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The publication’s ongoing centennial celebration includes a film component: a series at Film Forum called “Stories from The New Yorker,” which featured films that were related to The New Yorker’s history, either because the source material had been published there or because the magazine’s writers had connections to the films in question. But the series left out one important aspect of The New Yorker’s identity—its connection to the city—and since the current centennial issue is New York-centric, this list of some favorite New York-set films is a timely selection.
Ten is a fair number to celebrate a century, and I’ve chosen one film for each decade since the magazine’s founding, from 1925 to 1934 and beyond. Still, I could easily have doubled or tripled this list, as the variety of films about life in the city is truly vast; in fact, some of my favorite New York films (like An Unmarried Woman) aren’t available to stream. I’ve specifically avoided modern classics that immediately evoke the city, whether from Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, James Gray, or Woody Allen, and skipped over familiar titles like Saturday Night Fever and The Apartment, as captivating as they are. Instead, I’ve chosen dramas shot on location with sultry detail, comedies set in a gin-and-whip-cream New York that only existed onscreen, and comedies set in the kind of sleek, sleazy New York that’s never been seen before. one documentary that delves deeply into the private lives and social activism of a single neighborhood; and another that connects urban landscapes to the director’s family history. Many of my favorite New York films don’t even depict the city—at least not literally—but rather recreate some version of it in a studio. They convey states of mind in New York that are far more varied than its inhabitants. New York is a realm of fantasy and myth, obsession and resentment, fear and bewilderment for many who have never been there; and many who live here also create and perpetuate some version of an imaginary city.
This may be the only kind there is: everyone’s New York, even those who don’t call it home. (Like cinema itself, The New Yorker also promotes enduring visions or versions of New York, whether in fiction or in reportage.) That’s why it’s so hard to pick favorite films about New York: on the one hand, there have been plenty of great films about it, but on the other, none of them quite get it right—none of them quite captured the city as I imagined and experienced it. (I’d wager that every New Yorker feels the same way.) But many films, like many writers, have broadened my view of the city and deepened my understanding. Here are just a few.
1925-34: Me and My Girl (1932, Raoul Walsh)
Marion Burns, Joan Bennett and Spencer Tracy in Me and My Girl. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox/Everett
They say New York City is all about gab and street smarts, and Walsh, born here in 1887, raised in comfort and free to live on the underbelly, nails both in this fast-paced tale of a cocky, brash cop (Spencer Tracy) on duty
Sourse: newyorker.com
