What are some of your favorite movies/documentaries/shows that are set in New York from 1945 to 1999, pre-gentrification?

[quote] I hear that they tore down a lot of buildings and streets, and that it's very gentrified.

You probably read about on here, on one of the two thousand threads on this subject.

They just starting showing "Cagney & Lacey" on the Decades channel. I saw a great-but-sad view of the Twin Towers.

Check it out, OP.

Dressed To Kill

The French Connection

Bill Cunningham New York

Muppets Take Manhattan

"The Lost Weekend." Great shots of the 3rd Avenue El.

"Taxi Driver" has a lot of wonderful location shots, especially of Hell's Kitchen. Really captures the grey feel of the era.

many of Martin Scorsese's films are set in NYC. check them out!

Mean Streets, Taxi Driver...

Other movies...

State of Grace, one of my fav

Ghostbusters

Home Alone!

When Harry Met Sally (they're gonna be releasing it next month)

You've got mail!

Serendipity

The Warriors

After Hours (Scorcese)

Desperatrly Seeking Susan is a guilty pleasure

Most of pedo Allen's movies.

Manhattan

Saturday Night Fever

Wall Street

working girl

The Secret of my success

The Out of Towners (1970 version)

The In-Laws (1979)

The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975)

The Odd Couple (1968)

The Goodbye Girl (1977)

Kojak!

An Unmarried Woman (1978)

The 80's horror movies Maniac, Nightmare, and Basket Case show a very different kind of New York than the one we see now. So much sleaze it practically pours off the screen. I never grew up wanting to live in New York because of these movies. They made it seem terribly unsafe.

They All Laughed (1981)

Gentrification started before 1985, you nit! East village was rapidly gentrifying when I arrived in 1986. Soho had finished.

An Unmarried Woman

The Owl and the Pussycat (1970)

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

I also love The Out-of-Towners (1970)

You could do a wonderful festival with all the films set in NYC in the ‘70s.

The Pope of Greenwich Village

Next Stop Greenwich Village

Goodbye Columbus

Barefoot in the Park

Author! Author!

A Thousand Clowns (1965)

Girlfriends (1978)

Kramer vs. Kramer

Moonstruck

Tootsie

Short Circuit 2

Crocodile Dundee

Prince of the City from 1981--Sidney Lumet. Any film by Sidney Lumet really.

The Detective (1968) Madigan (1968)

The best of them all...

One of my all time favorite comedies is Easy Living (1937), written by the great Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen. There are iconic scenes from the Manhattan of the later Depression--a young secretary (Jean Arthur--at her very best) riding on top of a double decker bus on 5th Avenue suddenly has a super luxurious fur coat land on her head, which had fallen from a nearby fancy building balcony. She is so honest she goes to find the owner--and screwball hilarity ensues. The young Ray Milland is a rich banker's son (it was his mother's coat of course) but he is trying to make it on his own so of course he works in an automat (look them up if you've never heard of them--I think they were gone by the 60s). She comes in and he is immediately smitten and then causes is a great scene of chaos in the automat with all the doors opening at once, etc and people scrambling for free food. A great Manhattan movie--have seen it 3 times and it never gets old. It's beautifully shot in black and white. There are other movies with that title (one with Victor Mature from the '50s!). Don't get the wrong one.

I remember Cruising being pretty grimy.

R30

Your description made that movie sound so great that I just bought it.

Thanks!

Weddings and Babies (1958)

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961)

^^Sorry, bad link.

The World of Henry Orient

Breakfast at Tiffany's

The Apartment

Annie Hall

25th Hour (one of Edward Norton's best performances)

R34 - You beat me to it with Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Might be fun to do a similar thread on London.

Crossing Delancey , although that is slightly beyond 1985.

On the Bowery (1956) is one of my all-time favorites.

This is obviously pre-1945, but Harold Lloyd's "Speedy" (1928) has some wonderful footage of Coney Island and Luna Park in the 1920s.

