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With its still-dashing skyline and its rugged facades, its mean streets and its swanky avenues New York is probably the most filmed city on earth, or at least the one most instantly recognizable from the movies. It would be fruitless to enumerate them all; we've just given a small sampling below of films that best capture the city's atmosphere, its pulse and its style and, if nothing else, give you a pretty good idea of what you're going to get before you get there.
Thirteen great New York movies
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977). Oscar-winning autobiographical comic romance, which flits from reminiscences of Alvy Singer's childhood living beneath the Coney Island rollercoaster, to life and love in uptown Manhattan, is a valentine both to then-lover and co-star Diane Keaton if not to the city. Simultaneously clever, bourgeois and very winning. All of Allen's movies are New York-centric; also don't miss Manhattan (1979), which with its Gershwin soundtrack and stunning black-and-white photography is probably the greatest eulogy to the city ever made.
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards, 1961). This most charming and cherished of New York movie romances stars Audrey Hepburn as party girl Holly Golightly flitting through the glittering playground of the Upper East Side. Hepburn and George Peppard run up and down each other's fire-escapes and skip down Fifth Avenue taking in the New York Public Library and that jewelry store.
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989). Set over 24 hours on the hottest day of the year in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuyvesant section - a day on which the melting pot is reaching boiling point - Spike Lee's colorful, stylish film moves from comedy to tragedy to compose an epic tale of New York.
The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971). Plenty of heady Brooklyn atmosphere in this sensational Oscar-winning cop thriller starring Gene Hackman, whose classic car-and-subway chase takes place under the Bensonhurst Elevated Railroad.
The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974). Flashing back to the early life of Vito Corleone, Coppola's great sequel re-created the Italian immigrant experience at the turn of the century, portraying Corleone quarantined at Ellis Island and growing up tough on the meticulously re-created streets of Little Italy.
Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969) The odd love story between Jon Voight's bumpkin hustler and Dustin Hoffman's touching urban creep Ratso Rizzo plays out against both the seediest and swankiest of New York locations.
On the Town (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1949). Three sailors get 24-hours' shore leave in NYC and fight over whether to do the sights or chase the girls. This exhilarating, landmark musical with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Ann Miller flashing her gams in the American Museum of Natural History was the first to take the musical out of the studios and onto the streets.
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954). Few images of New York are as indelible as Marlon Brando's rooftop pigeon coop at dawn and those misty views of New York Harbor (actually shot just over the river in Hoboken), in this unforgettable story of long-suffering longshoremen and union racketeering.
Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968). Mia Farrow and John Cassavettes move into their dream New York apartment in the Dakota Building (72nd and Central Park West) and think their problems stop with nosy neighbors and thin walls until Farrow gets pregnant and hell, literally, breaks loose. Arguably the most terrifying film ever set in the city.
The Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957). Broadway as a nest of vipers. Gossip columnist Burt Lancaster and sleazy press agent Tony Curtis eat each other's tails in this jazzy, cynical study of showbiz corruption. Shot on location, and mostly at night, in steely black and white, Times Square and the Great White Way never looked so alluring.
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976). A long night's journey into day by the great chronicler of the dark side of the city - and New York's greatest filmmaker. Scorsese's New York is hallucinatorily seductive and thoroughly repellent in this superbly unsettling study of obsessive outsider Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro).
West Side Story (Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, 1961). Sex, singing and Shakespeare in a hyper-cinematic Oscar-winning musical (via Broadway) about rival street gangs. Lincoln Center now stands where the Sharks and the Jets once rumbled and interracial romance ended in tragedy.
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