New York City and Cinema
- LAST REVIEWED: 17 April 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0287
- LAST REVIEWED: 17 April 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0287
Introduction
New York City has played a vital role in the history of American cinema. This bibliography draws together divergent strands of scholarship that approach the topic of New York City and cinema from multiple perspectives. The iconic cityscapes and distinctive cultural milieux of New York have provided both setting and subject matter for countless movies, whether filmed on location or recreated in Hollywood studios. There is a significant body of work that addresses New York onscreen, analyzing urban narratives and Genres and the use of locations, architecture, and specific areas of the city. This work has explored how cinema has engaged with the changing nature of New York over time, and investigated the representation of the city’s neighborhoods and ethnic groups. An important subsection of this scholarship pursues New York’s special relationship with particular film genres, such as The City Symphony, Musicals, Film Noir, and the Romantic Comedy. In the critical literature, New York has frequently been associated with the work of specific directors, including Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Spike Lee, as well as key figures in experimental film such as Shirley Clarke, Jonas Mekas, and Andy Warhol. New York has also been an important site for film production and exhibition. Although the American film industry has been predominantly based in Southern California since the 1910s, New York has always been Hollywood’s second city. In the studio era, it was home to the studios’ corporate headquarters and a string of highly profitable first-run theatres. Although filming in the city has waxed and waned, New York has always played an influential role as a regional production hub, a source of talent, and a center for film criticism. The city can claim a pivotal role in the development of early cinema, and it therefore holds a privileged place in histories of early film production and exhibition. New York has also operated in multiple ways as a counterpoint to Hollywood and a crucible for independent or alternative film culture. Experimental filmmaking has flourished in New York, especially in the mid-20th century, and the city has long operated as a vital hub for independent distribution as well as fostering a network of underground and nontheatrical exhibition spaces. This is addressed in intersecting bodies of work on experimental and independent film, and on New York Film Culture. There is now an extensive critical literature on the wider relationship between cinema and the city (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies article The City in Film by Pamela Robertson Wojcik for a more general cinema-city bibliography). This bibliography only includes sources that focus (in whole or in part) on New York City in particular.
General Overviews and Edited Collections
There are few books that provide a general survey of New York and cinema, as much of the scholarship in this area is organized around specific historical periods, geographical areas, Genres, directors, or themes. Sanders 2002 provides perhaps the broadest vantage point on the history of New York as setting and visual landscape for Hollywood films and is a crucial starting point for work on the subject. The essays in Pomerance 2007 provide a varied set of entry points to the topic of New York on screen. Harris 2011 is a useful, if selective, source of information on filming locations.
Harris, Scott Jordan, ed. World Film Locations: New York. Bristol: Intellect, 2011.
Accessible, illustrated guide to selected New York films and their locations, with maps and stills. Includes short profiles of New York filmmakers and key landmarks. Popular rather than scholarly, but may provide a useful reference guide for students.
Pomerance, Murray, ed. City That Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic Imagination. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007.
Anthology of essays that address various aspects of New York’s image on screen. Includes essays on films by Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Sidney Lumet, and Roman Polanski.
Sanders, James. Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies. New York: Knopf, 2002.
Panoramic overview of New York and film across the 20th century, focusing on the relationship between the real city and the “mythic city” of the movies. Combines substantial, carefully researched sections on topics such as Hollywood production design with shorter chapters that map out a typology of screen spaces—from apartments, tenements, and lofts, to stations, skyscrapers, and nightclubs. Accessible yet scholarly. Beautifully illustrated with 328 black and white images.
