I want to wake up in the (fake) city that never sleeps…
1 comment June 5th, 2009
Susan Harrison and Burt Lancaster share a tense moment in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, with a vintage (and probably fake) ’50s New York right behind them.
Over at his Getafilm blog, Daniel Getahun has started a meme asking movie fans to pick their favorite movie era and place, a location and time where they’d like to live — or at least spend some time.
Daniel’s choice is a good one — Hill Valley in the year 2015, as depicted in the (very underrated) sequel, BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II. (And incidentally, isn’t it strange that that once far-off date is a mere six years away?) Me, I’m going back to the past instead, and to a city that’s real — or at least based on a real city.
I want to live in New York City as shown in any of these movies: SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, THE APARTMENT, THE FOUNTAINHEAD or CAT PEOPLE. (As runner-ups, I’ll accept PORTRAIT OF JENNIE and THE SEVENTH VICTIM.) The dates on these films range from 1942 for CAT PEOPLE to 1960 for THE APARTMENT, but they all share similar elements — evocative apartment and office settings, dramatic lighting a hard-to-explain combination of cozy surroundings and invigorating tension. Plus, everything was so much more beautifully designed back then — the cars, the buildings, the signage, you name it.Â
Those are all black and white movies, but I would accept a pair of color films as substitutes: THE HUDSUCKER PROXY and READ WINDOW. Man, I’d like to have Jimmy Stewart’s cool Greenwich Village apartment! And, for every more fictional versions of Manhattan, I’d take the ones shown in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW. That last pick even has a dirigible mooring mast on the Empire State Building, which was planned but never built.
There’s a great book, CELLULOID SKYLINE, that’s all about New York’s movie appearances through the years, and most of these movies get at least a mention. (There are plenty of other great New York movies from later years, like TAXI DRIVER and DOG DAY AFTERNOON, but I don’t want to live in that city — and plus, I already lived through the 1970s once.
How about you?
