Manhattan as a Character in Film

[MrBern]

remake & recast

I have no problem w/updating the Honeymooners w/ an Afra-American cast.. but they filmed the Brooklyn scenes in Ireland...


Incidentally , a great classic B&W film set in NYC, LOST WEEKEND.

And one that couldnt be anyplace but Manhattan, Miracle on 34thStreet.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

"An Affair to Remember." They agree to meet at the closest thing to heaven: the top of The Empire State Building.

And for a gleeful "I love NY" vibe, it's tough to beat "Ghostbusters."

 

[Doh!]

Sweet Smell of Success. ("I love this dirty town!" --J. J. Hunsecker)

 

[MrBern]

Woody Allen also based Matchpoint in London.
Which makes me wonder if our fair city is as characteristic as we think it is?

It jsut goes to show you he had to go to Europe to find a suitable alternative.

 

[Tomasso]

Rent Control...............

though, once again, everyone has too much apartment for their professions.

..........is a possibility

 

[Doctor Strange]

There's a great book on this subject that I highly recommend: "Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies" by James Sanders (ISBN 0394570626). It's a fascinating study of the interrelationship between NYC and Hollywood that includes:

How incredible NYC sets were created in Hollywood (e.g., the studios maintained reference materials that included more detailed photos/drawings of neighborhoods and buildings than any city agency at the time possessed).

How the Hollywood image of NYC as the golden city of desire in turn changed the city itself over time.

How recreations of the city (and once location shooting become common, the city itself) became almost a character itself. (There's a whole chapter on the 1800s townhouse set for William Wyler's "The Heiress" and how it functions in the story - and how these houses later evolved into the familiar NYC brownstone apartment building.)

Sanders is an architectural historian and movie buff, and this book represents many years of work. Apart from that, it's loaded with great pictures.

BTW, I notice that the hardcover is currently a closeout special at Amazon for less than the paperback edition!

 

[MrBern]

I've also noticed the reverse.
In movies like Speilberg's WaroftheWorlds, and HowardStern's Private Parts, brownstone locations in brooklyn were substitutes for other locations such as Boston.

And its always amusing to see Vancouver or Toronto substitute for NYC in a film.

 

[LizzieMaine]

How about Harold Lloyd's "Speedy" (1928)? It was shot on location in New York, and features some really evocative footage of Manhattan, Luna Park at Coney Island, and Yankee Stadium, among other spots. The underlying theme of the picture is the collision of the new, modern New York of the twenties with the older, traditional city -- and is one of Lloyd's best silents.

One of my all-time favorite New York films is an obscure short called "Manhatten Medley," filmed by a Movietone News cameraman named Bonney Powell in 1931, and released as part of the Fox Movietone Magic Carpet travelogue series. It's an art film compressing an entire New York day into one ten-minute reel -- and it's really an extraordinary time capsule of the city's day to day routine. New York itself is the only character in the film -- the people are just a faceless mass, herding into the subway, bustling in the streets, and filling in the background. It's one of the best "mood piece" films I've ever seen. (You'll find it on the "Unseen Cinema" series DVD entitled "Picture of a Metropolis," which is made up entirely of early experimental films shot in and around the city -- dating as far back as 1904!)

 

[Quigley Brown]

I like the ones that tell the stories of people wanting to escape their Brooklyn, Queens or Bronx lives and make it in Manhattan...like Working Girl and Saturday Night Fever.

 

[Tomasso]

I end up having to watch Manhattan movies twice as I invariably miss some of the story by trying to identify the the various locales.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Good call on "Speedy", Lizzie! It's definitely one of Lloyd's most charming films, and it has all that fascinating location shooting. There's even an amusing cameo by Babe Ruth.

Another one that's great for its 1940s Central Park locales is "Portrait of Jennie".

 

[Doh!]

There's a great book on this subject that I highly recommend: "Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies" by James Sanders (ISBN 0394570626). It's a fascinating study of the interrelationship between NYC and Hollywood that includes:

BTW, I notice that the hardcover is currently a closeout special at Amazon for less than the paperback edition!

Thanks for the tip -- I just ordered it! (Under $19 bucks shipped to Los Angeles.)

 

[Hemingway Jones]

I was just thinking of how Luc Besson made Manhattan look like Paris in "The Professional."

Also, in watching "The French Connection" again, I love its portrayal of New York City in the early 70s. Many of the extras, and characters, are still classically attired. I also appreciated the shoot location at The Roosevelt Hotel.

