On my way down to the Bloomsday celebration I was attending with Therese (and it was one for the books, more later) I found myself wandering the streets of the Financial District, an area of town I rarely go to, and the streets down there truly are canyons. They are thin, curving, and the buildings tower up on either side, piling on top of one another, filling up the horizon. I love being a movie fan because my immediate thought, looking at the landscape, was of Anthony Mann’s terrific film noir Side Street (I reviewed it for Noir of the Week here.) New York is one of those cities where it is difficult to remove it from all of the stories told about it, and it depends on your filter, and although New York has changed so much and it is difficult to find the New York of Midnight Cowboy anymore, it’s still there, at some points on 8th Avenue, if you’re looking for it. The canyons yawn down in Wall Street, with only geometrical glimpses of the sky above, and my vision went flying up into the sky, looking down on what those streets must look like from far above, as Mann showed during the amazing car chase that closes the film. I even walked by the Sub Treasury building where the final standoff takes place. Anthony Mann’s New York is alive and well and living on Wall Street.
Seeing this a few years ago gave me a pleasant shock of recognition for a wholly different reason. I thought the whole time through I was seeing the film for the first time–until the claustrophobic car chase at the end, which I instantly recalled as something I’d seen on television in my childhood and had been searching for ever since. That Mann can so expertly carve space is nothing new, but decades of my poorly remembered details conveyed but fumblingly to film-loving friends had kept this on the short list of cinema memories that I couldn’t place.
Love. It. Loveit!
Among your many gifts is a great visual eye for space and detail. Love the pix, esp in b/w.
Bruce – love it. Yes, that car chase is one of the best of its kind -totally memorable, and amazing how much variety Mann was able to get (camera angles and the like). I love it because I can get to see what Fulton Fish Market and Wall St looked like back then. Fulton Fish Market has moved from that location by now but Wall St looks pretty much the same.
Good movie, I really really liked it.
Office Gulch.
Somewhere along those winding streets is the Pussycat Lounge–haven’t been there in awhile but hope it’s still there.