NYC NOIR: 5-Week 46-Movie Festival previously at Film Forum July 27-August 30 -- plus THE SILENT CITY on Mondays

“Film Forum has put together a series which features a whopping 47 movies that collectively portray this city as dangerous, corrupt, frazzling, beautiful, and dangerously sexy, and who could argue? Famously nothing shocks New Yorkers, and that urban sang-froid is precisely the spirit of N.Y.C. Noir. These ravishing pictures show us all the dirty things, outside and inside, that we've somehow learned to love.”
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Click here to read

Click here for a New York Times photo gallery accompanying Rafferty's feature on NYC Noir

“Big screen New York either captures the pain, loneliness, anger, anxiety, risk, and triumph of the city living or it doesn’t. The pictures in Film Forum’s NYC Noir retrospective not only romance that unique homegrown pain, but successfully exported it to the rest of the world with style.”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun Click here to read feature

"Film Forum is also doing its part to keep the summer movie revival season humming locally with a long, ambitious program:
NYC Noir."
- Andrew Sarris, The New York Observer

"Film Forum's forthcoming NYC Noir series closes out the summer with the very best in two-fisted tales of seduction, sleaze and crime from an era when men were men, women were femmes fatale and NYU only owned 1/100th of New York."
– John Lichman, The Reeler Click here to read feature

“If you have ever in your life been nostalgic for a period of N.Y.C. life you weren't around to experience, or if you just really like the dark motives and fatale verve of noir movies, you should really, really show up at NYC NOIR... You'd be wise to check out the whole schedule and plan ahead.”
– Mark Asch, The L magazine

(1957, ALEXANDER MACKENDRICK) “I love this dirty town!” “Match me, Sidney” barks sanctimonious, Winchellesque gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker (a bespectacled Burt Lancaster) to sycophantic publicist Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), who’ll do anything in pursuit of that ever-elusive ink, in the quintessential portrait of the rancid underside of The Great White Way. The ultra-stylized dialogue by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman (who wrote the original short story) is now legendary (quoted wholesale in everything from Diner to The Simpsons). As are Elmer Bernstein’s jazz score and James Wong Howe’s glistening location-shot b&w cinematography, with midtown of the late 50s seen in the minutest detail, from a 46th Street hotdog stand, to the lights of Times Square (including the marquees of the since-demolished Loews State, Astor, and Rivoli Theaters), to the Brill Building (doubling as Hunsecker’s swanky apartment building), to a shadowy street below the Queensboro Bridge. There isn’t a greater picture about this crazy burg.
1:45, 3:40, 5:35, 7:30, 9:25

“Uniquely delicious!” – Mark Asch, The L magazine

“A movie of blistering cynicism that boasts some of the purplest dialogue ever to emerge from the typewriter of blacklistee screenwriter Clifford Odets.”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

"McKendrick's first American movie, a pungent exploration of ambition and evil in the New York newspaper world, is his masterpiece. A chilling and powerful picture."
- Elliot Stein, Village Voice

"Witheringly cynical...the opening film of the series, and it sets exactly the right tone."
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times

“Extraordinary for its depiction of a now-vanished New York, for the spiraling viciousness of Lancaster and Curtis, and for the plot, which hinges on a smear campaign.”
- Stuart Klawans, The New York Times

“Captures the smarmy texture of the world of Broadway.” – Neil Gabler

“Paints New York as a jungle of glitz and devouring egos.” – Godfrey Cheshire

"THE DOUBLE FEATURE TO END ALL DOUBLE FEATURES!" – Andrew Sarris, New York Observer

(1944, OTTO PREMINGER) “I shall never forget the weekend Laura died.” Clifton Webb’s elitist critic Waldo Lydecker acidly narrates, as detective Dana Andrews, on the brink of necrophilia, falls in love with portrait of murdered Manhattan smart-setter Gene Tierney, in the classic romantic noir. With Vincent Price, Judith Anderson. Preminger took over from Rouben Mamoulian (see Sept. 7-18).
2:55, 6:30, 10:05

"Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews give off sparks in one of the most perverse noirs of the '40s."
- Time Out New York

"A wonderfully sleek and inventive picture."
- Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times

“Ripe with perverse sexual undertones.”
– Foster Hirsch

“Introduced a gallery of perverse types as well as the most hauntingly romantic theme of the decade.” – J. Hoberman

“Everybody’s favorite chic murder mystery.” – Pauline Kael

(1944, FRITZ LANG) Professor Edward G. Robinson takes up Joan Bennett’s “come up and see my sketches” invitation, then, after blackmail by low-life boyfriend Dan Duryea and the ensuing murder, gets to watch his old buddy, D.A. Raymond Massey, “use the law to nail a man.”
1:00, 4:35, 8:10

"Lang's gripping meditation on the nature of fate; be sure to stick around for the surprise finale. Gorgeous new print; DO NOT MISS."
- Time Out New York

“An exceptionally intelligent thriller.”
– David Shipman.

