Movies about World trade center manhattan new york city
For almost 30 years, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center graced the New York skyline. They were 110 stories high and symbolized strength and optimism. The monumental complex in Lower Manhattan was at the heart of New York’s financial center. But the towers were more than that. They became a landmark of popular culture. For three decades, they were showcased in more than 1,000 films. For Americans and people around the world, they became an emblem of New York and the entire USA.
In 1978, the world watched as superman, the all-American hero, brought truth and justice to Metropolis. It was the first of the «Superman» films, showcasing Christopher Reeve as the red caped man of steel. New York’s World Trade Center provided the background.
«It summarized a certain kind of American grandeur. Not the grandeur of old. Not the grandeur of tradition because they were so new and so modernist in their design,» explains film critic David Sterritt. «But the grandeur, I would say, of sheer American powerfulness.»
Hard to miss
For years film Sterritt lived next to the Twin Towers.
«I was never very fond of them architecturally,» he admits. «However, they certainly are large. I guess for a while they were the tallest building in the world and it’s kind of an American triumphalism here. You not only build the tallest building, but you build it twice!”
Sterritt says the sheer size of the buildings made them hard to miss.
The Twin Towers were also in the drama Wall Street as well as in the opening shots of Brian de Palma’s Oheň marností.
Both films highlighted the arrogance and greed of Wall Street in the 1980s.
Mike Nichols’s 1987 Podnikavá dívka depicts the Towers as a power center. But here, the Towers are a symbol of women’s empowerment.
At the center of the story is Tess, a working class woman from Staten Island, a ferry ride away from Manhattan. She dreams of making it New York’s financial district. She finally succeeds.
The 1979 re-make of king Kong has the giant ape climbing the Twin Towers, not the Empire State Building as in the original.
Dramatic stunt
But the most dramatic stunt was in 1974, by the French high wire artist Philippe Petit. He secretly stretched a wire between the Twin Towers and walked on it for 45 minutes. The police were left to look on.
Dokumentární dokument 2008 Muž na laně, captures the breathtaking stunt with photographs and original footage. It represented one man’s power over the towering edifice.
The Towers also became linked to romance, like in the 1987 film Pomatenec which features the steel buildings in New York nostalgia. The story centers around Loretta Castorini, an Italian-American widow who falls in love with a one-handed baker in Brooklyn, played by Nicholas Cage.
In one poetic moment, a full moon shines over Loretta’s quaint Brooklyn neighborhood, stirring the hearts of its Italian residents, while the Towers shimmer in the background.
Disaster movies also appropriated the Towers. In Roland Emmerich’s 1996 Den nezávislosti, aliens from another planet destroy, one by one, America’s landmarks, including the World Trade Center.
«The Twin Towers have been destroyed in various disaster movies that were made before 9/11,» notes film critic Sterritt. «That became something that you couldn’t do even retroactively after 9/11.»
Odeslat 9 / 11
In some cases, Sterritt says, filmmakers cut out scenes that showed the Towers so audiences wouldn’t be upset.
One example can be found in footage from the 2002 movie pavoučí muž. Sterritt believes the cuts were patronizing. But New Yorkers have their own opinion. Here’s what some at Ground Zero had to say:
«You know I lost some relatives there. So, it’s a sad thought for me unfortunately,» one man said.
«When I see them in a movie, I think it’s wonderful and I love it and then when we were travelling and coming across from Jersey we look over it and we don’t see it, there is a big gap and we miss it,» a woman said.
David Sterritt says the gap is seen best in the 2002 crime drama 25. hodina by Spike Lee, a quintessential New Yorker.
The camera focuses on two parallel beams of light shining up from where the Towers once stood, an amputated New York still feeling its extremities.
The World Trade Center in its greatest film roles
How do you feel when you see the World Trade Center pop up in a movie from the 1970s and 80s? Sadness? Nostalgia? Or, with so many years gone by, do they just seem neobvyklý tobě?
Fortunately researcher and movie lover Donna Grunewald had documented every reference you need to revisit all those emotions.
The World Trade Center In Movies is a methodical look at the Twin Towers as they appear in motion pictures. (And recently updated fro 2021!) This site features buildings’ complete filmography, including silhouettes and appearances in skyline scenes.
