New York, New York (1977, Martin Scorsese)
The only musical Scorsese ever directed failed at the box-office in 1977, however I can appreciate the look and style of the film and I can see why Scorsese wanted to make this picture. If you look at all his other films based in New York such as Mean Streets or Taxi Driver, you can see he's captured the authenticity of the city. Yet here New York looks quite fake as everyone is dressed up way too well, the city is too clean to be real, the background sometimes looks to perfect you can tell it's a painting and I think Scorsese intended this as he was trying to capture the real look of New York from the old '40s and '50s films of New York (most notably The Man I Love from 1947) and for that, he succeeded with flying colours.
The main two characters are Jimmy Doyle played by Robert De Niro, an arrogant, rude, obnoxious and annoying saxophonist who in search of a night companion (on the eve of the victory of WWII) finds Francine Evans played by Liza Minelli who he will literally not let go. The two of them end up together, being on the road together with their band leader Frankie Harte played by Georgie Auld (who is De Niro’s sax in the film) and throughout the film they‘re no joy to watch, unlike the beautifully written characters from the old Hollywood movies of New York (we really cared for those characters). Whereas here the character has only the outer shell shown, the annoying one.
This is never the case in a Scorsese picture, in fact every Scorsese picture I've seen has had wonderfully written characters from his first film Who's That Knocking at My Door to Shutter Island. None the less, the film can be looked as a great homage to the great old jazzy times of the big apple that Scorsese loves so much.
This is a great film by a an also great director, although I admit I didn't like De Niro's character/role. It will remain famous even for the Minelli's title song!
ReplyDeleteJust goes to prove that great work will stand the test of time!