of NYC life, he left Park Slope and headed to working class Long Island. John Turturro's film about his father's life was also set outside the world of strollers and Ozzie's coffee.
Should "The Squid and the Whale" not exist? Not really. Is it a decent film, but essentially more of the same.
And the thing about the NYC films of the 1970s that makes them unique is that dozens of different slices of NYC life are portrayed. "Annie Hall" fetished Manhattan life. And so did "Manhattan"! But few if any films nowadays come close to Allens unique view.
I thought Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971) should be there. So I added it.
Park Slope in the 80's is not the same as now. I went to Midwood one year ahead of Noah and we came from a world that simply doesn't exist anymore. We were technically middle class but u try growing up getting mugged in 1st Grade and punched up by a "wolf pack" in 9th. You didn't need divorce to have an insane childhood. We grew up fast and learned to look after ourselves, which is why so many of us are successful now. Congrats on having an easy life Jack, but you are speaking out of school.