Calling all New York area history hounds, cinephiles, and strap hangers! Film Forum is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the New York Transit Museum with a curated series featuring the city’s most iconic locations and modes of transportation. You will want to catch this local train with stops at some truly indelible films, several of which we count among our favorites here at Concentric Cinema.

The series features a single screening per film occurring on periodic Tuesday nights over the next several months. It includes shorts, documentaries, and feature films, plus a special program of rare films from the Transit Museum’s own archive; the latter will be introduced by Curator Jodi Shapiro.

The series kicked off last Tuesday with a screening of the silent film SPEEDY (1928) with live piano accompaniment by pianist Steve Sterne. If you missed this stop, don’t worry—you can always get off at the next one.

To further whet your appetite, we are highlighting a few of the series’ offerings below.

The Naked City (1948)

A former model is found drowned in her bathtub in what appears to be a murder case. NYPD Homicide Detectives Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) scour New York City in an attempt to solve the crime. Along the way they encounter various clues and some shifty characters who may or may not be involved.

This Classic-era police procedural is famous for its on-location-only shooting at many spots throughout NYC—perhaps more than any film on this list, which is saying something. Arguably the film’s most famous of these is a climatic confrontation on the Williamsburg Bridge. It also happens to be a pretty solid noir crime thriller with a strong ensemble cast and a methodical yet intriguing quasi-documentary approach to its storytelling. The film is also known for its closing line, delivered by its narrator:

“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

The same evening Film Forum is also screening Uncovering the Naked City, an original short-form documentary and personal essay by Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum’s founding repertory artistic director.

Screening Date: Tuesday, August 4th @6:45pm Eastern

Original poster art for The Naked City

The French Connection (1971)

This film is without a doubt one of the most celebrated crime thrillers of all time and one that, in our humble opinion, lives up to its lofty reputation. Narcotics detectives “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) are hell bent on taking down a large international heroin deal set to unfold in New York City. However the two must contend with uneven support from their superiors, the animosity of a very skeptical FBI agent, and one slippery Frenchman dubbed “Frog One.”

This grainy, visceral, and sharp-edged production delivers a series of high-stakes action set pieces, the most famous of which is a careening white-knuckle chase of a subway train, made to sing in large part due to the masterful editing of Gerald B. Greenberg. Meanwhile, the taut, nerve-twitching score by Ron Ellis keeps the viewer on edge, making it nearly impossible to tune out. We previously touched on The French Connection in our “chilling” special, The Frozen 13: A Rundown of Wintry Genre Films.

The French Connection received eight Academy Award nominations and produced five winners including Best Picture, Best Actor (Gene Hackman), Best Director (William Friedkin), Best Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Tidyman), and Best Film Editing (Gerald G. Greenberg).

Screening Date: Tuesday, August 11th @7:20pm

*Original poster art for The French Connection*

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Four men take a single NYC subway car hostage, demanding $1 million ($7 million adjusted for inflation) in ransom. The clock is ticking as the city has one hour to deliver the cash or else—well, the poster caption below sets the stakes.

The film takes a grounded, even methodical, approach as New York City Transit personnel, public officials, hostages, police, and even the hijackers grapple with the extraordinary events. We at Concentric Cinema love this movie for its perfect blend of hair-raising tension, exciting set pieces, gallows humor, clever dialogue, and distinctly New York banter permeating the film. It doesn’t hurt that the cast is wonderful across the board, with the unforgettable Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw leading the way.

We have already covered this crime thriller staple in a previous Cinematic Semicentennial Series piece, Going off the Rails: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Check it out and then go catch it at Film Forum.

Screening Date: Tuesday, August 18th @8:10pm

*Original poster art for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three*

The Warriors (1979)

Like many of its characters, The Warriors is lean, mean, and not here to waste your time. Ranking highly among aficionados of cult cinema, this story unfolds stylishly yet efficiently, and with a driving momentum all of its own. And what story is that, you ask? In a nutshell, the Coney Island-based “Warriors” are framed for murdering the leader of the city’s largest gang at a meeting in the Bronx. With every rival gang (not to mention the cops) after it, our plucky cohort of leather-vested boppers must dodge, run, and rumble its their way straight through the night to get back to Coney. The film boasts lots of on-location shooting in New York City streets, subways, and green spaces such as Riverside Park on Manhattan’s West Side. Interior shots, including the film’s largest fight scene, were filmed at The Kaufman Astoria Studios. Kaufman happens to be in Concentric Cinema’s own backyard of Astoria, Queens, so we have to love the film even more for that.

