There is not another city in the world, not even Los Angeles, that cinema loves more than New York City. There is a special place in the film industry for the greatest city in the world that has been there since the beginning, and that love can be felt in countless films. If you grew up in New York or the surrounding New York Metro Area, then you probably feel a connection to films centered around our city. Many films that center around New York are really an ode to the city that never sleeps and the different emotions it evokes in people. In fact, New York isn’t just a setting for many films, it’s a character.
15 Frances Ha (2012)
IFC Films
A New York woman named Frances (Greta Gerwig) apprentices for a dance company and fully commits herself to pursuing her dreams, even as the reality of achieving them dwindles in Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha. The concept of moving to New York City to pursue your dreams isn’t new, but it’s a concept that people around the world consistently believe in. Frances Ha demonstrates that belief in a very realistic manner. Sometimes our dreams require more thought and dedication than we realize but being in the most famous city in the world makes us think that we just need to believe.
14 Rear Window (1954)
Paramount Pictures
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window starring Grace Kelly and James Stewart takes place in one apartment in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of the city. A wheel-chair bound photographer spies on his neighbors through his courtyard window and becomes convinced that one of them has committed murder. This movie would not work nearly as well without the tight space of multiple apartment buildings surrounding this small courtyard in the city. It makes the viewer feel confined and anxious like they themselves are in one of these apartment buildings.
13 Moonstruck (1987)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Loretta Castorini is a bookkeeper from Brooklyn who finds herself in an uncomfortable situation when she falls in love with the brother of the man she is supposed to marry in Moonstruck. Right from the get-go, it is obvious that Loretta is a New Yorker whose identity is inevitably tied to being from the city. The big hair, the Italian-New York accent, and the big family are dead giveaways. Everything about this movie is about being a New Yorker. As much as it’s about the love affair between Loretta and Ronny, it’s also a love letter to the city.
12 While We’re Young (2014)
When a carefree young couple enters their lives, a middle-aged couple’s careers and marriage are disrupted in While We’re Young. Being young in NYC is something that everyone should have the chance to experience. To be free-spirited and have the city as your landscape is incredible. However, it may not always feel like that, especially as you get older. You can party until 5:00 AM or order takeout at 1:00 AM without worry, but when you have already lived through your youth, that may not be appealing anymore. The constant movement of the city may not be one of your favorite aspects anymore, and While We’re Young poses that sentiment.
11 The Apartment (1960)
The Mirisch Company
Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is a classic New York-centered film. A Manhattan insurance clerk trying to rise through the ranks of his company allows his executives to use his apartment for romantic rendezvouses, but complications ensue when a romance of his own blossoms. Not only is New York a character in this film, but the actual apartment is a character as well. All the characters have some sort of connection with this apartment, and it has become a well-known figure within the company. They have become reliant on what they think the apartment has to offer them.
10 Mean Streets (1973)
Warner Bros.
Martin Scorsese is a born and raised New Yorker, and he embraces it. Even in films such as Mean Streets, where the streets are filled with trash and there’s violence around, it is evident that Scorsese loves his hometown. A small-time hood attempts to keep the peace between his friend Johnny and his debt collectors in this mob movie, and the seedy streets of NYC in the ’70s are always lurking in the shadows.
9 The Warriors (1979)
A street gang known as The Warriors must fight their way from the Bronx back to their home turf on Coney Island in Brooklyn after they are falsely accused of assassinating another gang leader. New York in the ’70s was very different than it is now. Crime rates were higher, the streets and sidewalks were dirtier, and there wasn’t a general sense of order. Much like the rivalry between the gangs in The Warriors, there was somewhat of a rivalry between the boroughs of the city. People from each borough want to believe that they are from the best area of the city.
