The Public Eye (1992)

Inspired by a real photographer: Joe Pesci's Leon "Bernzy" Bernstein is a cigar-smoking, Weegee-like figure, written after Howard Franklin could not secure the rights to Arthur Fellig's story. Franklin's 1992 noir follows a freelance crime photographer chasing bodies for the 1940s New York tabloids, a man who hopes to see his gritty pictures published as a book while a publisher dismisses them as vulgar. Pesci gives one of his most tender performances, and the period night photography is gorgeous. It is a modest film, but nothing else captures so well the hustle of the flash-and-run news photographer.