“Absorbing, diverting and full of often painful suspense.”
– Richard Mallett, Punch

(1928, EDWARD SEDGWICK) In his last silent masterpiece, Buster Keaton, as the neophyte newsreel photographer of the title, loses his swimsuit at Coney Island and his heart on the streets of Manhattan, lensing Mott Street Tong Wars while being upstaged by monkey great Jocko.
3:50*, 7:00*, 10:10

“A lovely start to Film Forum’s series.” – Rachel Saltz, The New York Times

“Worth going out of your way for!” – Time Out New York

“A ROMANTIC CHARMER! Keaton proves his genius at creating a parabola-like farce with what looks like a series of straight lines, whether he’s racing across town to face his true love before she realizes that he’s off the phone or getting his tripod levelled during a tong war by flying bullets.”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

“Keaton at the height of his art and master of every detail of silent filmmaking.”
– Rudi Blesh

(1928, TED WILDE) Jazz Age Idols meet, as baseball-crazed soda jerk/cabbie Harold Lloyd and passenger Babe Ruth hurtle to old Yankee Stadium. Extensive NYC location work is highlighted during a frenzied finale, as Harold races Gotham’s last horse-drawn trolley right through Washington Square Arch! Silent, with synchronized musical score.
2:10, 5:20, 8:30

“Beautifully of its age, the Jazz Age, which perhaps found it s purest physical expression in New York.”
– Rachel Saltz, The New York Times

“No filmmaker had ever made such flamboyant use of New York.”
– Kevin Brownlow

(1941, H. BRUCE HUMBERSTONE) In what’s often called the first true American film noir, sports promoter Victor Mature finds “protégée” Carol Landis dead, then is alternately menaced by hulking detective Laird Cregar and solaced by victim’s sister Betty Grable. Another first: Gotham skyline credit sequence underscored by Alfred Newman’s soon-to-be-ubiquitous “Street Scene.”
1:05, 4:25, 7:45

"Betty Grable is enormoously appealing in her first non-musical role in this moody noir 'wrong man' whodunit graced with superlative lighting from veteran cameraman Edward Cronajer, who creates surprising menace from the slanting shadows of Venentian blinds. Another asset of this fine thriller is a memorable performance by the marvelously sinister Laird Cregar."
- Elliot Stein, Village Voice

(1948, ANATOLE LITVAK) Busy signal on 911? Compare to Barbara Stanwyck’s plight as, bedridden in her Sutton Place riverview apartment, she frantically dials for help after overhearing husband Burt Lancaster’s murder plans.
2:40, 6:00, 9:20

"Good, tense fun!" - Time Out New York

"In this taut chamber noir Barbara Stanwyck found one of her most indelible roles." - Elliot Stein, Village Voice

(1953, SAMUEL FULLER) Lowlife grifter Richard Widmark’s routine subway snatch of Jean Peters’ purse plunges him deep into the Cold War. Set in what noir historian Foster Hirsch called “a palpably real environment: New York in the summer.”
WED 2:55, 6:25, 9:55
THU 2:55

“Hard, tough, and brutal and indebted to Joe MacDonald’s superb high-contrast black-and-white photography, Fuller’s slam-bang, endlessly inventive anti-Commie noir is some kind of masterpiece.”
- Elliott Stein, The Village Voice

“One of 1950s cinema’s most vivid evocations of New York street life.”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

"One of the best low-budget thrillers ever made!" - Time Out New York

“A marvel of middle class nuttiness.” – Manny Farber

“If there is such a thing as tabloid art, this is it.” – J. Hoberman.

