New York, New York

The big apple, the city that never sleeps, the capital of the world: New York. I have never even been there, but I know what it looks like, I know where to go shopping, I know where the coolest places to go out are, where to not go if you want to stay alive, how much it would cost to leave on Central Park East, how to get from Jersey to The City...how is that even possible? Books, music, cinema and TV have been celebrating this city for ages, just like long dead poets used to chant about ancient Rome.

The good deal of lobbying that NYC puts in place to look cool in movies cannot be it: there is a real attraction about it that makes writers and directors decide to pick it as setting for their love stories, gangster’s stories, end of the world stories... or whatever story. If you Wikipedia a list of films set in NY, the list is amazingly long, especially in the last 10 or 20 years: even if you take into consideration that the amount of movies released in a year has quadrupled compared to the 40s, it still is a lot of movies to be set in one, single city.

And movies are not the only thing. I have never seen so much as “Central Perk” in the TV show Friends, and yet New York is a main character of the show. You don’t see much of it, but you get the feeling: the life style, the relationship, the dynamicity that you live there. And the list of TV shows, dramas or comedies, is long too.

Going back to movies, there are some that give me the feeling of knowing the city, of wanting to go there and live there and do the cool things that you see on the screen. Even if I know that it cannot possibly be that good in real life. The movies where you see the magic are mostly the ones in which the city is a character, a fundamental piece, a metaphor: a symbol of dreams and infinite possibilities, of finding love and realization; of the complications behind criminal activities or political and financial plots. We have the feeling that anything, bad or good can happen there, and that the city can be a beautiful fairy godmother or a terrible evil witch queen.

Making a list of movies in which these feelings are best conveyed is impossible because it is so subjective. However, I can very easily mention the ones that more easily come into my mind when I think of NY. I am not going to go into the ones that have New York or Manhattan in the title, because that’s too easy; or into any Woody Allen’s movie, because that would be even more easy. Some of them give you that romantic, dreamy image of the city; some others are more cruel and real, and possibly impact even more. Here are my favorites, which can be taken as representatives of different categories.

• When Harry Met Sally. Love movies.
• Fame. Talent movies.
• Miracle on 34th Street. Good feelings/Christmas movies.
• Do the right thing. Not-so-good-as-it-seems/problems-to-deal-with movies.
• Breakfast at Tiffany. Self-redemption movies.
• Mr. Deeds goes to town. Small-towns-are-better movies.
• The devil wears Prada. Fashion oriented movies.
• The Godfather. Gangsters movies.
• Men In Black. Sci-fi but funny movies.
• The Day after tomorrow. Apocalyptic movies. 
• Wall Street. Corruption movies

I am sure I forgot many, but you got the idea!