My minuscule contribution to the thread is "Bell, Book and Candle."

Can't think of anything else that hasn't been mentioned already.

Marathon Man Three Days of the Condor

On the Town- I think it was one of the first Hollywood location shoots in NYC.... I may be incorrect....

Thank you all for all of the suggestions so far, I can't wait to watch all of these little gems!

R43 here --- it was the first musical feature film to be shot on location.

I tried watching The Out of Towners (1970) tonight based on this thread. What a piece of shit! I shut it off 35 minutes in because I didn't laugh once. I love Jack Lemon and thought I liked Neil Simon, plus young me loved the Goldie/Steve Martin remake. This was just some guy yelling at his wife for things she couldn't control.

Zombi and Cannibal Holocaust, both cheap Italian schlocky horror but still manage to capture the zeitgeist. Both films even have shots of the World Trade Center

Trick

Party Girl

The Daytrippers

A bit obscure but brilliant and mesmerizing - Chantel Ackerman’s “News from Home” - see it projected if at all possible - just a series of long unedited takes - each shot is a full 16mm camera load - shot in Manhattan in the mid 70s. The camera looks out the window of a bus, rides in a subway car, slowly pans an intersection, etc - the film let you really see a city that no longer exists - the one I remember growing up.

“News From Home is a 1977 avant-garde documentary film directed by Chantal Akerman. The film consists of long takes of locations in New York City, set to Akerman's voice-over as she reads letters her mother sent her between 1971 and 1973, when the director lived in the city.”

Midnight Cowboy. "I'm walking here!"

Let No Man Write My Epitath is very good.

Klute

Heartburn

Sweet Charity

"Alphabet City," starring Vincent Spano as a drug dealer.

"Do The Right Thing"

"Times Square," with Tim Curry

The World of Henry Orient - I've loved this movie since I was a kid. The scenes in Greenwich Village and Central Park are part of the fun.

Serpico

All About Eve

The Apartment

Rear Window

[quote]New York from 1945 to 1999, pre-gentrification

"Pre-gentrification" is the 1970s. I remember the arrival of the yuppies on the UWS in 1981, and renovation starting on the far less grand Lower East Side at the same time.

The Twilight Zones were filmed on the MGM backlot so the New York you saw was the New York Street and not on location. However since the backlot has now gone it is worth it just to see that.

[quote]I tried watching The Out of Towners (1970) tonight based on this thread. What a piece of shit! I shut it off 35 minutes in because I didn't laugh once. I love Jack Lemon and thought I liked Neil Simon, plus young me loved the Goldie/Steve Martin remake. This was just some guy yelling at his wife for things she couldn't control.

"The Out of Towners" is a wretched movie, much more grueling than funny. "This was just some guy yelling at his wife for things she couldn't control" is a perfect description of it. I like Jack Lemmon, but his character in this is insufferable. Neil Simon at his worst.

The French Connection

The Godfather

Do the Right Thing

The documentary “Gay Sex in the Seventies” has some wonderful clips of New York City pre-gentrification. Also just a great movie.

R49 Thank you, I'll check it out. I used to get Chantel Ackerman moved up with Agnes Cards and Agnessa Holland.

Death Wish - I love the whole vibe of NYC at its nadir.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Mean Streets

r64: Do you mean Agnes Varda and Agnieszka Holland?

Also pre-1945, but William Wyler's "Dead End" is a real Depression-era gem about poor kids livng in the slums of New York, based on a play by Sidney Kingsley.

And, although "On the Waterfront" was about the corruption and crime on the Hoboken waterfronts in the early 1950w, it is redolent of the same conditions of the docks of NY across the river, and Leonard Bernstein's music is so evocative of the city, you can smell the river from the opening chords.

[quote]Home Alone!

"Home Alone" was Chicago, now "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" shows the true horrors of NY.

Ghost - the scenes on the subway are terrific.