(1947, HENRY HATHAWAY) “I thought you was my pal!” Even the Tombs looks good to kid-loving squealer Victor Mature, after being tormented by giggling psycho Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark’s electrifying debut), forever enshrined in movie baddiedom as the guy who propels an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs.
WED 1:00, 4:30, 8:00
THU 1:00, 4:30

“Tense, terrifying...with an unusually seamy atmosphere.” – Pauline Kael

“A killer’s kiss to the city.” – NY Post

(1947, GEORGE CUKOR) In the role of Othello, matinee idol Ronald Colman (in Oscar-winning performance) lives his part with a vengeance, both on stage at the Lyceum and off, at waitress Shelley Winters’ Mulberry Street apartment. With Oscar-winning Miklos Rozsa score.
8:00

“Director Cukor’s nose for authentic New York theater flavor is spot on. Ronald Colman’s mesmerizing performance deservedly won him as Oscar.”
- Elliott Stein, The Village Voice

“Brilliant melodrama with wonderful New York theater flavor!” – Leonard Maltin

(1943, MARK ROBSON) Boarding school grad Kim Hunter searches for her sister amid unnervingly calm Village devil-worshippers (ironically in the same neighborhood where Hunter lives today). With pre-Psycho shower scene and a corpse in the subway.
6:30, 10:00

“POSSIBLY THE GREATEST GREENWICH VILLAGE MOVIE EVER MADE…
A literate, mesmerizing, utterly unique work.”
- David Noh, Gay City News

“One of producer Val Lewton’s most effectively atmospheric Bs.”
– J. Hoberman

(1974, JOSEPH SARGENT) “Screw the goddamn passengers! What do they want for their thirty-five cents? To live forever?” “This city hasn’t got a million dollars!” kvetches the flu-plagued Koch-lookalike mayor to hovering spin doctors when he gets that ransom ultimatum: cough up the dough in an hour or 17 passengers on the downtown 6 train get wasted. Wisecracks and bullets fly as quick-witted TA cop Walter Matthau negotiates with the all-business “Mr. Blue” (Robert Shaw) via subway squawkbox, in Peter Stone’s crackling adaptation of the John Godey bestseller, featuring terrific Gotham locations, knife-edge hilarity, a thrilling jazz score by David Shire, and third-rail brand jolts.
1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50

“A violent and funny hostage caper with the cynical irreverence of a vintage Jimmy Breslin column and the relentless energy of an early James Bond film… Directed with breathless expediency.”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

“A time capsule spiked with amphetamines… It may be the perfect movie for post-blackout New Yorkers. And what a cast!”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

“Giddily thrilling! Bootylicious with tuba, David Shire’s score mates blaxploitation bomp to vintage-cop-show rattle and dread; indeed, Sargent’s whole enterprise doubles as a 70’s archaeological dig, its eureka momentarriving when the cop car with ransom in tow crashes in a grimy, pre-Starbucks Astor Place.”
– Jessica Winter, Village Voice

(1945, BILLY WILDER) “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Failed writer Ray Milland hits the sauce and bottom in Oscar winner for director and star—so harrowing that most viewers’ first need was for a drink. Among the famous sequences: the bat and mouse hallucination and the desperate trek for money past actual 3rd Ave. pawnshops closed for Yom Kippur. .
SUN 2:50, 6:35, 10:20
MON 2:10, 6:00

(1948, JOHN FARROW) Monomaniacal magazine mogul Charles Laughton orders Crimeways Magazine editor Ray Milland to track down a murderer—with all clues pointing to Milland himself. One of the great sleeper classics of noir suspense, with a key clue purchased at a Third Ave. antique shop.
SUN 1:00, 4:45, 8:30
MON 4:10

“A Taut and elegantly directed thriller. Charles Laughton’s performance is a technical tour de force, comic and powerful, a multifaceted portrait of arrogance and assertiveness.”
- Elliott Stein, The Village Voice

"Tense, sprightly...[with] a nice lurid murder in it. The tricky plot generates plenty of suspense and anxious comedy, which make tolerable--even enjoyable--the movie's vivid treatment of a peculiarly good nightmare."
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times

“Ludicrous and magnificently repulsive.” – Peter Ericsson

“Will remind you not only of The Blue Dahlia but of Graham Greene and Hitchcock, with a dash of Hammett and Ambler.”
– David Shipman

(1928, KING VIDOR) “You gotta be good to beat that crowd.” James Murray and Eleanor Boardman (real-life wife of the director) marry after a thrill-packed date at Coney, then weather kids, job loss, and marital troubles, in Vidor’s landmark paean to “real people” — the most celebrated silent drama of life in NYC. Plus short Meet Me Down at Coney Island (1931).
8:10*

“One of the last silent masterpieces!”
– Time Out New York

“REMARKABLE!
Literally covers more NYC ground than almost any other silent film.”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

“A SILENT MASTERPIECE which turns a realistically caustic eye on the illusionism of the American dream. The performances are absolutely flawless, and astonishing location work in the busy New York streets lends a gritty ring of truth to This intensely human odyssey.”
- Tom Milne, Time Out (London)

