Review of New York, New York

New York, New York is an ambitious failure. There are a lot of good things in it, but rarely do they ever seem to quite fit together into a consistent whole. You have to give Scorsese credit for trying to do something new, as he has done throughout his career despite the oft-repeated charge that he does the same thing over and over again. In this case, however, his gamble didn't pay off. Some of the tensions inherent in the "New Hollywood's" attitude towards Hollywood's past can be seen in New York, New York. With this movie, Scorsese sought to create a tribute to the big-band musicals of the 40s, while placing at its center a typically hard-to-like protagonist. Robert De Niro plays a talented but abrasive saxophonist who seemingly can't get along with anyone for any length of time, least of all his wife, played by Liza Minnelli. In the extended opening sequence, they meet cute at a V-J celebration, though, in a sign of things to come, the way in which De Niro tries to pick up Minnelli is distinctly creepy in its aggressiveness. She turns out to be a gifted singer, and they become partners, first singing together at a nightclub, then going on the road with a band, before his jealousy of her success finally drives them apart. After the low-budget success of Taxi Driver, Scorsese was riding high, and he was given the chance to mount his follow-up on a big scale. Just as the story and situation mimic those of old musicals, New York, New York's production design aims to recreate those movies' stylized, artificial sets and visuals. The sets are spare and designed in bold colors, while the car scenes utilize obvious rear-projection. At the same time as he is replicating the world of Hollywood musicals, Scorsese is also trying to subvert it's sentimentality by introducing his own brand of gritty emotional realism. Coppola tried to do something similar in One from the Heart; Scorsese's movie is much better, but it still doesn't work. At times, he seems to be doing a run-through for his next and much better movie, Raging Bull. In both films De Niro plays a volatile, jealous character who makes life difficult for everyone around him and never learns from his mistake. Of course, Jimmy Doyle is a little more bearable than Jake La Motta, but the fact remains that the character is just too unpleasant for the context of a musical. As despicable as he was, La Motta seemed to belong in the tough world of tenements, nightclubs, and boxing rings in which we saw him. If his character never really changed, then that was one of the main points of Raging Bull. In New York, New York, though, the characters are similarly unchanging, but they also remain strictly on the surface, as superficial as the studio-built world they inhabit. Scorsese seems to have mistaken unpleasantness for profundity.