New York, New York. 1977. The sixth film.
This is the first Scorsese movie I’ve ever seen that I didn’t even want to finish watching. I’m glad I did, because it became something a little more special at the end, although I don’t think this is really a “successful movie” by any means.
When I told my dad I was doing this project, and mentioned I was excited for New York, New York, he frowned and said “I didn’t like that one. There was no chemistry.” Kind of a funny thing for my dad to say; I didn’t think he cared about stuff like that in movies. I decided not to let my dad’s opinion color my experience of the movie, but I’m sorry to say that he was totally right. The movie is a mismatched and depressing love story between Robert Deniro and Liza Minelli. I guess I don’t really have to say anything more than that, but I will anyway.
Deniro is a great actor, but playing a charming and sensitive man is not one of his great talents. The closest he gets is what I call “bully-charm”, where he seems to stubbornly and aggressively convince people to like him. With the right partner, it works really well. But from the very start of the movie, Minelli responds to his overtures with mild displeasure, and has a look on her face like a depressed and battered housewife. It doesn’t get any better from there. You can tell from the dialogue that she is meant to be a spunky sparring partner from him, but playing “sharp, tough and sexy” is as much a weak point for Minelli as playing a “nice boyfriend” is for Deniro. Their romance is just unpleasant. It straight-up doesn’t work.
The film was supposed to be a fusion of gritty realism and bombastic musical, which is an idea I love. For most of New York, New York, though, I was trying to figure out exactly what the movie was, because it wasn’t quite what it was stated to be. There were a few scenes where I felt I caught glimpses of something. For example, there’s a scene where Deniro angrily proposes to Minelli, and she says she imagined her engagement to be more “calm”. He screams in her face “THIS IS CALM!” I thought it was a funny moment, but I also wondered “Wait, why is this funny? Was the other stuff supposed to be funny too? Has this been a comedy the whole time?” Not exactly a good sign.
I sat through the first two hours and felt ready to give up on the movie entirely. It didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and while several scenes had that great Scorsese visual flair, it seemed to be just scene after scene of unlikeable characters berating each other.
I’m glad I stuck with it though, because towards the end, the “musical” part of the gritty musical really kicked in, and for the first time the movie actually worked. Minelli’s character let loose and stopped just sitting there looking like a sad puppy, and Scorsese gave flashy musical scenes his usual striking and dynamic direction, making something interesting and unique. I had to wait two hours to get to a part of the movie I actually wanted to see, and I won’t quite say it was worth it, but I’m glad I didnt just eject the dvd.
Even though I felt Deniro and Minelli didn’t work for most of the movie, that penultimate scene, with Minelli belting out the title song they wrote together as Deniro wistfully watches from the audience, came close to tugging my heartstrings. Too little, too late, but it did happen.
Ultimately I think the film is an interesting experiment, and I’m glad it exists. I sort of wish Scorsese had made a movie more like the last quarter of this one, simply a flashy and dynamic musical without the unfitting injection of “realism”. Mostly though, to be honest, now that I’ve seen this, I’m relieved that I’ll never have to sit through the whole thing again.
Next: Raging Bull
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