“An extraordinary masterwork of complex simplicity...it seems more modern than ever. One of the very few uncompromising works of humanist art in world cinema.”
- Peter Bogdanovich

(1946, HAROLD CLURMAN) “Actress” Susan Hayward and cabbie Paul Lukas (uttering nutty Sweet Smell-worthy Clifford Odets dialogue) sail around the mean streets of Manhattan in the wee small hours to help clear sailor Bill Williams of a murder rap. Sole film directing job by stage legend Clurman, based on Cornell Woolrich (aka “William Irish”) novel.
2:30, 5:40, 8:50

(1949, TED TETZLAFF) A tall-tale-telling tenement kid’s eyewitness account of a sailor’s murder is believed by nobody but the killers themselves. From a Cornell Woolrich story, with a special Oscar to child star Bobby Driscoll, whose body would be discovered twenty years later in the rubble of an abandoned New York building. “Edgar” for Best Mystery Film of its year.
1:00, 4:10, 7:20, 10:20

"An earlier, junior version of Rear Window...the movie has an extraordinary visual unity and [director] Tetzlaff has the wit to give all the settings a uniform dark luster, the look of a playhouse just after lights-out, when ordinary, familiar objects can start to appear changed and menacing."
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times

“Logical, well-shaped, cohesive, admirably acted, beautifully photographed and cut to a nicety.” – Richard Winnington

(1948, JULES DASSIN) “There are eight million stories in the naked city. . .” The seminal all-location noir. Following a young woman’s murder on W. 83rd St., cops Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor track down leads from Stillman’s Gym to the Roxy Theater to the City Morgue to Roosevelt Hospital, with final showdown on the Williamsburg Bridge. Oscar-winning camerawork from former Garbo photographer William Daniels.
1:00, 4:25, 7:50

"Brilliant cameraman William Daniels' New York location footage is sensational- the city's the star."
– Elliott Stein, Village Voice

“Masterfully kinetic!” – Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

“New York comes to life as it was in its glory years, the era of streetcars, the Third Avenue El,
fedoras, dance halls, chop-suey joints and a functioning infrastructure.”
– William Grimes, The New York Times

(1948, ABRAHAM POLONSKY) Successful attorney John Garfield doesn’t blink at being front man for mobsters until numbers-running brother Thomas Gomez wants out. Poetically written and directed by soon-to-be blacklisted Polonsky, with key scenes at Federal Hall, 28 Wall St., the George Washington Bridge, and a final East River rendezvous.
2:50, 6:15, 9:40

"Abraham Polonsky's poetic, Marxist noir turned out to be one of the most promising debuts in Hollywood history."
– Elliott Stein, Village Voice

“A NOIR MASTERPIECE! Features John Garfield at his most commanding.”
– Time Out New York

“A world of sleaze and greed imploding before your eyes.”
– Martin Scorsese

“Moodily and brilliantly photographed in New York streets, gloweringly well-acted and almost as hypnotic as Citizen Kane.”
– Leslie Halliwell

(1960, ALLEN BARON) Le Samourai, Gotham style: writer/director Baron as a hired killer takes his time setting up the hit, with distractions from a former girlfriend and porcine hood Big Ralph (Paul Mazursky writing partner Larry Tucker).
3:50, 8:10

"A TRULY LOST AND UNDISCOVERED GEM! This one-last-job B thriller blends no-budget Cassavetes charm with Chandleresque narration and actual Long Island locations."
-– Time Out New York

“Mixes a tense, stark photographic style and eerie location footage with a non-stop voiceover that reeks of alienation.”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

(1958, WILLIAM A. BERKE) When the third detective killed in the 87th Precinct is his partner, Robert Loggia’s Steve Carelli begins to question whether the murderer is the eponymous serialist. From the Ed McBain novel.
2:20, 6:40

(1950, EDWARD J. MONTAGNE) When a brutally-murdered tattooed woman is found near the pre-jogging, pre-Onassis Central Park reservoir, an NYPD Homicide rookie trails a serial killer from Brooklyn to the Bronx.
1:00, 5:20*, 9:40

“An underseen rough-cut gem of a policier... Decades ahead of its time!”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

(1968, ROMAN POLANSKI) Despite their fab new Upper West Side apartment in the venerable “Bramford” (actually, the Dakota), complete with eerily avuncular neighbors Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon (the latter in an Oscar-winning performance by turns hilarious and chilling), nice kid Mia Farrow’s career-obsessed actor husband John Cassavetes is still looking for that big break. But then a Broadway lead looms when the star mysteriously goes blind, and Farrow gets in the family way after an evening of wild love-making—but wait...was that hubby, or some sort of horned beast? Suddenly every harried mom-to-be’s nightmare seems true. Polanski brought his penchant for no-exit situations and crumbling sanity amid banal settings (Knife in the Water, Cul-de-Sac, Repulsion) to mainstream, big-budget horror.
1:30, 4:10, 7:00, 9:35

