Do the Right Thing

Director: Spike Lee

1989 / 120min / 35mm

Has any movie better captured the atmosphere of those dog days when you can actually feel the suffocating weight of summertime in NYC? Production designer Wynn Thomas’s blazing red touch-ups on the shops and homes of Lexington Avenue, DP Ernest Dickerson’s flaring, hard-edged photography, and the tactile tensity conveyed by Barry Alexander Brown’s cutting combine to vividly convey the feeling of a blistering, oppressive heat wave that melts blacktop and sets tempers simmering, as Lee’s urgent, angry city symphony bears witness to the pressure cooker effects of a NYC heatwave on a few blocks in Bed-Stuy.

Part of Filmcraft: American Cinema Editors