New York

THE COLOSSUS ON CAMERA

Always a key character in every movie it’s in, the city’s representation has evolved over a century of filmmaking.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

25th Hour (2002)

Watch Episode 1 now.

I had my first drink in a bar at O’Flaherty’s on 46th street. I went to my first Broadway show. And saw the city through a thick, cinematic infatuation. I had to go back to college in LA, so I left, but came back as soon as school was over, two years later. When your primary life goal is to live in New York, you meet people here who share it. There is a group of us who are just happy to make it here. 

Books and movies are where the inspiration came from – and while not an exhaustive list, a shred of a roadmap could be started with not necessarily the “best,” but the entries most personal to me:

  • “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time” from The Great Gatsby (1925)

  • The B roll of nightclubs like El Morocco and Copacabana in 1930s and 1940s classics

  • The midtown elegance of Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

  • The wild playground and hood hopping of On the Town (1949)

  • The noir labrynths of Killer’s Kiss (1955)

  • The Beekman Place party glamour of Auntie Mame (1958)

  • The smoke, danger and intrigue of Taxi Driver (1976)

  • The upper west side apartments of Franny and Zooey (1961)

  • The downtown canyons from Wall Street (1987)

  • The sky high terraces in The Devil’s Advocate (1997)

  • The focused urban romance of Autumn in New York (2000)

  • The bachelor pad and cad character in Someone Like You (2001) 

  • The silvery gray melancholy of the far west side in Shame (2011)

It’s a fool’s errand to attempt to name “the best New York movie,” not unlike that most impossible of questions, “What’s your favorite movie of all time?” – but choosing two is marginally easier. In the beginning of my New York history… I thought midtown Manhattan was New York. I knew Manhattan was a long island, and knew of the four other boroughs… but the first I saw of New York, via films produced in the 1920s - 1950s, mostly focused on this specific locale . I remember being at a bar in 2002, a mere freshman, greener than green, no spots save for cigarette stains, and saying to someone, “Sure, but Brooklyn’s not really New York.” Talk about a fool. 

So let’s errand. There are hundreds of wonderful New York movies – to say little of  the nearly 400,000 total films (according to IMDB) shot here. This episode’s choices reflect this New Yorker’s experience – beginning with a bright. brutal and socially myopic midtown Manhattan in Sweet Smell of Success (1957), and the broader, more authentic, wounded city in 25th Hour (2002), the latter of which, gun to head, I’d answer that dreaded question just mentioned, when specified about films shot here.

The first, a fictionalization of the world of real life gossip columnist Walter Winchell, stars Burt Lancaster as the acerbic J.J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis as his lackey, gopher, shrimp, prisoner and press agent Sydney Falco. J.J has tasked Sydney with a piece of dirty work, the premise of which launches the film into instant discomfort, and holds you there for its light-footed 96 minute run time. Other than the moment of the title reveal, late in the film, it is consistently joyless, so it’ is little surprise it was a complete flop when it opened. 

To be a woman in the world of this film is to have lost the coin toss of life. You are either a kept sister, bartered cigarette girl, sad secretary, wry secretary or jilted wife. But they are the film’s moral center, and provide a mirror to the varieties of despicable behavior by its men.  Fans of Succession (2018-2023) will feel right at home here: there is no one to root for among its primary characters. Which makes carrying an entire work, let alone ending it, a challenge. 

The reason the film succeeds isn’t only the snappy dialogue, but the clever camera pans and spins, revealing how maniacal its villains are. Watch for the first scene with Lancaster’s J.J., in which a senator seeks a favor for some folks he’s brought along. (Note the irony of phones always being on tables, even back then.) To his civil servant guest, he quips, “Here you are, Harvey, out in the open, when any hep person knows, that this one – is toting that one – around for you.” As he delivers each beat, the camera swings around to reveal the target of J.J.’s judgment. In a magical world of Roger Deaksones and Hoyt van Hoytemas, it is easy to forget to appreciate the simple innovations of classic camera movement. But the film doesn’t let you. It reminds you of the magic that can occur with a talented crew, talented cast, and a single camera in a single room. 

I’ve sat at the tables at the 21 Club. I’ve peered into Ground Zero. I’ve been on a high floor overlooking Times Square. I’ve walked by the benches in Carl Schurz Park (above). And I have said goodbyes to loved ones, heart in shreds, along the streets of the city, as occurs in both films. 

