by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology
In preparing to apply to NYU for my graduate study, I've been doing a lot of research. Or should I say, "research" -- in that it mostly involves renewing my New Yorker subscription, carefully crafting New Jersey jokes and re-watching old episodes of The West Wing (...don't ask how that one's relevant but it IS). Haha, but I kid. I'm snapping at my own heels to get everything together.
All this planning and fretting got my mind box chugging, and I started to think long and hard about the idea--not the reality--of New York City. That mythical place that needs no introduction, two words that sum up dreams, chance and opportunity better than Jay Gatsby (that poser!) ever could.
In many ways, New York is my favorite fictional city; no matter how many times I visit, I can't help but remembering its long-ago location, when I was a little girl and it only existed for me in the frames of my favorite movies.
It inspired me--as most things do--in the most peculiar way. I decided to compile this list: the movies that helped build the image New York still holds proudly, even in these sullied times. But these aren't your mother's New York pictures. These are the oddball, the outliers, the ones that probably only exist to give us a picture that doesn't include Times Square, horses in the park or the Brooklyn Bridge. In other words, they're just a tad closer to the real, tangled, heady mess that is the real New York, the version tourists aren't going to find and won't want anyway.
After Hours (1985)
This twisted, uncomfortable little black comedy shows the other side the being 'the city that never sleeps'--if you don't ever go to bed, the night will reach a point when the creepiness never seemes to end. Griffin Dunne plays a man who ends up far from his uptown apartment one random night, and follows his mishap-filled journey to just get back home already.
Great Expectations (1997)
I've got a soft spot in my heart (or, the angry fist where my heart should be) for this adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel--a loving, though not quite accurate by any stretch of the word, snapshot of the New York art world. In this film, those who have money carry on effortlessly, quipping and socializing as Finn (Pip in the book), the bayou artist shot to success by an unknown benefactor, must struggle to learn the language. There's an eerie dream-like quality to the New York scenes, managing to foreshadow the fragility of Finn's success, a quality that just hasn't been in any other version of this story that I've seen--and really, what better well to capture that unnerving, temporary feeling of sudden fame than to suggest a new artist with no previous experience or struggle would become an overnight sensation in the city's finicky and selective art scene?
Tootsie (1982)
Oh come on, I'm going to make a list of New York and NOT mention Tootsie? Why not just ask me to stop breathing, huh, or eating, or...or...talking about what a perfect movie Tootsie is! In the words of GOB Bluth, COME ON!
Working Girl (1983)
Embarrassing use of "Let the River Run" aside, this charming little movie neatly sums up being a working woman in New York in the 1980s, trying to kick through that glass ceiling with the heel of your pumps. Melanie Griffith is a secretary who is kept down by the twin weaknesses of being a woman and being from Staten Island. So when her boss is kept out of the office by an injury, she takes the opportunity to make things happen. Features Harrison Ford as the loooooove interest.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Is it premature to call this Spike Lee's masterpiece? I don't think so. He's a talented filmmaker, but it's hard to see him surpassing this story about the tensions that boil over in a Brooklyn neighbourhood during a blistering heat wave. The heat wave comes with its own built-in suspense --as the tempreture rises, the audience can sense that tensions other than the barometer rise with it. Do the Right Thing is a story of many things--loyalty, society, and relationships--but the real buzz is around the film's treatment of race and prejudice in a multi-ethnic community. Despite the knowledge that in recent years, the neighbourhood -- Bedford-Stuyvesant -- has been turned over to the hipsters and would-be Bohemians, I find the film's setting enhanced by the eventual threat of gentrification looming on the horizon.
The Best of Everything (1959)
Joan Crawford proves the old adage that you can't have your cake and eat it too, unless you want to throw yourself from a moving car, give up everything you've dreamed about and end up with your best scenes on the cutting room floor (which, supposedly, is what happened to most of Crawford's scenes, including one of the most convincing drunk-acts ever put to film). This tale of three young professional gals in the 1950s follows them as they live, love and grow...oh, and learn that everything they're working for will most likely end in despair. Infused with the most delightful melodrama, the film is more like a really well-dressed soap opera, but for its portrait of New York for the young Peggy Olsons of the world, it's bossanova.
Woody Allen
It seems counter-productive to pick just one of Allen's movies when for the better part of his early career, his every film was set in or around Manhattan. Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan were all based in his hometown, and it's not much of a strech to suggest the city should have at least snagged a Best Supporting nod. It's like a character the way Allen films it, full of quirks and manipulations and neuroses (I always think that the movie scene in Annie Hall best sums up the collective consciousness of New York: nebbish, intelligent, and more than a little entitled). Though he's since relocated his fixation (first to London and now, it seems, to Europe at large), Woody Allen will have a tough time shaking his big city roots.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
In Roman Polanski's first significant smash, see New York become a sinister den of demonic possessions and Satanic rituals. Ordinary street corners suddenly transform into harbours for strangers with unknown agendas; most of the terrible things in the film happen not in dank basements or decrepit houses, but in the comforting light of day or the safety of the homestead. The plot line, revolving around the peculiar pregnancy of Rosemary, is a clever cautionary tale come to life, melding the young housewife's social anxiety of being taken from her old domestic sphere and easy adolescent sexuality and thrust into an adult's world of concerns and expectations.
