Manhattan, Woody Allen, 1979

"He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion." Woody Allen could never be accused of ignoring his native city, returning time and again to eulogise the virtues of its buildings and its inhabitants. With this black-and-white story of faithless lovers and nervous courtships wending their way through major art galleries, celebrated restaurants and picturesque landmarks, he came closest to the perfect love letter to the place. Filmed in jazz-age black-and-white, and opening with a stunning montage set to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Manhattan is suffused with an affectionate, excited nostalgia.

• Queensboro Bridge; Guggenheim Museum; Museum of Modern Art; Central Park; Russian Tea Room

The Naked City, Jules Dassin, 1948

On one level, a simple docudrama about how the New York police go about their daily work; on another, an amazing, pioneering poem to the rhythms of big-city life, in both its brutality and mundanity. "There are eight million stories in the naked city," said the famous narration, and with extensive use of hidden cameras director Jules Dassin set out to record "one of them" in an unprecedentedly unvarnished way. This is the New York of the Weegee era: hardboiled cops and pill-popping floozies, big hats and Saturday Night specials, a city tender and iron-hard at the same time.

• Williamsburg Bridge; Times Square; West 83rd Street

Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman, 1984

In some ways the apogee of the first Saturday Night Live generation – a quintessential New York TV institution – this blockbusting comedy took a special brand of mayhem on to the city's streets, making New York an integral part of all the spooky goings-on. From the bookstacking ghoul in the New York public library, to the firehouse HQ, to the intra-dimensional portal on the roof of one of those gothic midtown apartment blocks, Ghostbusters put the city front and centre. And then took great delight in ripping it apart: tearing up the streets, deluging them in goo and demolishing prime real estate.

• New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue; 55 Central Park West; 8 Hook and Ladder firehouse, Tribeca

Shaft, Gordon Parks, 1971

Shaft may not have been the first film in the blaxploitation genre, but it was certainly the first properly successful one, taking the Harlem-dude look of feather-hat, platform boots and silver-top cane to a massive audience. As a film, it's rough and ready but full of modish attitude and made a star of Richard Roundtree as the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks. The score was bit of a hit, too. For the first time, a hit film spent much time prowling in and around Harlem's main drag, 125th Street; but Shaft was a downtown cat, too: his apartment was in Greenwich Village and his office in Times Square.

• 125th Street; Times Square; Greenwich Village

Saturday Night Fever, John Badham, 1977

It may have been based on a made-up piece of jourmalism, but this much-venerated disco classic remains a raw, tough-nosed look at a then-hidden youth subculture. John Travolta, force-fed into a white polyester suit, became an instant star, and the Bee Gees's soundtrack a huge-selling, hit-spawning record. To their credit, the film-makers opted to film in authentic locations in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a world away from Manhattan's bright lights. The hardware store where Tony works, the place where he buys pizza, the studio where he rehearses: they're all local, and all still there. One major miss: the disco where he struts his stuff – known at the time as 2001 Odyssey, has been demolished.

• Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; Verrazano Narrows Bridge

Wall Street, Oliver Stone, 1987

Wall Street was supposed to be a denunciation of stock traders' venality, but as is the way of these things, became their defining document, a kind of holy grail. Oliver Stone's depiction of the "greed is good" generation dug its way fully into the financial district, even managing to snag 45 minutes' filming time on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The rest of the film is a whirlwind tour of the exclusive venues patronised by the brokerage set, from the ballroom of the Roosevelt hotel where lizardlike Michael Douglas delivers his epoch-making speech, the Broadway offices of Merrill Lynch, to the 21 Club, where Charlie Sheen eats steak tartare with Douglas.

• Battery Park; 21 Club, West 52nd Street; Roosevelt Hotel, 45 East 45th Street

Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee, 1989

Almost two decades after the blaxploitation explosion of the early 70s, Spike Lee singlehandedly reignited African American cinema with this tremendously powerful drama. It zeroed in on the inter-ethnic tensions then stalking New York, and Lee scrupulously articulated all the contending points-of-view in his account of a riot at a pizzeria. He also made sure it looked authentic, shooting the whole thing on a single-block location on Stuyvesant Avenue in Brooklyn, in the heart of the Bed-Stuy district that remains a central African-American neighbourhood in the borough.

• Stuyvesant Avenue, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese, 1976

Martin Scorsese rivals Woody Allen as New York's premier film-maker: he's returned to the city again and again in different guises, from the brash musical New York New York to the intense, confessional thriller Mean Streets. But Taxi Driver is arguably his towering achievement, and an eye-opening document of New York at its scuzziest, before the big clean-up began. De Niro drove a cab to get into the role, and Scorsese filmed at real cab offices and a cabdrivers' cafe. Even though Scorsese largely avoided obviously recognisable locations, Columbus Circle jumps out – that's where De Niro's mohawk-wearing Travis Bickle plans to shoot a politician. And East 13th Street – now considerably cleaner – was used for Taxi Driver's nastiest scenes, including the one where Bickle guns down pimp Harvey Keitel in a doorway.

• Columbus Circle, East 13th Street, 8th Avenue

Sweet Smell of Success, Alexander Mackendrick, 1957

Despite having a director who had grown up in Scotland and cut his teeth on Ealing comedies, this remains arguably the greatest depiction of New York of the Mad Men era: all smoke-filled rooms and swirling whiskies, newspapermen and cigarette girls. Tony Curtis hit a career high as press agent Sidney Falco, trying to sell tips to gossip columnist JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). Some key scenes were filmed at the legendary restaurant Toots Shor, but it's no longer around. Unlike the Brill Building, on Broadway, where Hunsecker has his apartment; it's better known, of course, for playing host to numerous songwriters in the 50s and 60s. And, like Bud Fox in Wall Street, Falco makes his way to the 21 Club to pay court to his more powerful employer.

• Brill Building; Broadway; 21 Club

Requiem For A Dream, Darren Aronofsky, 2000

It might not yet have acquired the status of a New York classic, but the Black Swan director's adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr's sprawling novel certainly offered an unusual slant on the city. Requiem is about the junkie son of a doting Jewish mother, who herself becomes an addict through the injudicious use of diet pills. Brighton Beach and Coney Island, for decades a neighbourhood dominated by Jewish immgrants from Eastern Europe and Russia, is the focus: the mother, Sara Goldfarb, has an apartment in one of the blocks on Brighton 8th Street (outside which she sits and gossips, like a yenta of old), while her son Harry drags his mum's TV along Coney Island's famous boardwalk, where you can see in the background the remains of the now-demolished Thunderbolt rollercoaster and the bizarre Parachute Jump tower. And Requiem's signature scene – a limpid dream sequence in which Harry fantasises about meeting Marion, his girlfriend, plays out on Steeplechase Pier.

• Brighton Beach; Coney Island

• Andrew Pulver is the film editor of The Guardian