After the heights reached by his 1976 Palme d’Or winner Taxi
Driver, writer-director Martin Scorsese dove into something far less
violent and subversive but ultimately far more destructive to himself and his
career with his 1977 musical misfire New York, New York from which the
hit Frank Sinatra song originated. A PG
rated period piece (a far cry from Taxi Driver’s near X) and musical
tribute to his home town of New York City featuring Robert De Niro as a smooth
talking saxophonist who woos a small-time singer played by Liza Minnelli into
forming a musical jazz act, the film is largely remembered for being
contributory to a dramatic cocaine binge which landed it’s director in rehab
followed by the making of one of his greatest films Raging Bull three
years later.
Akin to, say, Francis Ford
Coppola’s One from the Heart or Herbert Ross’ Pennies from Heaven,
the film is at once a piece of escapist excess harkening back to the Golden Age
of Hollywood Musicals while also trying to be a realistic character study. It never really engages fully which Scorsese
later blamed on being ‘drugged out’ but what’s here nevertheless is adorned
with striking audiovisuals and arresting set pieces.
Amid Victory over Japan Day in 1945 circa New York City’s
nightclubs and big bands, saxophonist Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro in a
character somewhere between Jake La Motta and Rupert Pupkin) sweet talks his
way into relations with Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli) who rebuffs the
undeterred musician at every turn. After
a chance success with a recording of the song You Brought a New Kind of Love
to Me, the duo is offered a job as a traveling sing-song act.
However, on the rise to their success, Jimmy
becomes increasingly erratic in behavior with jealousy, paranoia, possession
and physical altercations either with Francine or anyone who bats an eye at her. At one point his actions nearly causes
Francine to miscarry. To call their
relationship combustible if not dysfunctional is putting it mildly and in a
story arc predating La La Land by decades, the two begin to grow apart
as their disparate career paths take hold.
Characterized largely by the opening and closing theme track
by John Kander and Fred Ebb whose song became a megahit, legendary West Side
Story and The Sound of Music production designer Boris Leven’s
sumptuous sets and luminous radiant cinematography by Five Easy Pieces and
Ghostbusters cameraman László Kovács, New York, New York is a
sensory feast that feels lightweight contextually. Going for an intentionally saturated and grainy Technicolor aesthete which looks a bit like being projected on a thick carpet, it looks fabulous and even plays around with intentional artifice in some sequences. Still, it rings somewhat hollow compared to what Scorsese would do before and especially after this film.
While predating the character of Jake La
Motta which De Niro’s Jimmy Doyle has a lot in common with, the film never
really probes Doyle’s dysfunction and instead serves up a number of visual
excesses that are indeed lush and lovely to look at but only underscore the behind-the-scenes
chaos that ensued on the set. Liza
Minnelli however, which Scorsese had an affair with mid-production, is a joy to
watch in her element, channeling her mother Judy’s presence and voice while
finding her own footing in Scorsese’s largely improvised saga. As a period piece every dollar is on the
screen but again one gets the impression watching this supposedly carefree lark
that ballooning production costs and the director’s own addictions helped tilt
the thing off the rails somewhat.
On its own New York, New York serves
as a curiosity in the director’s oeuvre as something of an outlier, that one
time he tried to marry documentary realism to Busby Berkeley while under a
terrible influence. Looking at it now,
he couldn’t have made Raging Bull without this which in and of itself
was something of a rising again after a hard fall. Scorsese never had a failure of this
magnitude before or since but it absolutely taught him everything he needed to
make one of his very best and most celebrated films.
--Andrew Kotwicki