In preparing to apply to NYU for my graduate study, I've been doing a lot of research. Or should I say, "research" -- in that it mostly involves renewing my New Yorker subscription, carefully crafting New Jersey jokes and re-watching old episodes of The West Wing (...don't ask how that one's relevant but it IS). Haha, but I kid. I'm snapping at my own heels to get everything together.
All this planning and fretting got my mind box chugging, and I started to think long and hard about the idea--not the reality--of New York City. That mythical place that needs no introduction, two words that sum up dreams, chance and opportunity better than Jay Gatsby (that poser!) ever could.
In many ways, New York is my favorite fictional city; no matter how many times I visit, I can't help but remembering its long-ago location, when I was a little girl and it only existed for me in the frames of my favorite movies.
It inspired me--as most things do--in the most peculiar way. I decided to compile this list: the movies that helped build the image New York still holds proudly, even in these sullied times. But these aren't your mother's New York pictures. These are the oddball, the outliers, the ones that probably only exist to give us a picture that doesn't include Times Square, horses in the park or the Brooklyn Bridge. In other words, they're just a tad closer to the real, tangled, heady mess that is the real New York, the version tourists aren't going to find and won't want anyway.
After Hours (1985)This twisted, uncomfortable little black comedy shows the other side the being 'the city that never sleeps'--if you don't ever go to bed, the night will reach a point when the creepiness never seemes to end. Griffin Dunne plays a man who ends up far from his uptown apartment one random night, and follows his mishap-filled journey to just get back home already.
I've got a soft spot in my heart (or, the angry fist where my heart should be) for this adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel--a loving, though not quite accurate by any stretch of the word, snapshot of the New York art world. In this film, those who have money carry on effortlessly, quipping and socializing as Finn (Pip in the book), the bayou artist shot to success by an unknown benefactor, must struggle to learn the language. There's an eerie dream-like quality to the New York scenes, managing to foreshadow the fragility of Finn's success, a quality that just hasn't been in any other version of this story that I've seen--and really, what better well to capture that unnerving, temporary feeling of sudden fame than to suggest a new artist with no previous experience or struggle would become an overnight sensation in the city's finicky and selective art scene?
Oh come on, I'm going to make a list of New York and NOT mention Tootsie? Why not just ask me to stop breathing, huh, or eating, or...or...talking about what a perfect movie Tootsie is! In the words of GOB Bluth, COME ON!
Embarrassing use of "Let the River Run" aside, this charming little movie neatly sums up being a working woman in New York in the 1980s, trying to kick through that glass ceiling with the heel of your pumps. Melanie Griffith is a secretary who is kept down by the twin weaknesses of being a woman and being from Staten Island. So when her boss is kept out of the office by an injury, she takes the opportunity to make things happen. Features Harrison Ford as the loooooove interest.
Is it premature to call this Spike Lee's masterpiece? I don't think so. He's a talented filmmaker, but it's hard to see him surpassing this story about the tensions that boil over in a Brooklyn neighbourhood during a blistering heat wave. The heat wave comes with its own built-in suspense --as the tempreture rises, the audience can sense that tensions other than the barometer rise with it. Do the Right Thing is a story of many things--loyalty, society, and relationships--but the real buzz is around the film's treatment of race and prejudice in a multi-ethnic community. Despite the knowledge that in recent years, the neighbourhood -- Bedford-Stuyvesant -- has been turned over to the hipsters and would-be Bohemians, I find the film's setting enhanced by the eventual threat of gentrification looming on the horizon.
Joan Crawford proves the old adage that you can't have your cake and eat it too, unless you want to throw yourself from a moving car, give up everything you've dreamed about and end up with your best scenes on the cutting room floor (which, supposedly, is what happened to most of Crawford's scenes, including one of the most convincing drunk-acts ever put to film). This tale of three young professional gals in the 1950s follows them as they live, love and grow...oh, and learn that everything they're working for will most likely end in despair. Infused with the most delightful melodrama, the film is more like a really well-dressed soap opera, but for its portrait of New York for the young Peggy Olsons of the world, it's bossanova.
It seems counter-productive to pick just one of Allen's movies when for the better part of his early career, his every film was set in or around Manhattan. Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan were all based in his hometown, and it's not much of a strech to suggest the city should have at least snagged a Best Supporting nod. It's like a character the way Allen films it, full of quirks and manipulations and neuroses (I always think that the movie scene in Annie Hall best sums up the collective consciousness of New York: nebbish, intelligent, and more than a little entitled). Though he's since relocated his fixation (first to London and now, it seems, to Europe at large), Woody Allen will have a tough time shaking his big city roots.
In Roman Polanski's first significant smash, see New York become a sinister den of demonic possessions and Satanic rituals. Ordinary street corners suddenly transform into harbours for strangers with unknown agendas; most of the terrible things in the film happen not in dank basements or decrepit houses, but in the comforting light of day or the safety of the homestead. The plot line, revolving around the peculiar pregnancy of Rosemary, is a clever cautionary tale come to life, melding the young housewife's social anxiety of being taken from her old domestic sphere and easy adolescent sexuality and thrust into an adult's world of concerns and expectations.
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