We are longtime champions of this movie for its comic book sensibilities, killer soundtrack, and rare combination of flamboyance, theatricality, grit, grime, and sweat. The main cast, featured characters, and extras all play their parts very straight despite some arguably cheesy elements. The movie features a gallery of colorful theme-based gangs, tight pacing, and excellent chase and fight choreography. We will absolutely give this movie the full treatment down the road, but for now we’ll just say: “Ya hear me, babies? Good. Re-e-al good. Adios.” If you know, you know.

Screening Date: Tuesday, September 1st @9:00pm Eastern

Gloria (1980)

Tough, resourceful, and quippy former mob mistress Gloria Swenson (Gena Rowlands) becomes the reluctant caretaker of Phil, a young boy whose family has just been murdered by gangsters in their Bronx apartment. We learn that Phil’s Dad was an accountant for the mob and an FBI informant, a combination that inevitably leads to his premature demise. Just before he is shot by the mob, Phil’s father passes on his ledger to his son and though we never see what’s in the book it is understood that it includes some highly incriminating information. This makes Phil the mob’s primary target and Gloria his only protector. The two escape from the Bronx and into Manhattan to hide out, but the mobsters repeatedly track them down, triggering an ongoing game of cat and mouse.

While Gloria would much rather be home living her independent life with her own feline companion, she ultimately leans into the assignment, however reluctantly. The mob’s attempts to sweet talk, mansplain, or strong arm their way to Gloria, Phil, and the ledger are met with Gloria’s defiance and her snub-nosed 38 revolver.

Gena Rowlands is fantastic as the titular Gloria—quirky, conflicted, fun, and doing her best in an impossible situation. Shots of her facing down mobsters in high heels and coiffed hair while brandishing her Smith & Wesson are worth the price of admission. Rowlands collaborated with director John Cassavetes (also her husband) on a total of ten films from the late 1960s into the early 1980s. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Gloria. John Adames as the young Phil is hard to explain—he is equal parts precocious and naive, odd and sweet. Clearly not a trained actor, Adames gives an unpolished and idiosyncratic performance unlike any I have seen from a child actor. This would be his one and only role.

Screening Date: Tuesday, October 13th @7:00pm Eastern

Carlito’s Way (1993)

Brian DePalma and Al Pacino reunite more than a dozen years after the release of their gangster crime epic Scarface (1983), wherein DePalma directs the film and Pacino plays the Cuban refugee-turned-narcotics kingpin Tony Montana. Pacino’s performance in that film is big, brash, cartoonish, and admittedly cringeworthy. (still—it’s a good bit of fun.) This time around, he plays a more grounded character by the name of Carlito Brigante, a reformed drug trafficker released early from prison courtesy of some legal maneuvering by his shady lawyer friend David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn).

Carlito genuinely wants to go straight, with a a dream of raising enough money to relocate to the Bahamas and become part owner of a car rental business. Soon after returning to his old stomping ground of Manhattan’s Spanish Harlem, however, Carlito faces former acquaintances, old habits, and an unexpected opportunity at a quick-score cash windfall, all of which threaten to derail his plans and send him right back to prison.

While some might take issue with Pacino’s casting in the lead (he is not, after all, Puerto Rican), it’s hard to deny his extremely engrossing and charismatic performance. Sean Penn is equally great as Kleinfeld, a sleazy, corrupt, duplicitous, and coked-up lawyer with a giant chip on his shoulder. Other points to recommend this one are Patrick Doyle’s sweeping score, a superb supporting cast, and several operatic sequences, including one in Grand Central Station that has been compared to De Palma’s other legendary set piece at Chicago’s Union Station in The Untouchables (1987).

Screening Date: Tuesday, October 20th @7:50pm

Another film on the program that caught our attention (though we have yet to see it) is The Incident (1967), the story of two young punks terrorizing passengers on a late-night NYC subway ride. It features the debuts of the great Martin Sheen and Tony Musante; the latter I only know from his lead performance in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), a seminal Italian Giallo film and Dario Argento’s confident directorial debut.

The aforementioned titles are only some of what’s on tap for this expanding series. Check the full festival flyer for more information on the full listings, which run well into the fall.

More on the Transit Museum

If you are remotely interested in transportation or New York City and its history you should absolutely explore the Transit Museum, the largest museum dedicated to urban public transportation. It is located in Downtown Brooklyn on 99 Schermerhorn Street. Visit their website to learn more.

Established in 1970, Film Forum is a nonprofit theater that specializes in independent film premieres, international film screenings, and repertory programming. They are a cinematic institution here in NYC and one worth preserving. They also have great popcorn!

Learn more about the ways in which you can support Film Forum.

Next Stop: Film Forum Celebrates a Venerable NYC Institution

A Tough Break: Thief (1981)

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