Top 10 Movies Set and Filmed in Brooklyn

10. Bye Bye Braverman (1968; dir: Sidney Lumet)

Four writers and a funeral. This dated, talky yet oddly likeable movie is based on Wallace Markfield’s novel To An Early Grave, which was inspired, in turn, by the unfulfilled promise and early death of the writer Isaac Rosenfield. Yeah, it sounds a little morose, and it can be, as four cranky academics drive around Brooklyn looking for the funeral of their friend Braverman; but, for all its flaws, there is something compelling about this film. Perhaps it is the car trip through the Brooklyn of my (very) early childhood: Eastern and Ocean Parkways are instantly recognizable, yet they seem so different, so clean and empty. Featuring George Segal and Jack Warden, this movie can play like a travelogue circa 1968.

9. The Lords of Flatbush (1974; dir: Stephen Verona, Martin Davidson)

Okay, this coming-of-age tale set in the 1950s wouldn't win any awards, but it is fun, and a fabulous snapshot of a leafy neighborhood that hadn't changed much in the two decades between the setting and the filming of the story. Plus, it offers a neat glimpse of a pre-Fonzie Henry Winkler (who was hired when the original Butchey, Richard Gere, quit) and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone as the surprisingly deep Stanley. It is set in the environs of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s alma mater, James Madison High School, on Bedford Avenue between Avenue P and Quentin Road. Susan Blakely’s waspish character lives on East 27th Street off of Quentin, and the long-gone candy store where the guys hang out was on Avenue K off of Nostrand. There has been so much demolition and renovation in this area in the 30 years since this movie was made that it is now as perfect a time capsule of the 1970s as it was of the 1950s.

8. Sophie’s Choice (1982; dir: Alan J. Pakula)

Well, it is set in Europe as much as Brooklyn, and, although it has been acclaimed—largely for Meryl Streep’s polished Polish as Sophie—it is also controversial in choosing to represent the horrors of the holocaust through the story of a non-Jew. Still, I have been questioned very closely by movie fans from all over the world about the actual location of the “Pink Palace” boarding house. The answer is: 101 Rugby Road, in the Prospect Park South section of Flatbush. Yo, people: is it really that hard to believe Brooklyn has beautiful Victorian houses on tree-lined streets? (Also in the neighborhood, at 1305 Albemarle Road, is the ionic-columned classical revival white mansion that starred as Alan Dershowitz’s Boston home in Barbet Schroeder’s 1990 Reversal of Fortune.)

7. Little Odessa (1994; dir: James Gray)

Why haven’t more people seen this film? Set in Brighton Beach, called Little Odessa because it is home to a large population of Russian emigres, it tells the story of a hit man for the Russian mob, played by Tim Roth. He returns to the old neighborhood to do a job and reconnects with his kid brother (Edward Furlong) and ailing mother (Vanessa Redgrave). Unlike Moscow on the Hudson, Paul Mazursky’s cheery 1984 tale of an asylum-seeking jazzman (played by Robin Williams), this flick is very Russian in tone—maybe it’s all that snow. It is also quite faithful to its Brooklyn setting except for one unfortunate geographic error regarding Newkirk Avenue towards the end. You will easily recognize Brighton Beach Avenue beneath the el, and the boardwalk; even the family’s home is an apartment in a local building and not a set or out-of-town substitute.

6. Saturday Night Fever (1977; dir: John Badham)

Here is a picture that is now viewed largely through the lens of camp, and that’s somewhat unfortunate. Set in a world that is 1977 to the nth degree, it stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, the paint store sales guy who lives for his weekly moment in the sun—or, more accurately, in the glitter-specked glow of the mirror ball—on the dance floor of the Bensonhurst disco, 2001 Odyssey. Based on a New York Magazine article that author Nik Cohn has since admitted was woven out of whole cloth, it still works by refashioning our age-old universal myth of striving into a modern cultural touchstone. Remember when it mattered if you loved or hated disco? The movie used actual locations throughout Bensonhurst—this el is along 86th Street, and 2001 Odyssey is still at 802 64th Street, but now it’s called Spectrum—and Bay Ridge. The park bench where Tony sits and rhapsodizes on the glories of our under-praised Verrazano Narrows Bridge is in John Paul Jones Park near Shore Road. (And, by the way, everything he says about it is true.)