 

[Feraud]

Also, in watching "The French Connection" again, I love its portrayal of New York City in the early 70s. Many of the extras, and characters, are still classically attired. I also appreciated the shoot location at The Roosevelt Hotel.

What a coincidence. I just watched The French Connection this week! They do not make 'em like that anymore. The location, the actors and that car chase!

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Great film and excellent character. We must have a Car Chase thread around here somewhere. It seems to me I recall one.

The one thing funny about "The French Connection" is that "Popeye Doyle" is following all of these people wearing that distinctive pork pie hat. He does take it off briefly a few times, as in the subway, but could he be a bit more obvious???

 

[Feraud]

The one thing funny about "The French Connection" is that "Popeye Doyle" is following all of these people wearing that distinctive pork pie hat. He does take it off briefly a few times, as in the subway, but could he be a bit more obvious???

Ha,ha,ha you are right! There were a couple of scenes where I am thinking, "take off the hat, take off the hat...." lol

 

[Hemingway Jones]

He sure makes it look cool though.

 

[MrBern]

40 years of locations

http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/anniversary/anniversary_home.shtml

 

[Feraud]

NYC in film.

Grand Central Terminal is hosting a multimedia exhibition on New York City in film.
The article-
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/movies/25cell.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

May 25, 2007
Film
Starring New York, City of Grit and Glamour
By CARYN JAMES
To walk through the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal is to step onto a real-life movie set. Cary Grant passes through it while escaping his would-be killers in “North by Northwest.” Jim Carrey grabs Kate Winslet’s hand and dashes across it in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” watching people vanish one by one as his memory is erased. Most tellingly, it is the site of a pivotal moment in “The Fisher King,” when Robin Williams, as a pure-hearted, emotionally unbalanced man, spots the quite plain woman of his dreams heading for her train. Suddenly everyone in the room breaks into a waltz, as this grimy, everyday place becomes a scene of glittering romance.

Its magical role on screen makes Grand Central the ideal location for “Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies,” an ambitious exhibition of films, photographs and sets that begins today in Vanderbilt Hall, adjacent to the main concourse. The project was put together by James Sanders, based on his 2001 book of the same title, which shrewdly observes that two New Yorks — the real city and the screen fantasy — feed each other in a never-ending circle.

The exhibition and its offshoots, including a series on Turner Classic Movies and special material added to Grand Central’s tours, do more than take viewers behind the scenes and through the city’s history on screen. They illustrate how film has made New York a communal experience, familiar even to people who have never been here. Hemingway applied the phrase to Paris, but New York in the movies is another kind of movable feast.

But what is a New York film? It’s not one that simply happens to be set here; whether it’s shot here doesn’t matter either (though that helps). In a genuine New York movie the characters and their stories can’t be separated from the life of the city. There is a dynamic between character and place like the one that makes Mr. Williams in “The Fisher King” lead a band of homeless people in song — “I like New York in June, how about you?” — and insist that no threat of criminals will chase him out of Central Park because “This park is mine just as much as it is theirs.”

Mr. Sanders is right to point out how reality fuels the movies’ fantasy of New York, which in turn helps shape real New Yorkers’ perceptions of the city. Push that idea further, and you see that those fantasies are almost always close to the soul of the city, to what New York is or wants to be.

As the country struggled out of the Depression, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced through a city of dazzling, black-and-white Deco elegance, in nightclubs created with all the artifice Hollywood sound stages could offer.

The changing, freewheeling ’60s saw the tawdry street hustlers of “Midnight Cowboy,” as well as the glamorous Holly Golightly (a more refined hustler) in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The crime and deterioration of the ’70s were handled by Neil Simon as a comic nightmare in “The Out of Towners” and ominously by Charles Bronson as a vigilante in “Death Wish.”

Today the bracing, multiethnic realism of Spike Lee in “Do the Right Thing,” “Jungle Fever” and “25th Hour” make him the pre-eminent New York filmmaker, capturing the city’s varied elements — racial tensions, upscale ambitions, drug-dealing street scenes — with a clearsighted, trenchant vision. He doesn’t romanticize the city as Woody Allen did in his classic comedies from the ’70s, “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan,” but obviously loves New York every bit as as much. Mr. Lee, like Martin Scorsese in ’70s masterworks like “Taxi Driver,” depicts it without sugarcoating.

There are matte paintings on display from North by Northwest and The Clock.
Video clips of the city from Rosemary's Baby, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and rare "actuality" films are on display.

Click on the "New York City on Film" link for a nice synopsis of the exhibit.
http://video.on.nytimes.com/

 

[Jack Scorpion]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the motion picture.