Category: Film Festival

Pelham One Two Three: NYC Underground will receive its broadcast premiere as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival on HBO Max from May 6 as a part of the The Streets of New York Collection.

Goldstein’s latest film, Pelham One Two Three: NYC Underground is a humorous short essay about one of his favorite New York movies. The film spotlights Joseph Sargent’s quintessential 1974 thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, in which four armed man hijack a New York City subway train, holding seventeen passengers hostage.

The setting for hundreds of Hollywood classics, this collection highlights the Big Apple in key films from different eras and includes a special short subject for each film produced by film historian and New Yorker Bruce Goldstein. Includes The Naked City (1948), Speedy (1928) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974).

BRUCE GOLDSTEIN

Bruce Goldstein is Repertory Programming Director of New York’s Film Forum and founder of Rialto Pictures. Under Goldstein’s direction, Film Forum’s repertory division has premiered virtually every major film restoration of the past 33 years. As founder and co-president of Rialto, he has reissued over 75 classic films in cinemas across the U.S.

In recent years, Goldstein has developed a new career as an acclaimed documentarian with his short films In the Footsteps of Speedy, The Art of Subtitles, and Uncovering The Naked City, which critic J. Hoberman called “the most purely enjoyable movie of the year [2020].”

Goldstein’s latest film, Pelham One Two Three: NYC Underground – a humorous short essay about one of his favorite New York movies -- will debut as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival on HBO Max. The film spotlights Joseph Sargent’s quintessential 1974 thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, in which four armed man hijack a New York City subway train, holding seventeen passengers hostage.

“Thousands of movies have been set in this city,” says confirmed New Yorker Goldstein, “but few get it as right as Pelham One Two Three, the ultimate subway movie. And there is no greater ‘audience picture.’ At a screening at the 2018 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, which I had the honor to introduce, the fans went absolutely wild, from the very beginning to the very end.”

Goldstein’s jam packs a lot in the short (9 minute) running time, including VHS footage he shot of former NYC Mayor Ed Koch introducing Pelham One Two Three at Film Forum in 1994.

All three films in Goldstein’s “New York trilogy” – In the Footsteps of Speedy (about Harold Lloyd’s 1928 silent comedy shot on the streets of NYC), Uncovering The Naked City (about Jules Dassin’s 1948 New York cop picture), and Pelham One Two Three: NYC Underground – will be shown in May on HBO Max as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival. The collection is entitled “The Streets of New York.”

In 1997, Time Out named Goldstein one of the 101 essential people or places of New York, citing him “for keeping showmanship alive,” and, in 2005, “New York’s Finest Film Programmer.” In its 2012 “Best of New York issue,” the Village Voice called him “the Michael Jordan of Film Programmers.” Kent Jones’ profile of Goldstein in Film Comment was entitled “The King of New York.”

In 1987, Goldstein created Film Forum’s now-iconic repertory format. Time Out New York named Film Forum “New York’s Best Theater for Classic Films” and has called Film Forum the city’s #1 movie house.

In 1997, Goldstein founded Rialto, a distributor specializing in classic reissues. Described as “the gold standard of reissue distributors” by the L.A. Times.

In 2000, the National Society of Film Critics awarded Rialto a special “Heritage Award” for its re-releases of The Third Man (1949) and Grand Illusion (1937). The following year, the New York Film Critics Circle awarded Rialto a special award for its re-release of Rififi (1955), which was presented to him by Jeanne Moreau. In 2006, Rialto also received recognition from the NY Film Critics Circle for its release of Army of Shadows, which they named Best Foreign Film of the Year. Goldstein was also honored by the New York Critics Circle in 2000 for “Consistent and Imaginative Quality Programming.”

In 2007, Goldstein was honored by Anthology Film Archives for his work in film preservation and, in 2009, he was the recipient of the San Francisco Film Festival’s prestigious Mel Novikoff Award. In 2002, the French government bestowed on him the Order of “Chevalier” of Arts & Letters. In 2012, he was the recipient of the first Lifetime Achievement Award in Film ever given by George Eastman House. He is on the National Film Registry Board and the boards of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and Film Noir Foundation.

“There are programmers, there are programmers’ programmers, and there is Bruce Goldstein, programmers’ programmer and cine-showman extraordinaire… He is a celluloid warrior, a dedicated cinephile-activist, a fighter for old movies and new prints, for weeklong revivals and knowledgeable reviews. For going on a quarter of a century, he's been New York film culture's indispensable man.”

– J. Hoberman, San Francisco Film Festival

“The invaluable programmer and distributor Bruce Goldstein makes Film Forum one of New York’s most important destinations.” -- Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“ONE OF 101 ESSENTIAL NEW YORKERS… There was a time when movie exhibitors tried to outdo each other with flashy stunts, promotions and pure showmanship. The last man to be keeping that tradition alive is Bruce Goldstein, repertory program director of Film Forum, the only full-time revival house left in the city. A showbiz kid, Goldstein seems to have an inexhaustible fount of retro hip programming ideas.” – Eric Myers, Time Out New York

“The Michael Jordan of Film Programmers!” – Village Voice

“The King of New York!” – Film Comment

“The Essential Man” by J. Hoberman

2021 TCM Classic Film Festival
Thursday, May 6 through Sunday, May 9 at two virtual venues: the TCM network and the Classics Curated by TCM Hub on HBO Max.

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