New York is like anything else that inspires fanaticism – religion… sports… social media. You’re into it or you’re not. A magnificent quandary, and a complex reality that takes as much as it gives. But on camera – it’s always the city seen for the first time. The most incredible set any production designer could dream up. And the central, scintillating star of both of these masterpieces. If you can make it here… you’re broke. But it’s just like the movies: it’s real life. 

i love this dirty town

The first time I came to New York, it was the summer of 2000. When I stepped one foot out of the cab that brought me to Bleecker between Thompson and Sullivan from a delayed flight to JFK, it was about 2:00 a.m., and the humidity hit me right away. “What is this?” I thought. “And how do people live like this?”  

I was staying in the apartment of a friend’s brother, who was in LA for pilot season. It was a studio with a single window, facing south, perfectly framing the twin towers. I worked in a restaurant in Times Square, arriving late and drenched the next morning on my first day. Down the stairs came a tall blonde from Ohio, and I fell in love immediately. 

When asked, “Why does everything you say sound like a threat?” J.J. responds, “Maybe it’s a mannerism, because I don’t threaten friends.” Talk about your understatements. To J.J., conversation is the battlefield, and he’s Alexander the Great, leaving everyone, friends and enemies, in his terrible wake. Set against the bright lights of Broadway and the smoke filled jazz clubs of midtown, the black and white treatment is a fitting contrast to the murky, gray world of its inhabitants. 

A wonderful emblem of the “rat-a-tat tat” dialogue style of early and mid-20th century Hollywood, hats should tip farthest for writers Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, and next to the fearless and committed direction of Alexander Mackendrick. Every other line is a one liner (“You’re dead, son – get yourself buried” and “The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river”) and a representation of efficient, fast moving exposition and character development. 

The set gets even smaller, and more focused, like a needle into the skin, in the rightfully lauded “mirror scene” in Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, arguably one of the best of the film – here it’s just one man, and one mirror. In it, it’s as if Edward Norton’s drug dealer and soon-to-prison Monty picks up the microphone of the city, and spews every major racial stereotype it can conjure. Let’s pause to consider whether any other director on the planet could have pulled this scene off. 

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And we’re back. This is an important difference between these two masterpieces. To be sure: Success is canon. It’s a triumph of New York Noir. But the white in the black and white isn’t the only all white element. 25th Hour updates us to the real New York – the diverse, fraught, melting-pot-that-never-really-melts frictions of the many peoples that call it home. Jackson Heights, Queens, once held the title of the most diverse place in the world, with over 120 of the 190 of the world’s countries represented. This is not suits and cigarettes in midtown. This is a big, beautiful, difficult city, with people from just about everywhere. 

On the surface, it shares the unlikability of its major characters with Success. But it veers away, drawing us into an empathetic connection with most. Like Success, it carries with it a sense of the brutality that life in the city entails. It is not an easy place; it requires fight. Both films illuminate the struggle, the uncertainty and the tenuous nature of making and sustaining a life here. 

In each, we sense the colossus of the place – not just due to the rapturous cinematography (perhaps the best of both films are their sumptuous B roll), but from their incredible scores, both of which use dominant and defiant brass sections to scream the scale and intensity of the greatest thing a country has achieved over 400 years. In Success, mid-century master Elmer Bernstein, whose filmography is longer than rush hour traffic to Kennedy (but includes The Ten Commandments (1956), The Great Escape (1963), Ghostbusters (1984), and 180 others) delivers Broadway-style razzle dazzle, with sinister dips and devolutions. In 25th Hour, Terence Blanchard, one of the great living composers today, draws us along dark river water to the searing saber lights of downtown, and right into ground zero, a mere year existent, at the time of the film. (Try listening to his soundtrack to If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), without tearing up. Go ahead; we’ll wait.)

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And we’re back. People are always telling me – “Life is not like the movies.” No? Did Walter Winchell not eviscerate socialites, politicians and performers with his pen? Do drug dealers not occasionally go to jail, and have one day of freedom left before a sentence? Are the lights of Broadway not intoxicating? Is a row of benches along the East River not a place of peace? One of the sources of power of New York filmmaking is its permeability with real life. We flock to James Bond, but how accessible are Moscow, Macau and Montenegro to us everyday folk?