Fun City Cinema: New York City and the Movies That Made It

Film critic and historian Bailey (It’s Okay with Me) takes an exhilarating look at the history of New York City through films spanning the past 100 years that have become “valuable reminder[s] of what once was.” Combining his impressive knowledge of cinema with fascinating historical context of the cultural moments that gave rise to each film, Bailey illuminates how movies functioned as an “act of preservation” and “a conversation of connections and reflections between the fictional lives in their foregrounds and the real lives happening behind them.” In the 1920s, as filmmakers relocated from Hollywood to the Big Apple, the lurid grit of the city became the ultimate backlot for “quick, dirty” 1940s film noirs, such as 1948’s The Naked City, which was filmed in 107 locations over one summer; 1950s riffs on the brutal postwar business world (Sweet Smell of Success); 1960s and ’70s views of the city’s urban decay (as an antidote to the “bloated, lumbering musical extravaganzas of mainstream studios” in the ’50s) in such seminal films as Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Taxi Driver (1976); and, later, trips beneath the “shiny, cleaned-up surface of the city” that explore the excesses of wealth, including the 2019 drama Uncut Gems. Cinephiles will relish every stop of this entertaining tour of the big city. (Oct.)