“Skin-crawling. but sophisticated and funny.” – Pauline Kael

“Pregnant women should see it at their own risk.” – Motion Picture Herald

(1976, MARTIN SCORSESE)) “You talkin’ to me?” The last word on Big Apple paranoia and short circuit energy, as Robert De Niro’s insomniac hack Travis Bickle yearns for a rain that’ll “wash all the scum off the streets,” transforming himself into a mohawked, armed-to-the-teeth avenging angel, meeting his own judgment day in the form of child hooker Jodie Foster and her pimp Harvey Keitel. Featuring the last great score by Bernard Herrmann, who died the day after finishing it, and with Scorsese in a memorable cameo as a hopped-up cuckold.
SUN 3:35, 7:50
MON 1:00, 5:15

“Like a raw, tabloid version of Notes from Underground.”
– Pauline Kael

“It came, it saw, it lodged itself in America’s psyche.”
– J. Hoberman

(1973, MARTIN SCORSESE) Guilt-ridden hood Harvey Keitel keeps a low profile, but out-of-his-friggin’-mind cousin Robert De Niro doesn’t give a flyin’ pasta fazool about those gambling debts. In his breakthrough picture, Scorsese invests a typical gang story with a gritty street feel, with exteriors shot in and around his Elizabeth St. home turf.
SUN 1:30, 5:45, 10:00
MON 3:10

"The young-hods film that launched a thousand knockoffs has lost none of its startling power over the years.
Scorsese, Keitel, De Niro, Little Italy, the Ronettes- what more do you want?"
– Time Out New York

“An uncompromising and hugely influential ’70s crime masterpiece” – Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

(1928, JOSEF VON STERNBERG) Dock worker George Bancroft marries waterfront hooker Betty Compson after rescuing her from suicide, in Von Sternberg’s expressionist masterpiece. “Von Sternberg’s peak as a visual stylist.” – David Shipman. 35mm print courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Hollywood Museum Collection, City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation and Parks.
8:50*

"From billowing smoke to the slightest lowering of a shoulder, ever frame of Von Sternberg's silent classic is packed with such naked sexual energy and longing that it makes most films currently in release look banal by comparison."
– Time Out New York

"It was this visually ornate late masterpiece of the silent screen that brought Sternberg's pictorial artistry to full flower.
Light and darkness, mist and shadows make the exquisite camera work as compelling as the story."
– Elliott Stein, Village Voice

“A private world of light and shade, romance and violence, strong men and mysterious women...
von Sternberg's erotic imagery coming into being.”
- David Shipman

“More than any previous film, Sternberg has integrated spectacle and psychology.” - Andrew Sarris

(1915, RAOUL WALSH) Shot on the Bowery with actual bums, winos, hookers and thugs as extras, and capped with a spectacular cruise ship fire, this is “the most authentic-looking gangster film surviving from the entire silent period” (Kevin Brownlow). Plus D.W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), with Lillian Gish and Lionel Barrymore.
7:30*

"There is perhaps no cinematic view of slum life as shockingly squalid as the one on view in this 1915 drama, one of the first gangster films, made largely on location in New York. The director Raoul Walsh, who grew up in the city, infuses his first surviving feature with the raw street life of his youth and a colorful, disturbing array of broken-down, life-worn extras he recruited from saloons. The redemptive ending foretold in the title does little to dispel the air of grimness induced by the sight of cracked walls, ragged clothes, filthy tin buckets of beer, and ugly fistfights of a knockdown, drag-out inconclusiveness. Revelling in the cinema’s power to set a vast scene in a single glance, Walsh gives the spare, schematic story a novelistic amplitude."
– Richard Brody, New Yorker

THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY:
“The soft-hearted melodrama provides a sharply focused view of a back-alley urban Atlantis that, though vanished beneath nearly a century of increasingly upscale real estate, still silently calls from the silver screen.”
– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

(1945, HENRY HATHAWAY) The picture that brought Hollywood movies back to the streets: as Reed Hadley’s narration rat-a-tat-tats, FBI agent William Eythe infiltrates Signe Hasso’s mob of Yorkville Nazis. Semi-doc shot on the real case’s actual locations, with 53 E. 93rd Street in the title role.
2:55, 6:35, 10:15

