New York, New York (film)
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| New York, New York | |
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| Directed by | Martin Scorsese |
| Produced by | Robert Chartoff Irwin Winkler |
| Written by | Earl Mac Rauch Mardik Martin |
| Starring | Liza Minnelli Robert De Niro |
| Cinematography | László Kovács |
| Editing by | Bert Lovitt David Ramirez Tom Rolf |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | June 21, 1977 |
| Running time | Original Cut: 155 min. Edited Theatrical Version: 136 min. Re-Release: 163 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $14,000,000 USD (estimated) |
New York, New York is a musical-drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, released in 1977. It is a musical tribute, featuring new songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb as well as standards, to Scorsese's home town of New York City, and stars Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli as a pair of musicians and lovers.
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[edit] Plot
The story opens on V-J Day in 1945, the day World War II finally ended. A massive celebration in a New York City nightclub is underway, music provided by the Tommy Dorsey orchestra. While there Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro), a selfish and smooth-talking saxophone player, meets Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli), a small-time singer. Francine is lonely but still, she wants nothing to do with Jimmy, who keeps pestering her for her phone number.
The next morning, they end up sharing a cab, and, against her will, Francine accompanies Jimmy to an audition. There he gets into an argument with the club owner. Francine, to get the audition back on track, begins to sing the old standard, "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me." Jimmy joins in on his sax. The club owner is impressed and, to Francine's astonishment, they are both offered a job—a boy-girl act.
From that moment on, Jimmy and Francine's relationship deepens into love. But there are problems—mainly, Jimmy's tendency to quarrel with everyone, and his increasingly violent fights with Francine, who becomes pregnant with his child. An especially bad shouting match between them results in Francine going into premature labor. Jimmy rushes her to the hospital, but he is not ready to be a father, or a good husband, and he abandons his wife.
Several years later, in a recording studio, Francine records "But the World Goes Round," a powerful anthem which makes the charts and turns her into a popular entertainment figure. In the following years, Jimmy and Francine both find success in the music industry. Doyle becomes a renowned jazz musician and club owner. Also, Francine becomes a successful singer and motion picture actress.
Jimmy records a song of his on his saxophone which tops the charts, and Francine cements her stardom after singing Jimmy's song, the Theme from New York, New York. Her performance, received by a wildly appreciative audience, takes place in the same nightclub where, years earlier, she and Jimmy had met. After the show, Jimmy telephones his ex-wife, proposing a reconciliation. Francine is tempted, heads toward the elevator, but at the last moment changes her mind. Jimmy, waiting on the sidewalk, realizes he has been stood up and walks off into the New York night, accompanied by the song he has written — the "Theme From New York, New York."
[edit] Style and responses
Made after Scorsese's successful Taxi Driver, the film was a box-office failure. Its budget was $14 million, a large figure at the time, but it grossed only $13 million at the box-office and the disappointing reception drove Scorsese into depression and drugs.[1]
In his introduction to the DVD edition of the film, released in 2005, Scorsese explains that he intended the film as a break from the gritty realism that he had become famous for, and sees it as an homage to the musical films of Classical Hollywood.
For this reason, he designed the film's sets and storyline to be deliberately artificial-looking. He acknowledges that it is an experiment that did not please everyone.
[edit] Re-Releases
When the film was originally released, it had a running time of 153 minutes. The box-office failure of the film prompted United Artists to cut the film down to 136 minutes. It was then re-released in 1981 with the deleted scenes restored, including the lengthy musical number "Happy Endings," only a small portion of which had appeared in the original release. The total running time of the DVD edition is 163 minutes.
The theme song of the film, "New York, New York," found its own success when Frank Sinatra recorded a cover version of the song in 1979. The song became a hit, and both Sinatra's and Minnelli's versions have become closely associated with the City of New York. Minnelli continues to perform the number at nearly all of her concerts.
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