A dreaded moment: Another scholar has succinctly captured what I want to say about 1970s urban cinema.

"In the end, Scorcese's films translate a city in crisis into a geography of desire, a fascinatingly undetermined social space with as yet illegible rules."

That's Sabine Haenni in her article "Geographies of Desire: Post-social urban space in the films of Martin Scorsese."

I'm hoping she doesn't tread too far into my territory and I'm sure that this will complement rather than eclipse my own research. Anyway, I'm glad she says it, it means I'm not wrong. And there's many more films with which this case can be made and complicated.