5. Smoke (1995; dir: Wayne Wang)

Written by Paul Auster and based on a Christmas story he published in The New York Times, Smoke is a low-budget film anchored by Auggie Wren, the owner of a Park Slope cigar store (played by Brooklyn native Harvey Keitel). It leisurely allows chance to piece together the lives of several locals searching for family and wholeness. There are many touching moments and performances as the characters wind their way through the film like so many wisps of, well, smoke. You won’t find the cigar store where this was shot, however, because it never existed. When the Windsor Terrace substation of the Post Office relocated down the block in 1993, the filmmakers creatively and cheaply transformed the vacant storefront on Prospect Park West and 16th Street—across from Farrell’s Bar—into a smoke shop for a few weeks. It is now a check-cashing place. Wang and Auster even had enough time and money left following their frugal shoot to make the free-wheeling companion piece, Blue in the Face.

4. Prizzi’s Honor (1985; dir: John Huston)

This sharp and nasty adaptation of Richard Condon’s sophisticated, unsentimental novel is a darkly comic, operatic vision of Brooklyn’s wise guy underworld. Anjelica Huston won a best supporting actress Oscar for her dead-on portrayal of Mafia princess Maerose Prizzi, and Jack Nicholson was at the absolute top of his game as the dull-witted hit man Charley Partanna. The wedding reception was filmed at the Grand Prospect Hall, before its questionable “restoration.” Don Corrado Prizzi (played by the late William Hickey) lived in a mansion on Pierrepont Street (on the same Brooklyn Heights block where the gates of hell are located in Michael Winner’s 1976’s cult fave The Sentinel). Charley’s apartment is also in Brooklyn Heights, in the high rise on Montague Street. Jack, by the way, graced the streets of Brooklyn once again in James L. Brooks’ 1997 Oscar-winning film As Good As It Gets: he visits Helen Hunt’s character at her home on 1 Fuller Place.

3. Do the Right Thing (1989; dir: Spike Lee)

Obviously, we could do a top 10 list set in Brooklyn and dominated by director Lee’s work: his love for the borough is evident, and his understanding of its denizens matures apace. I especially recommend the overlooked Crooklyn of 1994. However, I decided to choose just one for now, his brilliantly funny and provocative 1989 breakthrough. A visually vibrant film, it is superb not just for its “big” theme, exploring the racial tensions surrounding a white-owned pizzeria on a Bedford-Stuyvesant block during the hottest day of the year, but for its less melodramatic little moments as well. The scene where a few women sit on the stoop doing one another’s hair is simply lovely. And the Greek chorus in lawn chairs on the corner (including the late comedian Robin Harris) is unforgettable. Lee was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay for this movie.

2. Dog Day Afternoon (1975; dir: Sidney Lumet)

If we’re talking hot days in Brooklyn, let’s move on to Dog Day Afternoon. That this far-fetched tale of a desperate (but not unsympathetic) man who holds up a bank to pay for his lover’s sex-change is based on a true story doesn't detract from Lumet’s ingenious handling of the material and Al Pacino’s Academy Award-nominated performance as Sonny Wortzik, the would-be criminal mastermind who was just smart enough to entangle himself in a net of spectacular proportions. The actual robbery occurred at a Chase Manhattan branch on Avenue P, but the exteriors for this film were shot in Windsor Terrace, on Prospect Park West (9th Avenue to the locals), between 17th and 18th Streets. (The interior of the bank was built and filmed inside a warehouse.) The facade that was dressed up as the bank is now a condo, and the barbershop used by Detective Moretti (Charles Durning) as command central is actually a caterer, but most of the street remains recognizable, including Holy Name church in the distance. This prescient saga of our tabloid-tv world would be a must-see even if it had been set in the Bronx.

1. The Little Fugitive (1953; dir: Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin)

An exquisite film that has been credited with inspiring the French New Wave. A magical work by a renowned photographer and her husband, it tells the story of a charming little boy (played by Richie Andrusco) who is tricked by the older boys in his building into believing that he has killed his brother, so he runs away to—where else would a child go?—the amusement park at Coney Island. Such an ingenious escape! Besides its sweet story, the draw of this flick is the snapshot it offers of a Coney Island that was on the brink of disappearing forever. The ocean hasn't’t changed much, but precious little else is the same. Many movies have been shot in Coney Island over the past 100 years (a personal favorite includes the Harold Lloyd vehicle Speedy, which won director Ted Wilde an Oscar in 1928), but this is amazing in its view through a child’s eye—in height as well as wonder. Less is more here: I can’t recommend it highly enough, and it is the only film on the list truly suitable for children. It is Brooklyn through and through: no matter how much has changed in the past 50 years, this film captures something real and eternal about our borough.