What movie perfectly captures the feel of an American city to you? (upper-class, movies)

[KathrynAragon]

My parents grew up in rural SW Arkansas and not in rural Mississippi but to them, and even coinciding with my memories of rural Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s, O Brother Where Art Thou feels like just about anywhere in the rural south in the early to mid 20th century.

[Iconographer]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

My parents grew up in rural SW Arkansas and not in rural Mississippi but to them, and even coinciding with my memories of rural Arkansas in the 1960s and 1970s, O Brother Where Art Thou feels like just about anywhere in the rural south in the early to mid 20th century.

My mother from Hattiesburg, MS would have agreed with you. My earliest memories of Hattiesburg feel like a melange of that movie, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.

[BostonBornMassMade]

Gone Baby Gone or Squeeze for Boston.

[Justabystander]

Originally Posted by Iconographer

Vertigo, Dirty Harry films = San Francisco
Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil = Savannah
The Big Easy = New Orleans
Top Gun = San Diego
Laurel Canyon = Los Angeles
My Best Friend's Wedding = Chicago
Urban Cowboy = Houston
Hannah and Her Sisters = New York
Mystic River = Boston
Rocky = Philadelphia
Hairspray = Baltimore
Driving Miss Daisy = Atlanta
Singles, Sleepless In Seattle = Seattle

I like the list, I would add Ferris Bueller's day off for Chicago as well as well as the Blue's Brothers. I like Family Man for suburban NJ and NYC.

[eddie gein]

Breaking Away for '70s Bloomington, Indiana

[Iconographer]

Originally Posted by eddie gein

Breaking Away for '70s Bloomington, Indiana

Oh, I love that movie.
I'll bet the college kids really do call the townies "Cutters".

Another college movie: Animal House for Eugene, OR.
Apparently the university's president neglected to read the script before he granted permission to film there.

[Nearwest]

My recommendation is "Call Northside 777". It was the first Hollywood feature film to be shot in Chicago. The film was released in 1948.


The stellar cast included James Stewart, Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb and E.G. Marshall.


It's a B&W film, and accurately portrayed city life in the late 1940s, before the era of white flight and moving to the suburbs affected many established US cities.

[eddie gein]

Originally Posted by Iconographer

Oh, I love that movie.
I'll bet the college kids really do call the townies "Cutters".

Another college movie: Animal House for Eugene, OR.
Apparently the university's president neglected to read the script before he granted permission to film there.

LOL, I am proud to say I got to see the REAL Animal House before they tore it down.

And ironically enough I was a student at the University of Arizona when they filmed Revenge of the Nerds and actually got to watch it happen. That was fun. Really good shots of the University in the movie and a couple of neighborhoods around campus but not a lot around Tucson except for the very first.

Animal House was the same way. They had the UofO campus and a couple of neighborhoods and that notorious scene up on Skinner's butte, but the downtown parade scene was shot down in Cottage Grove Oregon because downtown Eugene was a pedestrian mall at that time. The pedestrian mall was torn out there and turned back into a street years later.

[FirebirdCamaro1220]

The Fugitive for Chicago

To Live And Die In LA for Los Angeles, as it covered more industrial and crime ridden areas of the city rather than say Bel Air or Hollywood or Downtown which have been done to death

[edujop]

"Dolores Claiborne" does a good job of capturing what it feels like to live in Maine. I know the question asked for a city. I will have to think about that. Dolores Claiborne jumped immediately into my head.