We all know that New York City has come a long, long way.
In the 70s, it was damn near bankrupt. The Bronx looked like a war zone. Homeless people almost outnumbered homed people. The garbage collector strike wreaked havoc on the entire city. The subways weren’t safe. Ever.
Sadly, this is still the image that many people have of NYC.
And, while it does have its charm and romance…if your idea of romance is getting mugged while watching the dirtiest porn you can think of. I kind of love reading stories about The Deuce and its grindhouses. And I absolutely love movies that are set in that particular world.
But, just as I couldn’t live in NYC now, I DEFINITELY couldn’t live there in the 70s or 80s. It was just far too volatile for…well, anyone, really.
(I say all of this, but I love the hell out of New York City. As a visitor, though. I spent four weeks there one time. It was enough to go from “I could live here!” to tapping my fingers very roughly on the table, thinking “I gotta get outta here NOW!”)
There are, however, two sides to every story.
For every story about the Lower East Side burning, there’s a story about the Upper West side’s parties.
Let’s take a look at the two sides of NYC in two classic 70s movies.
TAXI DRIVER (1976)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Paul Schrader
For the dirty side of NYC, look no further than Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader’s vision. This is about as dirty as it gets.
You know the story. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro in one of his greatest and most indelible performances) is just on the edge of insanity.
He recently got back home from Vietnam and it’s taken its toll on his psyche. He loves his city, but he hates it, too. Everything about it is filth. He drives his taxi around at night mainly because he doesn’t sleep. Ever. When he meets Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), he falls instantly in…something. You never quite get the feeling that he really likes her. He just seems to think that he should like her. It doesn’t help that they’re from two different worlds. He’s from the dirt, she’s from the clean. Her co-worker, Tom (Albert Brooks), warns her against him, but she sees something in this schlub. Their first date is a disaster because he takes her to a porn theatre on 42nd Street.
Then Travis meets Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12 year old prostitute. He thinks it’s time to save this little girl from her dragon of a pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel in the creepiest performance in a career full of creepy performances).
That’s when the screaming starts. And the shooting. And the “You talkin’ to me?” (All improv, by the way.)
The ending of the film has been up for debate since the film came out to rave and awful reviews. It has since become a classic, and rightly so. Taxi Driver is a quintessential American film that shows the dark heart of one of the biggest and best cities in the world. Travis drives around Manhattan picking up awful person after awful person. (One of the worst is Scorsese himself.) Every person that he meets just seems to be worse than the last. Even the folks who surround Betsy aren’t the greatest. I mean, she hangs out with politicians. And Tom is obviously both looking out for Betsy and trying to get her for himself.
Any time I visit NYC, I always think of one of the first lines of this movie: “Thank God for the rain which has helped wash the garbage and trash off the sidewalks.”
MANHATTAN (1979)
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen/Marshall Brickman
Woody Allen is one of THE New York City directors. Sure, he’s left the boroughs a few times (more in the last decade than ever), but that doesn’t make him any less NYC.
The late 70s and 80s were Woody’s most NYC period. From Annie Hall up through Radio Days, almost every movie was a love letter to his home town. None more so than Manhattan.
Isaac (Allen) is a divorced writer who happens to be dating a teenager named Tracy (Mariel Hemingway). He really likes her a lot, but he keeps telling her not to get too attached because, one day, she’s going to meet someone her own age and leave him. He basically wants to be her teacher.
When Isaac meets Mary (Diane Keaton), he immediately hates her. She is everything he loathes. She’s a pretentious know-it-all. She hates everything. She’s not from New York. Eventually, though, he starts to fall for her. They spend an entire night just walking around Manhattan with her dog, ending the night with the sun coming up over the Manhattan Bridge (sitting on a park bench that wasn’t really there, by the way).
The catch is that Mary is not so secretly seeing Isaac’s best friend, Yale (Michael Murphy). Yale is happily married to Emily (Anne Byrne Hoffman), but he loves having Mary on the side. Mary has fallen head over heels for Yale, but knows that it will never work out. He’ll never leave Emily. That’s when Isaac and Mary go to the Planetarium and have a nearly intimate discussion on the surface of the moon.
What happens between these five people is really only half the story. The rest of the story is in the beautiful black and white cinematography by Gordon Willis. The opening montage set to Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue is some of the greatest filmmaking of all time. The Upper West Side has never looked so perfect. Not a bum in sight!
Not only that, but the monologue is perfect. Isaac is trying to write the perfect opening to his book. Instead, he writes the perfect introduction to New York City. Some of it is in the trailer, but watch the movie. It’s much better in its full version.
I love this movie. It’s funny, romantic, sad, bittersweet and even a little bit creepy when you look back a bit too hard on Woody’s life in the last 20 years. But I try not to do that. Just watch the movie.
There are plenty of great movies about New York City, many of them made in the 70s. Just about any movie by Scorsese, Allen, Lumet or Coppola will show you a side of NYC that you may not have seen before. Taxi Driver and Manhattan are good starting points, though.
Someday (maybe next time), I’ll do an NYC horror double feature.
