With Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), Martin Scorsese made his reputation for gritty stories linked to the hard-fought turf of New York at a time when the city seemed to be fading into twilight. And then came New York, New York (1977), which painted Manhattan with a nostalgic luster. NY, NY has just been released on Blu-ray with the director's commentary and other special features.
Twenty-first century audiences may be surprised to find Liza Minnelli billed above Robert De Niro, but in the '70s she was the celebrity and De Niro was still a rising figure on the strength of his work with Scorsese. The box office draw at the time of NY, NY's debut was the unconventional glamour of Minnelli, remarkable in the musical scenes for channeling the voice and presence of her mother, Judy Garland. Nowadays De Niro's Method performance as the raging bull of postwar jazz (a vulnerable ego given to self-destructive, abusive outbursts) tends to dominate perceptions of the movie.
Scorsese filmed NY, NY in the better-than-life colors of a 1940s Hollywood musical and reveled in the artifice of lavish nightclubs that could never have existed in reality, soundstage street scenes and even a painted sunrise. And yet he admitted randomness and spontaneity to the set. The paper cocktail napkin sticking to the base of Minnelli's drink at a Harlem nightclub would never have made it into a '40s musical. The story of De Niro's saxophonists Jimmy Doyle, pushing out of the swing era in a blazing fire of jump R&B and bebop, and his tempestuous love for Minnelli's Francine Evans, the girl singer who made it in Hollywood, culminates in one of Scorsese's cinematic tours de force—his recreation of a classically-styled MGM musical within his own movie.
Although Taxi Driver and Raging Bull overshadow New York, New York, it remains a remarkable accomplishment with its feats of acting and filmmaking. And lest we forget, the title song, which has become a standard, was written for the movie.