8 Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
20th Century Fox
Most kids probably dream of having a day when they are free from their parents’ rules and can choose what they want to do with their time. What better place to do that than in the heart of New York City? Kevin McCallister gets to do exactly that in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Manhattan becomes his playground, and the staff at the Plaza Hotel his toys. He meets all different types of people on his solo journey throughout the Big Apple, but the person who has the most impact on him is the lady he meets in Central Park with the pigeons. She is kind to Kevin, and her home is literally just New York itself. She does not have a traditional home, the city is home enough.
7 West Side Story (1961)
United Artists
Musicals make their home in New York City, so it’s fitting that in West Side Story, NYC is the heart of the story. Two rival gangs, the American Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks, compete with each other to dominate the streets of the Upper West Side. Tensions rise to tragic levels as two teenagers, one from each gang, fall in love. New York is the battleground in this film adaptation of the Broadway musical. The gangs climb up fire escapes, jump over chain link fences, and meet under streetlights to fight their way into owning their corner of the island of Manhattan.
6 Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s has certainly received some valid criticisms over the decades, but it is still considered an icon for films set in New York. Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is a New York socialite who takes interest in a young man who moves into her apartment building, but her past threatens to intervene. High fashion, expensive jewelry, and grand penthouses fill the frames within this film, all aspects of the New York high society scene. The iconic status this movie has received within pop culture most likely would not exist if it wasn’t for the sweeping landscape of NYC and the flashy nature of wealth.
5 You’ve Got Mail (1998)
You’ve Got Mail was the second time Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks were cast as each other’s love interests after the success of Sleepless in Seattle. Ryan and Hanks play two feuding booksellers who happen to be anonymously emailing each other and falling in love, both completely unaware that he is trying to put her independent bookshop out of business. It’s no coincidence that they are falling in love in New York as it’s a place they are already in love with. There are many loving shots of the city that capture the same feeling depicted by Ryan’s and Hanks’ charming chemistry.
4 Do the Right Thing (1989)
Universal Pictures
Spike Lee’s third feature-length film, Do the Right Thing, takes place on the hottest day of the summer on one street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn when everyone’s hatred and bigotry boils until it explodes. This film is a perfect example of New York being more of a character than a setting. It’s summer, everyone is hot and uncomfortable, there’s not much to do, and no one has anywhere else to go. The city is getting hotter as the hours go by, and it’s not offering any solutions. The cramped, narrow streets and crowded buildings only add to the tensions that have risen among everyone on this street.
3 Taxi Driver (1976)
Columbia Pictures
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is an unstable veteran who works as a nighttime taxi driver on the dark streets of Manhattan in Taxi Driver. The degeneracy and sleaze only fuel his need for violence. New York is known for being the place to go to follow your dreams, but there have been moments in the city’s history when it was corrupt and frankly a dangerous place to be. So as Travis is continuously being sucked into the shadows of New York’s criminal scene, we can see the two different sides of the city.
2 After Hours (1985)
Another Scorsese film makes the list, unsurprisingly. An average word processor has the absolute worst night of his life when he agrees to visit a girl in Soho who he only met earlier in the night at a coffee shop in After Hours. This is a dark comedy that is quite different from most of Scorsese’s filmography and displays the nightmarish escapades that Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) has to endure after he makes the mistake of breaking his normal routine by meeting up with a woman he only just met that night. He actually encounters five women on his night out, all of them overpowering him and effectively pushing him deeper and deeper into the hell that the city is pushing on him.
1 When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Castle Rock Entertainment
Nora Ephron has a knack for writing New York as an integral part of her stories. When Harry Met Sally is the 12-year love story of a man and a woman who have an incredibly close friendship, but fear that making the relationship intimate will ruin the friendship. They originally part ways after they drive from college in Chicago all the way to Manhattan, but the city keeps finding ways to bring them back together. Through breakups, their best friends getting married, moving apartments, and finally sleeping together, Harry and Sally can’t live without each other. On New Year’s Eve, when Harry realizes he wants to spend the rest of his life with Sally, he runs through the miraculously empty streets of New York to get to her. It’s almost as if the city wanted them to be together because New York is anything but empty on New Year’s Eve.