(1946, HENRY HATHAWAY) “I’m backed up in a dark corner, and I don’t know who’s hitting me.” Mayhem on the New York art scene: wise-cracking secretary Lucille Ball aids boss Mark Stevens, on the run from a phony murder rap and hired thug William Bendix — himself later menaced by Lydeckeresque Clifton Webb.
1:00, 4:40, 8:20

(1942, JACQUES TOURNEUR) Ambiguities proliferate, as Balkan-descended fashion designer Simone Simon fears a panther metamorphosis if her passions are aroused. Memorably subtle horror sequences include a stalking at an indoor pool and the arrival of a New York bus!
2:40, 6:05, 9:30

"Conveys a haunting New York ambience." – John Ashbery

"A remarkably discerning portrait of sexual repression." – Time Out New York

“As important as Citizen Kane in the development of a more mature American cinema.” – Martin Scorsese

(1944, ROBERT SIODMAK) Ella Raines and Franchot Tone desperately search for a condemned man’s only hope to beat a wife-murder rap—the nameless woman he met in a bar. With orgasmic Elisha Cook Jr. drum solo. From a Cornell Woolrich novel, with “the essential ingredients of Woolrich’s world, the desperate innocent at loose at night in New York City, a city of hot sweltering streets...” (Robert Porfiro).
1:00, 4:25, 7:50*

"A first-rate mystery!" – Time Out New York

“An abstractly atmospheric evocation of New York after dark...
a template for studio-made hardcore noir.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

(1942, JACK HIVELY) Burgess Meredith, waking up in a strange part of town — haven’t we all? — finds a year has passed, a fiancée he’s never met, and a murdered boss. From yet another Woolrich story and “an important early entry in the noir cycle” (Robert Porfirio).
4:15, 8:35

(1942, ANTHONY MANN) A blonde about to jump from a neon-lit Times Square hotel ledge, nightclub patrons fading into the woodwork as enemies meet, and a gangster fried to death by an ultra-violet lamp: later Westerns giant Mann already showed stylistic flair in Runyonesque debut.
2:55, 7:15

(1950, EARL MCEVOY) Panic in the streets: when diamond smuggler Evelyn Keyes returns from Cuba with the hot ice — and a case of smallpox — she’s trailed by both T-men and the NYC Department of Health.
1:20, 5:40, 10:00

(1979, WALTER HILL) As color-coded gangs gather in thousands in the Bronx, charismatic leader Cyrus is assassinated and the finger points, mistakenly, at the Warriors—now it’s one long train back to Coney. Stylized violence-packed update of Xenophon’s Anabasis, with Mercedes Ruehl briefly recognizable among the otherwise anonymously spectating cops.
2:50, 6:25, 10:00

(1972, GORDON PARKS, JR.) “Eight-track stero, color TV in every room and you can snort half a piece of dope ever' day. That's the American Dream." Coke-blowing pusher Priest has fine vines, a mean haul and a pair of foxes, but he wants to split from the life--so he's got a plan to stick it to The Man. Ron O'Neal stars as one of the era's most unforgettable icons: cool, calm and baaaad, with his long hair, insolent pout, wide brim hats and sweeping coats creating the ultimate early 70s fashion statement. Music by Curtis Mayfield.
1:00, 4:35, 8:10

"Its gut pleasures are real, and there are a lot of them." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times

(1945, FRITZ LANG) Jealousy and murder in a Village apartment, as Sunday painter Edward G. Robinson moves from canvas to toenails in his infatuation for Mulberry St. hooker Joan Bennett, but draws the line at finding her with sleazeball Dan Duryea. Lang’s own personal favorite of his American films.
SUN 3:40, 7:15
MON 2:40

"Fritz Lang's most harrowing study...In many ways the apotheosis of Lang's expressionism,
a film that lives in the dark night of the Catholic soul. Strongly recommended!"
– Dave Kehr

"In giving Renoir's La Chienne the Hollywood treatment Fritz Lang softened the characterizations and raised the s/m quotient.
The best passages are textbook noir."
– J. Hoberman

(1949, ANTHONY MANN) Disgruntled postal worker Farley Granger dips into the till to top off the family budget, but picks on the wrong guy’s roll, and soon it’s a three-way chase with both hoods and cops on his tail: with cars careening through the location-shot Sunday morning canyons of lower Manhattan—stunningly photographed by James Alton.
SUN 2:00, 5:35, 9:10
MON 1:00, 4:35

"A chilly, documentary-style noir...For Mann, a hostile environment is a given, and his Manhattan is not much different from the jagged mountain ranges that fill his later westerns: a place of highs and lows, steep ascents and sudden drops, where moral compasses spin into uselessness."
- Dave Kehr, The New York Times Click here to read full review

