Across the Universe | Rivington and Clinton Streets — the Lower East Side corner the film moved into

The corner of Rivington and Clinton is unremarkable at first glance, which is precisely its value. Six-storey tenements with fire escapes zigzagging down the brick. A bodega awning. Steps that end at a door two feet below sidewalk level, because the street was raised around them a century ago. This is the Lower East Side that generations arrived into — Germans, then Eastern European Jews, then Puerto Rican and Dominican families — and the housing stock has outlived every wave.

Across the Universe put its characters into rooms exactly like these, and the production shot on this stretch of Rivington. The film's downtown apartment is a shared flat full of musicians and runaways, the kind of place that only existed because these buildings were cheap and nobody in charge cared much what happened inside them. Taymor did not need to build that. She needed to point a camera at it.

Walk east along Rivington from Essex and the change of texture is physical. The blocks nearer Orchard have been polished by shops and hotels; by the time you cross Clinton the buildings go quiet again, and you can read the old cornice lines and the ghost signs above the ground floors. Look up at the water towers. Look down at the cellar hatches in the pavement, still in use for deliveries.

Stand on the northeast corner in the late afternoon, when the sun comes down the street from the west and the fire escapes throw ladders of shadow across the brick. That is the light the film borrowed, and it is free.