City That Never Sleeps : New York and the Filmic Imagination

New York, more than any other city, has held a special fascination for filmmakers and viewers. In every decade of Hollywood filmmaking, artists of the screen have fixated upon this fascinating place for its tensions and promises, dazzling illumination and fearsome darkness. The glittering skyscrapers of such films as On the Town have shadowed the characteristic seedy streets in which desperate, passionate stories have played out-as in Scandal Sheet and The Pawnbroker. In other films, the city is a cauldron of bright lights, technology, empire, egotism, fear, hunger, and change--the scenic epitome of America in the modern age. From Street Scene and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Rosemary's Baby, The Warriors , and 25th Hour , the sixteen essays in this book explore the cinematic representation of New York as a city of experience, as a locus of ideographic characters and spaces, as a city of moves and traps, and as a site of allurement and danger. Contributors consider the work of Woody Allen, Blake Edwards, Alfred Hitchcock, Gregory La Cava, Spike Lee, Sidney Lumet, Vincente Minnelli, Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese, Andy Warhol, and numerous others. Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Prelude: To Wake Up in the City That Never Sleeps 14 Memory All Alone in the Moonlight: City of Experience 30 “I Love New York!”: Breakfast at Tiffany's 34 A Day in New York: On the Town and The Clock 44 Paradise Lost and Found: A Bronx Tale 60 There's a Place for Us: City of Characters and Spaces 72 Woody Allen's New York 76 From Mean Streets to the Gangs of New York: Ethnicity and Urban Space in the Films of Martin Scorsese 88 Can't Take My Eyes Off of You: Andy Warhol Records/Is New York 102 A Clean, Well-Lighted Place: Hitchcock's New York 114 Whispering Escapades Out on the D Train: City of Moves and Traps 130 “When We See the Ocean, We Figure We're Home”: From Ritual to Romance in The Warriors 134 He Cuts Heads: Spike Lee and the New York Experience 148 New York Class-Passing Onscreen in the 1930s: Gwendolyn Audrey Foster 162 Midtown Jewish Masculinity in Body and Soul 178 Stayin' Alive: City of Danger and Adjustment 190 City of Nightmares: The New York of Sidney Lumet 194 Urban Irrational: Rosemary's Baby, Polanski, New York 212 The City That Never Shuts Up: Aural Intrusion in New York Apartment Films 226 Wretched Refuse: Watching New York Ethnic Slum Films in the Aftermath of 9/11 240 Night World: New York as a Noir Universe 254 Works Cited and Consulted 270 Notes on Contributors 278 Index 282 New York, more than any other city, has held a special fascination for filmmakers and viewers. In every decade of Hollywood filmmaking, artists of the screen have fixated upon this fascinating place for its tensions and promises, dazzling illumination and fearsome darkness. The glittering skyscrapers of such films as On the Town have shadowed the characteristic seedy streets in which desperate, passionate stories have played out?as in Scandal Sheet and The Pawnbroker. In other films, the city is a cauldron of bright lights, technology, empire, egotism, fear, hunger, and change - the scenic epitome of America in the modern age.--Back cover Edited By Murray Pomerance. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 259-266) And Index.