Gordon WIllis' New York: BROADWAY DANNY ROSE

Sadder than Manhattan, the elegiac and nostalgic Broadway Danny Rose is perhaps Allen's finest underrated film. Allen and Willis ping-pong from the city's iconic Broadway haunts, where washed-up comedians gather for coffee, to New Jersey, where madcap romance looms in the shape of Mia Farrow's giant, Mob Wives-eque sunglasses. A caper, a comedy, a mournful portrait of success and failure; a beautiful film.

Gordon Willis' New York: THE PICK-UP ARTIST

Post-Coppola, post-Allen, Gordon Willis--already immortally associated with THE New York look--is picked up by the '80s. This time, it's James Toback, seeking the visual heft the lightweight story of an NY cad (Robert Downey, pre-Jr.!) so sorely needs. It's all Brat Pack desperately seeking some Gen X relevancy. At least the city looks good.

Final scenes at Atlantic City gives us a glimpse into the neon wasteland of young RDJ's babyfaced cruiser. Romantic and cynical, genuine and scheming, RDJ's/Toback's pick-up artist tries to strike out on his own, but can't quite escape the city's cultural baggage. (RDJ's character lives near Coney Island, just like Woody Allen does in Annie Hall; note the shot below that Willis cribbed from his earlier work in Manhattan.)

Willis does what he's hired to do--remind you of his earlier, better New York pictures. A self-conscious reflection of the city's evolving (devolving?) state. In the '70s, NYC was pitch-black; in Allen's nostalgic black & white, a city of classical beauty; in Toback's Reagen-era city is alternatively washed-out and alive with the colors and spaces of New York City's cinematic past. 

Gordon Willis' New York: KLUTE

DP Gordon Willis (left) with director Alan J Pakula

When we talk of Gordon Willis collaborations, everyone focuses on Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. I mean, why wouldn't they? The Godfather films? Woody's greatest films (Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo) of his greatest decade (1980s)? These are tough creds to ignore.

That Willis' collaboration with Alan J. Pakula (Klute, The Parallax View, All The President's Men) is only his third most notable contribution to American cinema, speaks to the absurd high quality of the man's work and his seminal impact on filmmaking.

All three films deal with paranoia, surveillance and the espionage-as-commonplace themes prevalent during the Nixon years. The message: You Are Being Watched. Who better than Willis, the master of the artistic establishing shot, to capture the individual in the everyday?

Klute is the most formally obscure of the three films. Pakula/Willis shot behind objects in the foreground, between bars, from behind windows. POV is stationary, constant, omnipotent. You are just a figure in the background. We see all.

Gordon Willis' New York: THE GODFATHER

Blacks have never been blacker, shadows never so deep. Gordon Willis' starts with a blank, pitch-dark frame and then adds pools of illumination--an arc light here, a reflection in blue-tinted glass there. Minimalism is key. 

Most people forget that for much of its runtime, The Godfather is a Christmas movie. Willis and Coppola capture the crispness of a wintry Manhattan where holiday cheer is put on ice. It's a post-war Christmas, slightly dimmed, slightly less festive. New York wants to celebrate, but there's a darkness in the streets they can't escape.

The objects of the mafioso become objets d'art: the smooth glint of a chrome running board, the burst of fire from a .38 special like a shot in the dark. 

The Godfather would be nothing without its time and place. This is the world of Michael Corleone--all inky pavement and dank alley corners--as thick and dark as Pacino's Brylcreemed hair. 

This is Gordon Willis' New York. All hail The Prince of Darkness. 

Gordon Willis' New York: BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY

Another '80s gem. A movie so much about New York, cocaine, and yuppies, you'll think the neon was right there in the room with you. LIVE IT as Michael J. Fox lives it. Confront your own dickishness via the superficial milieu of cheap fusion restaurants; marvel at your lack of insightful introspection even as you walk the streets all night in search of crepuscular redemption.

Here Willis has perfected the art of the street corner, the street sign, and again--eternally, a trademark (money shot?)--the silhouetted couple. 

As with The Pick-Up Artist, Willis keeps the pic afloat; whatever mild interest it rouses stems from his consummate urban eye. Even though the film is laughably dated (albeit in a fun, "It's the '80s! Let's do cocaine!" kind of way), it takes itself much too seriously, in a faux Bret Easton Ellis style White Boy's Sorrow kind of way. Again, the pretty pictures ground its quarter-life crisis melodrama in some kind of recognizable reality. Yuppies come and OD; New York City survives.