Although the World Trade Center made many more appearances in the 1980s and 1990s, I prefer a good peek via a good 1970s film. Check out the extensive collection here. But here are a few of my favorites:
The World Trade Center, still under construction, appeared in Francouzská spojka (1971), its jagged and unfinished silhouette adding to the film’s gritty ambiance.
The lovely 1975 Robert Redford/Faye Dunaway thriller Three Days Of The Condor focuses on the towers’ modern beauty.
The breathtaking scenery in 1977’s Horečka sobotní noci.
The website is so joyously exhaustive that it even documents brief cameos like the nighttime fly-by in 1978’s Superman: Film.
And in the 1978 oddity Bye Bye Monkey starring Gerard depardieu, the World Trade Center is just along for the ride.
And the towers make a rather ominous appearance in the 1979 science fiction film Meteor. (Click here so see the movie poster.)
For more information on the early years of the World Trade Center, listen to our show from earlier this year:
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10 Movies Starring the Original World Trade Center
April 4, 1973 (50 years ago today) marked the official opening of Tower 2 of the World Trade Center (RIP). As I mentioned here, the first place I ever took note of the WTC (as a kid a couple of hundred miles from New York City) was in the opening credit sequence to Barney Miller. But while they stood, the Twin Towers starred in over 1,000 movies, as chronicled on this lovingly tended website. I thought I would pick out 10 notable ones to highlight for this important if somber benchmark.
All of the gritty NYC crime dramas in the early ’70s have incidental shots of the WTC, mostly when it was still going up. This shot from Serpico is particularly eye-catching for it shows how the buildings were almost like natural features, like the mountains in the distance when you’re in Seattle. You could see them from just about everywhere.
Tři dny kondora (1975)
The WTC is an actual location in this Sydney Pollack/Robert Redford thriller, and there’s a zillion good shots of the complex, inside and out. My heart especially leaps at the shots of the lobby because, unless you worked there, you were only inside the building a few times in your life (as compared to the thousands of times you saw the outsides). That’s the thing I wish I could do again the most — go inside. (When I lived in Jersey my commute took me through the lower level concourse daily for years. Only a few times did errands or appointments take me into the ground floor lobbies).
king Kong (1976)
It was a stroke of genius transplanting the climax to the ’76 remake of king Kong from the Empire State Building to the World Trade Center. Honorable mention goes to the 1998 remake of Godzilla, which includes some shots in at as well.
It’s almost like people were remaking movies simply just so they could include the new World Trade Center! In superman, the Man of Steel takes us to a perspective only helicopters got in real life (although I once got real close to it from the top of the Woolworth Building.)
Útěk z New Yorku (1981)
I’ve never been a huge fan of John Carpenter dystopian sci-fi action movie, but as a fan of the World Trade Center, I do enjoy the climax that is set there (even though those scenes of people taking the stairs all the way to the top at a run were proven tragically fanciful two decades later).
Trading Places (1982)
Most of this John Landis comedy starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy is set at the New York Stock Exchange and elsewhere, but the main characters do enter the WTC (just a couple of blocks away) in one scene.
Squeeze (1987)
I know nothing about this Michael Keaton comedy except I saw this poster and it blew my mind. It was the genesis of this post.
Podnikavá dívka (1988)
Melanie Griffith’s character works in lower Manhattan in this Mike Nichols rom-com. The lobby scenes were shot in 7 World Trade Center, which was destroyed on Sept 11.
Gangy New Yorku (2002)
Scorsese’s adaptation of the Herbert Asbury classic is a mess, but that final shot puts a lump in my throat every time. Best thing about the movie. And as he knows so well, it’s what only movies can do — put things BACK.
Muž na laně (2008)
Terrific doc about Philippe Petit’s historic 1974 wire walk between the towers, featuring my good friend Jim Moore, who was there and helped facilitate and record the event as it happened! The event was later dramatized by Robert Zemeckis ve svém filmu z roku 2015 The Walk.
Anyway, thanks to cinema: gone, but not forgotten. For a thousand more movies that feature the World Trade Center (pre 9/11) go here.
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