A city that beckons many to dream of the ultimate romance. A crowded city, always bustling, with towering skyscrapers that beg us to dream — maybe there’s someone in this big mess for us. New York City invites cinema to create stories larger than us, but ones we also find hopeful and sad. It's a place that has gotten the love story treatment repeatedly from the films of Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Paul Mazursky, Billy Wilder, and Noah Baumbach. Directors have created countless memorable stories of people fighting through the muck and grind of a city that scathes people down to their core. These are the best New York love stories.
10 Jungle Fever
Spike Lee is a filmmaker so tethered to his Brooklyn origins that his filmography shakes to the beat of the city he knows best. Lee is known for his aesthetic and social audaciousness, but not necessarily for his ability to make scenes sensual. Tapping into both his formal precision and political bullheadedness, Jungle Fever taps into the social anxieties of mixed-race relations and attempts to have an honest conversation on how racism still pervades Italian-American households. Pairing a sexual dynamite couple in Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra, the two embark on a love affair that threatens the fabric of their households. Lee also makes the film a critique of the crack-era politics of that time, but there are still some questions about the ending.
9 You’ve Got Mail
Even behind the anonymity of online chat rooms and at the time, the newfound technological power of emails, You’ve Got Mail captures love in the big city and the randomness that ensues when people collide. Tom Hanks stars, not altogether in his usual dad charm but part of the corporate slime causing the homogeneity of big business in New York. Hanks and Meg Ryan’s small bookstore owners collide, not knowing they're the two people behind the chat room usernames. The film is a classic and one that outdoes Sleepless in Seattle.
8 Moonstruck
The fleeting nature of love in a moonlit New York City and the chaotic dissonance of Italian households were front and center in Norman Jewison's Moonstruck. Cher won the Oscar for her charismatic and loving turn as a woman caught up in the wrong marriage. Opposite Nicolas Cage, the pair's over-the-top energy was the perfect fit to match that classic Italian New York attitude. The film flirts with becoming a triptych as Cher’s parents battle their infidelities and the limits of monogamy.
7 Ghost
The supernatural thrills, the hopefully tragic romance, and the fun charm of its supporting star Whoopi Goldberg — Ghost was a sensation upon release, and rode its momentum all the way to a few surprising Oscar nominations and wins. With Patrick Swayze as the opposite of a terrifying ghost who comes to get Goldberg’s help to reconnect him with his wife, played with a wave of delicate anger and romance by Demi Moore. Ghost has all the hallmarks to make the film a great New York film and has one of the most recognizably sensual scenes in pop culture history.
6 Crossing Delancey
Writer and director Joan Micklin Silver’s much-underrated filmography is highlighted by Crossing Delancey. A romantic comedy in the heart of New York City that is directed with subtle warmth and comfort with cultural touchstones that give the film its lived-in quality. Amy Irving plays the romantically disgruntled bookshop owner who can't seem to catch a break. Silver highlights this with an old Jewish matchmaker, pairing her with the warm and cuddly Peter Reigert, who runs the unexacting business prospect of pickles. The film weaves in doubt, love, and heartbreak with enough random New York characters to make the film appear singular.
5 When Harry Met Sally
One of the great romantic comedies and one of the great New York City romances, When Harry Met Sally made perfect use of its precarious and hectic backdrop. Throwing Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan together in the middle of Manhattan’s famous Katz Deli for the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene or Crystal's marathon miracle through Washington Square Park, the film was designed to become a New York classic. Especially with Crystal's known love for the Knicks and Yankees.
4 Eyes Wide Shut
This would be the last film from the legendary director Stanley Kubrick, who teamed up with, at the time, the Hollywood power couple Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. During a brief stint of time when Cruise still took cracks at his star power veneer, Eyes Wide Shut is a film that always pops up in conversation during the holidays. The film is a surreal drift into the shadows of a secret society and also a complex distillation of a marriage in crisis, where Cruise memorably wanders the dimly lit streets of New York. If you're going to a party, don't be afraid to whisper, "Fidelio."
3 An Unmarried Woman
A genuine depiction of heartache, unfamiliar terrain, and dealing with the loneliness of becoming yourself, but also hilariously delirious when new love does hit, An Unmarried Woman is a delicate and intoxicating look at life after marriage through the eyes of Jill Clayburgh. Groundbreaking for its therapy session scenes, where Clayburgh spills her heart but also iconic for its wandering New York scenes, An Unmarried Woman is funny as it is a tender look at the romantic life of a recent divorcée.
2 Annie Hall
Woody Allen has made a career of making heartfelt, witty, endearing, and sometimes venomous love stories about his home city of New York. The fourth-wall-breaking Annie Hall broke new ground in the genre of romantic comedy, one that even Academy members couldn't ignore. The hilariously romantic and tragic arc of Alvy (Allen in all of his schmuck charm) and Diane Keaton as the titular Annie is a great pairing. Keaton plays the character with a shy and goofy radiance. A quirk that counteracts and disarms the often pretentious silliness of Allen’s self-deprecation. As they find love from New York to Los Angeles even when breaking each other's hearts.
1 The Apartment
A masterpiece from a director whose filmography embodies that of a genius of the craft, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is one of the smartest, most layered, humane, and funniest romance stories set against the backdrop of the Big Apple. With stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley McClaine bouncing off each other with radiant chemistry, the film explores the sexual politics of the workplace and the dangers of selling your soul up the corporate ladder. All while setting up the jokes with rewarding payoffs, courtesy of Jack Lemmon's infamous workplace apartment where dishonest men go to cheat.