RICK MCGINNIS: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three: New York Goes Down.
When The Taking of Pelham One Two Three came out in the fall of 1974, New York City was building up to a fiscal crisis and a year away from president Gerald Ford’s statement that he would refuse to give the city a bailout, which led to the famous New York Daily News headline “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD”.
The exodus of jobs and residents that was underway by the late ’60s shrank the city’s tax base while a budget deficit that began with mayor Robert F. Wagner’s administration in the early ’60s was compounded by Wagner’s successor, John Lindsay, borrowing heavily to improve city services. New York was funding free tuition at the City University of New York and keeping transit fares low while relying on federal aid to make it from year to year.
Meanwhile in the movie theatres the “New York as shithole” genre had come into focus with Midnight Cowboy in 1969, followed by Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Shaft, The French Connection and The Panic in Needle Park in 1971, Super Fly and Across 110th Street in 1972 and Badge 373, The Seven-Ups, Mean Streets, Black Caesar, Willie Dynamite, Gordon’s War, Hell up in Harlem and Serpico in 1973.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three shared screens in 1974 with Claudine, Three the Hard Way, Crazy Joe and Death Wish and, as the city’s fiscal crisis became global headlines, was followed by Dog Day Afternoon and Report to the Commissioner in 1975 before the cinematic capstones to the subgenre: Taxi Driver (1976) and The Warriors (1979).
Perhaps this genre will be making a cinematic return in a few years: NYC: Begun, the Class War Has.