(1924, ALLAN DWAN) Gum-cracking Macy’s shopgirl Gloria Swanson finds her chance impersonation of a Russian countess (parodying Swanson’s rival Pola Negri) is an entrée into Manhattan society. Quintessential working girl comedy, with a memorable subway rush hour crunch. Plus short Broadway By Day (1931).
7:00*

"One might almost go back and see Manhandled a second time, because of the knack and skill, the refined grace with which Gloria Swanson removes her shoes."
– Carl Sandburg

“Dwan's own favorite and the best of his Swanson series.”
– Philip Kemp

(1927, CLARENCE BADGER) In the picture that catapulted her to super-stardom, shopgirl Clara Bow — in hot pursuit of boss Antonio Moreno — turns a pronoun into the most desirable attribute of the decade; ie., “sex appeal.” With a cameo by IT originator Elinor Glyn and newcomer (and Bow beau) Gary Cooper. Silent, with synchronized musical score.
8:20

(1950, GEORGE SHERMAN) Drugs, blackmail and murder at Bellevue — no, its not a Frederick Wiseman documentary — with Richard Conte going undercover as an intern, and speaking a “no particular city” prologue to appease an irate Mayor O’Dwyer.
2:50, 6:20, 9:50 CRY OF THE CITY

(1948, ROBERT SIODMAK) Hood Richard Conte and relentlessly pursuing cop — and childhood pal — Victor Mature take turns shrugging off bullet wounds on the trail of stolen diamonds, with memorable encounter with “white and plump as a slug” shyster Barry Kroeger. With Shelley Winters.
1:00, 4:30, 8:00

(1955, STANLEY KUBRICK) Down-on-his-luck boxer falls Jamie Smithhard for Pleasureland (49th and B’way) hostess Irene Kane (now better known as Josephine Baker biographer Chris Chase), but club boss Frank Silvera has his own plans. Arms, heads, and legs go flying in the axe-swinging mannequin factory showdown that concludes Kubrick’s second feature, a Cassavetes-like blend of New York avant-garde and mood-drenched noir.
3:05, 6:30, 9:55

“For anyone who wants to get a flavor of mid-50s Times Square, showcasing the cheap attractions of the area.”
– William Grimes, NY Times

(1961, JACK GARFEIN) College girl Carroll Baker bails out from under domineering mom Mildred Dunnock to the Lower East Side, but still can’t handle the trauma of her brutal rape in a park. Will similarly lost-soul/garage mechanic Ralph Meeker (Kiss Me Deadly) prove savior or ...? Second and last film by Baker’s then-husband, with score by no less than Aaron Copland, and moody photography of a sizzling NYC summer by the great Eugene Schüfttan (Metropolis, The Hustler).
1:00, 4:25, 7:50

(1954, ALFRED HITCHCOCK) “Why would a man leave his apartment three times on a rainy night with a suitcase and come back three times?” Laid up with a broken leg in his apartment in the “low-rent district” (the West Village!), news fotog James Stewart wiles away the sweaty summertime hours between visits from uptown gal-with-her-eye-on-marriage Grace Kelly by using that telephoto lens to zero in on the human comedy across his courtyard: a lonely woman; newlyweds who can’t get enough; boozing musician wrestling with that elusive love tune; the dancer with boyfriend overload; the childless couple with the beloved little dog—but, hey, what’s Raymond Burr up to? From a story by suspense titan Cornell Woolrich (writing as William Irish), one of the Master’s greatest successes: a witty, moving, and nerve-shredding entertainment; a technical tour de force, with Hitchock’s most ruthless orchestration of point of view; and a meditation on the voyeurism of both filmmakers and the audience.
2:35, 6:15, 9:55

(1948, ALFRED HITCHCOCK) “We’ve killed for the sake of danger and the sake of killing...I felt tremendous, exhilarated!” Hitchcock’s boldest technical experiment ever, as the claustrophobic, single-set story of effete rich boys Farley Granger and John Dall’s thrill-seeking murder—clearly derived from the Leopold-Loeb case—is exposed by Professor James Stewart. With the action taking place in “real time” and shot in continuously moving ten-minute takes, the entire thing seems to be composed of only four shots (count ‘em), causing as much suspense on the set as for the audience.
1:00, 4:40, 8:20

