New York, a city of cinema

New York is one of the most watched and fantasized cities in the history of cinema. Its geographical location makes it one of the most cosmopolitan metropolises in the world, whose imagery alone represents the embodiment of the American dream. The image of the Statue of Liberty is often shown as the first visual contact of migrants with their host land over the centuries, in a mythological dimension that continues in animated cinema as in Fievel and the New World by Don Bluth (1986). New York is also a history of America that Martin Scorsese will have been able to capture in his sordid contemporaneity in Taxi Driver (1976), its brutal origins with Gangs of New York (2002) or the stifling tradition of one part of his community in the magnificent The Time of Innocence (1993). A sprawling city if there ever was one, New York is the ideal breeding ground for allowing thriller and film noir to flourish in an aesthetic emblematic of the cinematographic and historical period such as The city without the veil by Jules Dassin (1948), the threatening urbanity of the 1980s by Abel Ferrara: The Angel of Vengeance (1981), The King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992) and even futuristic visions of a Blade Runner (1982). Through his sentimental, existential and amused wanderings, Woody Allen also made himself the city’s finest ambassador.

Enjoy your reading before a next Coin du Cinéphile dedicated to Luigi Comencini!

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