Taxi Driver being the best.
Good movie -- but in my humble opinion, "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Serpico" are the definitive New York City movies of the 1970s.
And anyone who wants to read a fantastic real-life book that stands as the definitive social commentary on the "bad old days" of New York City should try to get your hands on a copy of Report From Engine Co. 82 -- a classic non-fiction book by a New York City firefighter. It's (obviously) about the life and times of a firefighter in New York City's busiest fire station at the time, but it is -- first and foremost -- a scathing commentary on the decay of the city as evidenced by the sheer chaos of a firefighter's typical day.
Author Dennis Smith seems to look upon the preponderance of false alarms as a metaphor of sorts for the collapse of the entire social structure in the city's worst neighborhoods. And he's not referring to an accidental false alarm or an over-anxious person who smelled smoke somewhere in a building that turned out to be nothing . . . he's talking about the idiocy of completely useless @ssholes who would activate alarm boxes just for the sake of having something exciting happen in the neighborhood.
My memory of the book may be hazy, but I seem to remember the author pointing out that Engine Co. 82 responded to more false alarms in a typical day in the late 1960s and early 1970s that all of the combined fire departments in Switzerland answered in an entire year. And I think I remember him saying that the term "false alarm" can't even be translated into Japanese.
Pacino fan? Man, Al has gone to hell since "And Justice for All."
"Dog Day Afternoon" was based on a true incident that occurred in Midwood, although it was filmed on 7th Avenue in Park Slope (that pizzeria featured in the movie was still there until about five years ago. It ALWAYS comes back to pizza). Best scene in the film is when Al is talking on the phone with Chris Sarandon.
Preferred French Connection over Serpico. Despite Friedkin's overindulgent homage to Nouvelle Vague handheld cameras, you have to love a movie whose main chase scene was filmed in ACTUAL traffic on 86th street in Brooklyn (where Tony Manero would strut just six years later).