A Century of Life in the City, at the Movies

"The lives of working people in the city-above all, New York City-have been at the center of movies from the industry's start, as seen in "Tenement Stories," Film Forum's teeming series of fifty-plus films, running Feb. 6-26. The series spans more than a century of cinema, from the nineteen-tens to last year, with the 2025 documentary "Heat," directed by Aicha Cherif, about three women whose housing becomes tenuous in the gentrifying Lower East Side."

"There are comedies and romances, too, such as Hal Ashby's "The Landlord" (1970), with a script by Bill Gunn, and tales of artists in the downbeat city, such as Shirley Clarke's "The Connection" (1961), which features the jazz musicians Jackie McLean and Freddie Redd; "Pull My Daisy" (1959), with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; and "Frownland" (2007), directed by Ronald Bronstein (who co-wrote "Marty Supreme" and "Uncut Gems")."

"But the heart of the series is the immigrant experience-and its frequent burden of social exclusion-as in Allan Dwan's "East Side, West Side" (1927), in which struggling Jewish and Irish neighbors clash and coöperate; Martin Scorsese's Little Italy-set crime thriller "Mean Streets" and his documentary "Italianamerican," a discussion with his parents, who were born in Sicily; and the drama "El Super," directed by Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jiménez Leal, which shows a Cuban family struggling to fit into American life."

Film Forum's Tenement Stories presents more than fifty films about working-class lives in New York City, spanning the 1910s through 2025. The program includes stark early depictions of poverty, such as Regeneration (1915) and Shoes (1916), where youths are driven to gangsterism and sex work in households ruined by idle fathers. The lineup also features comedies, romances, and artist-focused works including The Landlord, The Connection, Pull My Daisy, and Frownland. The series centers on immigrant experiences and social exclusion, with films like East Side, West Side; Mean Streets; Italianamerican; El Super; and The Illegal Immigrant, set in Chinatown.

Read at The New Yorker