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Article
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Accounting, Motion Picture
- Acting
- Action Cinema
- Adaptation
- Advertising and Promotion
- African American Cinema
- African American Stars
- African Cinema
- AIDS in Film and Television
- Akerman, Chantal
- Allen, Woody
- Almodóvar, Pedro
- Alphaville
- Altman, Robert
- American Cinema, 1895-1915
- American Cinema, 1939-1975
- American Cinema, 1976 to Present
- American Independent Cinema
- American Independent Cinema, Producers
- American Public Broadcasting
- Anderson, Wes
- Animals in Film and Media
- Animation and the Animated Film
- Anime
- Arbuckle, Roscoe
- Architecture and Cinema
- Argentine Cinema
- Aronofsky, Darren
- Art Cinema
- Arzner, Dorothy
- Asian American Cinema
- Asian Television
- Astaire, Fred and Rogers, Ginger
- Australian Cinema
- Auteurism
- Authorship, Television
- Avant-Garde and Experimental Film
- Bachchan, Amitabh
- Battle of Algiers, The
- Battleship Potemkin, The
- Bazin, André
- Bergman, Ingmar
- Bernstein, Elmer
- Bertolucci, Bernardo
- Bigelow, Kathryn
- Biopics
- Birth of a Nation, The
- Blade Runner
- Blockbusters
- Brakhage, Stan
- Brando, Marlon
- Brazilian Cinema
- Breaking Bad
- Bresson, Robert
- British Cinema
- Broadcasting, Australian
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Burnett, Charles
- Buñuel, Luis
- Cameron, James
- Campion, Jane
- Canadian Cinema
- Capra, Frank
- Carpenter, John
- Casablanca
- Cassavetes, John
- Cavell, Stanley
- Censorship
- Chan, Jackie
- Chaplin, Charles
- Children in Film
- Chinese Cinema
- Cinecittà Studios
- Cinema and Media Industries, Creative Labor in
- Cinema and the Visual Arts
- Cinematography and Cinematographers
- Cinephilia
- Citizen Kane
- City in Film, The
- Cocteau, Jean
- Coen Brothers, The
- Colonial Educational Film
- Color
- Comedy, Film
- Comedy, Television
- Comics, Film, and Media
- Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI)
- Copland, Aaron
- Coppola, Francis Ford
- Copyright and Piracy
- Corman, Roger
- Costume and Fashion
- Cronenberg, David
- Cuban Cinema
- Cult Cinema
- 3D Cinema
- Dance and Film
- de Oliveira, Manoel
- Dean, James
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Denis, Claire
- Deren, Maya
- Design, Art, Set, and Production
- Detective Films
- Dietrich, Marlene
- Digital Media and Convergence Culture
- Directors
- Disability
- Disney, Walt
- Doctor Who
- Documentary Film
- Downton Abbey
- Dreyer, Carl Theodor
- Eastern European Television
- Eastwood, Clint
- Ecocinema
- Eisenstein, Sergei
- Elfman, Danny
- Epic Film
- Essay Film
- Ethnographic Film
- European Television
- Exhibition and Distribution
- Exploitation Film
- Fairbanks, Douglas
- Fan Studies
- Fantasy
- Fellini, Federico
- Festivals
- Film Aesthetics
- Film and Literature
- Film Guilds and Unions
- Film, Historical
- Film Noir
- Film Preservation and Restoration
- Film Theory and Criticism, Science Fiction
- Film Theory Before 1945
- Film Theory, Psychoanalytic
- Finance Film, The
- Ford, John
- French Cinema
- Game of Thrones
- Gance, Abel
- Gangster Films
- Garbo, Greta
- Garland, Judy
- German Cinema
- Gilliam, Terry
- Global Television Industry
- Godard, Jean-Luc
- Godfather Trilogy, The
- Godzilla
- Greek Cinema
- Griffith, D.W.
- Hammett, Dashiell
- Haneke, Michael
- Hawks, Howard
- Haynes, Todd
- Hepburn, Katharine
- Herrmann, Bernard
- Herzog, Werner
- Hindi Cinema, Popular
- Hitchcock, Alfred
- Hollywood Studios
- Holocaust Cinema
- Homeland
- Hong Kong Cinema
- Horror-Comedy
- Hsiao-Hsien, Hou
- Hungarian Cinema
- Icelandic Cinema
- Immigration and Cinema
- Indigenous Media
- Industrial, Educational, and Instructional Television and ...
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- Iranian Cinema
- Irish Cinema
- Israeli Cinema
- It Happened One Night
- Italian Americans in Cinema and Media
- Italian Cinema
- Japanese Cinema
- Jazz Singer, The
- Jews in American Cinema and Media
- Keaton, Buster
- King Kong
- Kitano, Takeshi
- Korean Cinema
- Kracauer, Siegfried
- Kubrick, Stanley
- Lang, Fritz
- Latin American Cinema
- Latina/o Americans in Film and Television
- Lee, Ang
- Lee, Chang-dong
- Lee, Spike
- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Cin...
