Richard Joseph Spinelli walks past three film locations on an ordinary day in Belmont without a plaque marking any of them, and this note puts the neighborhood’s screen history in order so a visitor can do the same on purpose.

The 1950s: Marty

Marty is the story of a Bronx butcher, and its neighborhood is Belmont. The film’s Italian American Bronx, with its stoops, its dance halls and its family kitchens, was drawn from these blocks, and the quiet, lonely Saturday night at its center is a neighborhood story more than a city one. It remains the film most often named when the neighborhood’s history is told, including by the Belmont Business Improvement District.

The 1970s: The Seven Ups

A police thriller of the 1970s used the streets around Arthur Avenue among its locations, part of a decade when the Bronx stood in for every kind of New York on film. It is remembered here mostly for a car chase and for showing the avenue as it looked between the market’s early decades and its revival.

The 1990s: A Bronx Tale

A Bronx Tale, set in the 1960s and released in 1993, is the film most visitors have in mind when they arrive: a boy, a bus driver father and the corner where the neighborhood’s other kind of authority held court. Its Belmont is a memory of the 1960s recreated for the camera, which is worth remembering when the real avenue of today looks different.

1999: Mario’s and The Sopranos

Mario’s on Arthur Avenue turned down a scene in The Godfather, because the owner wanted the restaurant known for its food and its family room rather than for a murder over dinner. When The Sopranos came to the avenue in 1999, the restaurant said yes, and the scene is the reason a certain kind of visitor asks for a particular table. The restaurant is still there and still run for the food, which was the point of the refusal.

Walking the locations

Era Film What to walk past
1950s Marty The residential blocks off Arthur Avenue, stoops and all
1970s The Seven Ups The avenue itself, wider and faster than it looks on screen
1990s A Bronx Tale The corners around East 187th Street, imagined as the 1960s
1999 The Sopranos Mario’s, on Arthur Avenue

Two other names belong to this history: actress Anne Bancroft and actor Joe Pesci are counted among the neighborhood’s own. The films are a reason people come; the neighborhood they find is the one that was here before the cameras and stayed after them.