New York Crime Action Double Bill: Film Noir UK

Many New Yorks: New York 1970s Crime Action Double Bill New York is a city so important and so vibrant that they named it twice. For some New York is the city that never sleeps. But there are many New Yorks: New York becoming modern in the late 1920s and early 1930s; New York divisions on race and class; New York vibrancy; fantastic New York; and dark and noir New York.

The third in Bristol Ideas' series on cities on film after Paris and Berlin – looks at the greatest city in the world in these many ways by bringing together films from 95 years of cinema.

12:00pm: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) 

Director: Joseph Sargent 

Starring: Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Héctor Elizondo 

15/ USA / 104mins

An all-star cast, including Robert Shaw (Jaws) and Oscar winners Walter Matthau and Martin Balsam delivers "sure-fire entertainment (that’s) gripping and exciting from beginning to end" (The Hollywood Reporter).

Based on the bestseller by John Godey, this pulse-pounding picture is guaranteed to give you the ride of your life. Somewhere underground, in New York’s subway system, just outside the Pelham Station, a gang of armed men hijack a train, threatening to kill one hostage per minute unless their demands are met. Forced to stall these unknown assailants until a ransom is delivered or a rescue is made, transit chief Lt. Garber (Matthau) must ad-lib, bully, con and shrewdly outmanoeuvre one of the craftiest and cruellest villains (Shaw) in a battle of wits that will either end heroically or tragically.

2:00pm: Shaft (1971) 

Director: Gordon Parks Starring: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi 

15/ USA/ 100mins

When Harlem P.I John Shaft first appeared on the movie scene, he was a 'shut your mouth' detective to reckon with, a fact underscored by Isaac Hayes' Oscar-winning Best Original Song (1971).

While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) made this ground-breaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and gave the screen a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, in a career-defining role), a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers.

After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss (Amazing Grace’s Moses Gunn) from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. A vivid time capsule of seventies Manhattan in all its gritty glory that has inspired sequels and multimedia reboots galore, the original Shaft is studded with indelible elements—from Roundtree’s sleek leather fashions to the iconic funk and soul score by Isaac Hayes.

Many New Yorks is a partnership of Bristol Ideas, Film Noir UK, South West Silents, and Watershed. It is the third in a series of film programmes looking at cities and film as part of Bristol’s Festival of the Future City.