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The
- Los Angeles and Cinema
- Lubitsch, Ernst
- Lumet, Sidney
- Lupino, Ida
- Lynch, David
- Mad Men
- Marker, Chris
- Martel, Lucrecia
- Marxism
- Masculinity in Film
- Media, Community
- Media Ecology
- Melodrama
- Memory and the Flashback in Cinema
- Metz, Christian
- Mexican Film
- Micheaux, Oscar
- Ming-liang, Tsai
- Minnelli, Vincente
- Miyazaki, Hayao
- Méliès, Georges
- Modernism and Film
- Mészáros, Márta
- Music and Cinema, Classical Hollywood
- Music and Cinema, Global Practices
- Music, Television
- Music Video
- Musicals
- Musicals on Television
- Narrative
- Native Americans
- New Media Art
- New Media Policy
- New Media Theory
- New York City and Cinema
- New Zealand Cinema
- Opera and Film
- Ophuls, Max
- Orphan Films
- Oshima, Nagisa
- Ozu, Yasujiro
- Panh, Rithy
- Pasolini, Pier Paolo
- Passion of Joan of Arc, The
- Peckinpah, Sam
- Pedagogy
- Philosophy and Film
- Photography and Cinema
- Pickford, Mary
- Planet of the Apes
- Poems, Novels, and Plays About Film
- Poitier, Sidney
- Polanski, Roman
- Polish Cinema
- Politics, Hollywood and
- Pop, Blues, and Jazz in Film
- Pornography
- Postcolonial Theory in Film
- Potter, Sally
- Prime Time Drama
- Psycho
- Queer Television
- Queer Theory
- Race and Cinema
- Radio and Sound Studies
- Ray, Nicholas
- Ray, Satyajit
- Reality Television
- Reenactment in Cinema and Media
- Regulation, Television
- Religion and Film
- Remakes, Sequels and Prequels
- Renoir, Jean
- Repo Man
- Resnais, Alain
- Romanian Cinema
- Romantic Comedy, American
- Rossellini, Roberto
- Russian Cinema
- Saturday Night Live
- Scandinavian Cinema
- Scorsese, Martin
- Scott, Ridley
- Searchers, The
- Seinfeld
- Sennett, Mack
- Sesame Street
- Shakespeare on Film
- Silent Film
- Simpsons, The
- Singin’ in the Rain
- Sirk, Douglas
- Soap Operas
- Social Class
- Social Problem Films
- Soderbergh, Steven
- Sound Design, Film
- Sound, Film
- Spanish Cinema
- Spanish-Language Television
- Spielberg, Steven
- Sports and Media
- Sports in Film
- Stand-Up Comedians
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Stardom
- Stop-Motion Animation
- Streaming Television
- Sturges, Preston
- Surrealism and Film
- Taiwanese Cinema
- Talk Shows
- Tarantino, Quentin
- Tarkovsky, Andrei
- Television Audiences
- Television Celebrity
- Television, History of
- Television Industry, American
- Theater and Film
- Theory, Cognitive Film
- Theory, Critical Media
- Theory, Feminist Film
- Theory, Film
- Theory, Trauma
- Touch of Evil
- Transnational and Diasporic Cinema
- Trinh, T. Minh-ha
- Truffaut, François
- Turkish Cinema
- Twilight Zone, The
- Twin Peaks
- Varda, Agnès
- Vertigo
- Vertov, Dziga
- Video and Computer Games
- Video Installation
- Violence and Cinema
- Virtual Reality
- Visconti, Luchino
- Von Sternberg, Josef
- Von Stroheim, Erich
- von Trier, Lars
- War Film
- Warhol, The Films of Andy
- Waters, John
- Wayne, John
- Weerasethakul, Apichatpong
- Weir, Peter
- Welles, Orson
- Whedon, Joss
- Whiteness
- Wilder, Billy
- Williams, John
- Wire, The
- Wiseman, Frederick
- Wizard of Oz, The
- Women and Film
- Women and the Silent Screen
- Wong, Anna May
- Wong, Kar-wai
- Woo, John
- Wood, Natalie
- Yimou, Zhang
- YouTube
- Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema
- Zinnemann, Fred
- Zombies in Cinema and Media