Early depiction of Post-stonewall NYC

There are a number of film narratives that take up the rather Hitchcockian idea of following an an object. Sometimes this motivates an anthology narrative, telling a group of mildly related stories (a la Ophuls LA RONDE). Examples include Julien Duvier's TALES OF MANHATTAN (1946), which follows a coat, THE GUN (John Badham, 1974) which follows a gun, Sacha Guitry's Les Perles de la Couronne uses a story of a necklace to construct a story which covers generations; TWENTY BUCKS (1993) by Keva Rosenfeld. There's also a German film, I believe, that follows a penny? These are narratives of circulation. DIABLE DE PARIS is an antecedent.

Joseph Wambaugh's THE BLUE KNIGHT (1975)

Joseph Wambaugh's POLICE STORY

James Willwerth seems to have been a crime correspondent for TIME in the late 1960s and 1970s. A search using his name on the TIME website brings up a number of articles. "Narcotics: Search and Destroy - The War on Drugs" describes a 1972 heroin bust in Chinatown, for example, as going off as "motion picture perfect."

Willwerth is also the author of Jones: Portrait of a Mugger, and Badge of Madness: The True Story of a Psychotic Cop. There's an excellent New York Times book review of the former.

Above is Paul Signac's Vue de Porte de Marseille from 1905. In the background is the Basilica de Notre Dame del la Garde. The depiction is very similar to William Friedkin's opening shot of The French Connection, which begins by zooming out from a view of the basilica into a port scene. The MOMA acquired this painting in 1955. Was it on view between then and 1970? Could Friedkin have seen it?

This the cover of the 1st ed. of Death Wish. Why does Paul Benjamin shed a blood tear? For his city? For the people he's killed?

From the dust jacket:

Death Wish is the story of a society having a nervous breakdown. It is about something that causes a secret uneasiness far back in the conscious minds of many people. What would happen to a man who is unable to keep to the narrow line that stands between being victim or executioner?

Paramount purchased the rights to both Death Wish and a novel called Relentless. The latter was produced by CBS television in 1977 - a story about an Arizon state trooper--who is also Indian-- that pursues a paramilitary group of robbers (who killed his uncle and have taken a woman hostage) into the mountain and uses his knowledge of the wilderness to track them.