Cinematic Representations of New York: Manhattan and the Warriors

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Woody Allen has spent his career creating portraits of New York.  Manhattan (1979) is an overt celebration of the city.  It presents an idealised, romantic vision of the city.  It focusses on the key landmarks and tourist sites, so it immediately reflects our preconceptions of the city.  It was shot in black and white by Gordon Willis, who was the cinematographer on the Godfather films.  We associate black and white footage with ‘serious’ art films, and colour with disposable crowd-pleasing films.  So the black and white photography helps to portray New York as a city of culture.  It also gives it a sense of timelessness.  The lack of colour also softens everything out into a monochrome.  It filters out the garishness and discordance of the city and makes everything look unified.  You could argue that the black and white photography is the visual equivalent of the blasé attitude we discussed earlier: it blunts discrimination.

In the voice-over Woody Allen is trying to write a book about New York, but he can’t get it right.  He gives you five different beginnings.  That’s reminiscent of the way in which we build up a picture of the city from different images, according to discourse theory. 

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A totally different representation of New Work is The Warriors, made the same year as Manhattan and directed by Walter Hill.  This depicts the other side of New York, a dark nocturnal world.  Here the city is a phantasmagoria with bizarre figures roaming the streets like in a nightmare. The film begins with the subway map which sets out the geography of the city.  In fact, the narrative is essentially a journey because the characters have to fight their way from Grammercy Park to Coney Island.  So you have the map of the city, but there’s a kind of secret geography laid over the top of this because the city is divided in gang territories – ‘our little piece of turf.’  This geography is imperceptible during the day; it only materialises at night when the gangs come out to enforce their territory. 

It’s as if the city at night represents the unconscious.  There’s a strong sense that the rest of the city is asleep.  The imagery consists of empty subway stations, trains with no one on them.  At night the city opens up for all the people who are marginalised by society: juvenile delinquents, prostitutes.