(1957, ALFRED HITCHCOCK) Returning at dawn to Jackson Heights, Stork Club bass player Henry Fonda finds himself trapped in a classic mistaken-identity case. Shot by Hitch in ruthlessly restrained semi-doc style on the locations of the actual case, with harrowing sequence of Fonda’s booking and arraignment and memorable innocent-to-guilty dissolve.
SUN 3:15, 7:30
MON 3:05

Until 1912, movies were registered for copyright on strips of paper. Restored to film beginning in the 1940s, the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection preserves more than 3,000 turn-of-the-20th-century American movies, including scenic views of a long-vanished New York. The Library’s chief film curator Mike Mashon presents this dazzling collection of NYC actuality footage from 1898 to 1906, along with other goodies from the LoC’s Collection.
7:30*

(1929, PAUL FEJOS) Glenn Tryon and Barbara Kent, two single-roomed Gotham dwellers, meet and lose each other at a Coney Island excursion, but then discover. . . Fejos’ tour de force was “part of a movement away from nightclubs, newspaper offices and marble halls towards the ordinary Joes in the audience” (David Shipman). Silent, with talking sequences and synchronized musical score.
8:50

"Visually complex...a peculiar appeal." – Time Out New York

“Paul Fejos's charming partial talkie is a wonderful celebration of 1920s New York, the era's definitive evocation of poignant anonymity amid the metropolitan crowd.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

(1971, ALAN J. PAKULA) Smalltown detective Donald Sutherland, journeying to NYC to seek a friend’s murderer, finds both were clients of high-priced callgirl Jane Fonda — and then things get ominous. Ruthlessly stylized photography by Gordon Willis (Manhattan), and a partly-improvised (and Oscar-winning) performance by Jane highlight glossily-noir thriller.
3:45, 7:40

"Jane Fonda never had a better role and as a high-class NYC call girl, perfectly blends steeliness with vulnerability. You want some great Nixon-era NYC paranoia? Come on down!"
– Time Out New York

“Challenges the historically male preserve of the private eye story.” – Foster Hirsch, Neo-Noir

(1971, IVAN PASSER) “I’m a very boring guy when I’m straight,” says ex-hairdresser George Segal in his “most prodigious and imaginative performance” (Pauline Kael) as a heroin addict who haunts pre-Disneyfied Times Square until a friend gets the obligatory “hot shot” in a hotel elevator. With Karen Black and a pre-Mean Streets Bobby De Niro.
2:00, 5:55, 9:50

“An unjustly neglected film.” – Kael

“So intelligently heartfelt and subtle, it makes you wonder
what director Ivan Passer’s been doing all your life.”
– J. Hoberman

(1969, JOHN SCHLESINGER) “Everybody’s talking” at cowboy-geared, straight-from-the-sticks stud wannabe Jon Voight — who immediately becomes the hustler hustled — while seedy tenement squatter Dustin Hoffman is “walkin’ here” as he storms at a pushy cabdriver; but they form their own alliance within the grubby underside of Times Square. Oscars for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay (Waldo Salt), among 7 Oscar nominations.
3:15, 7:30

(1971, JERRY SCHATZBERG) Scintillating debut for Al Pacino as the Boyfriend from Hell, a small-time crook leading decent Kitty Winn (Best Actress at Cannes) on the downhill heroin path. Screenplay by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne.
1:10, 5:25, 9:40

“Pacino completists should grab tickets pronto.” – Time Out New York

“Pacino proved he didn’t need Coppola to make him act.” – Time Out (London)

(1967, TERENCE YOUNG) At 27B St. Luke’s Place (actually, No. 4, a minute away from Film Forum), multi-disguised Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine) and cohorts Richard Crenna and Jack Weston terrorize blind lady Audrey Hepburn to find that drug stash. With one of the all-time jump-in-your-seat sequences.
3:20, 7:15

“Everybody's favorite OHMYGODLOOKOUT! movie.” – Mark Asch, The L magazine

“An effective shocker! The climax is a guaranteed nail-biter!” – Elliott Stein, Village Voice

(1958, ANDREW L. STONE) Psycho airline bomber Rod Steiger, on his way to a half-mill payoff, keeps James Mason hostage in an East Side apartment (albeit with riv vu) and Mason’s wife Inger Stevens captive at 6 Barrow Street (in Film Forum’s vicinity). With a suspenseful West Side Highway drive and a chase into a PATH station.
1:30, 5:25, 9:20

“Screws panic situations as far as they will go and farther.” – Leslie Halliwell

A CRITERION PICTURES RELEASE OF A 20TH CENTURY FOX FILM.
1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50

“A slam-bang thriller! Zaps the audience with noise, speed and brutality! It’s like an aggravated case of New York!”
– Pauline Kael