A Decisive Moment: Marilyn Monroe in New York

Marilyn Monroe: The City at Her Feet

New York City, 1955. Gazing down at Park Avenue, Marilyn Monroe stands on the balcony of the Ambassador Hotel, at Park between East 50th and 51st Streets. She was in New York in self-imposed exile from Hollywood. She had come back to the city she knew and loved in order to change her life.

New York (on film): A View from a Window

Greenwich Village View: Rear Window was filmed on a set built at Paramount Studios in LA

Movies have long been filmed on location in New York City, from the earliest days of silent film production. But New York films set within interiors that offer a view of the city--or even just a suggestion of the city outside-- often brilliantly evoke the city as a thematic element that propels the plot forward. Indeed, these films set within sets often use the city to evoke the great "world outside," as it were, and infuse the drama with a heightened sense of the film's moral underpinnings.