lasttimeisaw
Even NEW YORK, NEW YORK is Scorsese's notorious box-office snafu, it is still branded with his undeniable virtuosity of camera compositions and sleek cinematography which can feasibly best most of the films made by his peers in retrospective, the version I watch is a 163-minute re-issue in 1981, it is a veritable ode to the golden era of jazz standards.Along with a chronic but episodic story-telling, our two leads are Francine Evans (Minnelli) and Jimmy Doyle (De Niro), she is a promising lounge singer while he is a saxophone player and they first meet in a party on V-J Day where Jimmy's brazen flirting meets with Francine's feckless cold-shoulder, it is ever a stereotyped gambit to anticipate their romance blossoming although the ill-feeling exuded from a rakish scoundrel ever since Jimmy's very first appearance overtly portends that they' re a misfit match. A more problematic hiccup is Scorsese's unmethodical narrative strategy (with most dialogue impromptu), which meshes with random sappy moments, fails to elucidate what really goes wrong in their rocky relationship, superficially it is just an tiresome story of a poor girl falls for a giant pain-in-the-neck, and Scorsese and his screenwriters merely stick to this surface, as if all they want from viewers is to generate enormous sympathy for Francine and give Jimmy a free pass since he is so charmingly irresistible despite of his horrendous personality. If it has failed to do that in 1977, roughly forty years later, it is still a failure in this regard. Be that as it may, if the love story bores me to death and even comes off as a shade intolerable, the musical numbers have the exactly opposite effects, in addition to a haute couture parade for Ms. Minnelli, her renditions of BUT THE WORLD GOES 'ROUND and the sensational THEME FROM NEW YORK, NEW YORK are timeless earworms and Diahnne Abbott's performance of HONEYSUCKLE ROSE in the Harlem club is irresistibly soothing and enchanting, not to mention a young Mary Kay Place is also a brassy songbird. Albeit the inadequate character setting, Minnelli is the one who offers a positive momentum for the film to roll in the right direction, to be a star under the spotlight one has to make other sacrifices, in some way, it is her version of A STAR IS BORN (1954, 8/10), a homage to her mother's road to fame. Francine may be a dumb chick who inclines to make wrong choices in selecting her man, and too blind to see it, but thankfully, her rationality finally catches up with her in the ending scenes.But the same cannot be referred to Mr. De Niro, whose Jimmy is like a ticking time-bomb ready to go off anytime anywhere, it is not a cinch to establish such an off-putting egomaniac persona, which frankly speaking is quite praiseworthy for his acting chop, but on the other hand, ultimately viewers are prone to a certain perturbation generated by an assumption that all the acting may implicitly betray the thespian's real life temperament. There is also sheer contrast between his perfectly camera-friendly poise and the soused foreheads of his big band members during his show-stopping fanfare, as we have to swallow the fact that De Niro is just faking it whereas Minnelli has the bona-fide artistry.It is plain painful to see Ms. Minnelli's following silver screen career peters out rapidly after the failure of this project, no second chance or whatsoever meanwhile things go more kindly for men and it doesn't stop Scorcese and De Niro from ascending to their apex and maintaining their credibility up to this day.
disinterested_spectator
At the beginning of the movie, when Jimmy is trying to pick up Francine, the first thirteen words out of her mouth are the words "No." That would have been more than enough for most men, but Jimmy is so pushy that he keeps at it, getting nowhere. However, through a bizarre coincidence, Francine ends up with Jimmy the next day at his audition as a saxophone player. He flops. She tries to give him some advice, and he gets angry. Being a professional singer, she encourages Jimmy to accompany her in a song, and the manager is so impressed that he hires them as a boy-girl team. She agrees to meet Jimmy the next day, but when she gets back to her hotel, she finds out that her agent has a good singing job lined up for her, which means going on the road. But she has to leave early in the morning if she wants the job. As she has no way of breaking her date with Jimmy before she leaves, she simply takes off, giving her agent a letter to give to Jimmy explaining what happened.This first sequence of events is a harbinger of all that is to come, and so it is worth pausing here to see what this represents. First of all, Jimmy is a snob about the kind of music he plays, and thinks he is too good to take advice from anyone. Francine, on the other hand, is casually great, a natural, someone who sings the kind of songs people want to hear, and does so with a lot of personality and polish. This reminds me of "The Way We Were" (1973), when Katie works really hard, desperately trying to write the best essay in the course she is taking. Instead, the professor reads aloud the essay written by Hubbell, who probably just dashed it off the night before. And just to rub it in, the essay is about a man for whom everything came too easily. Katie is devastated. But at least she has the strength of character needed to admit that his essay was better, and to tell him so with a smile. Not so with Jimmy in "New York, New York." He can't stand the fact that Francine has more talent than he does. He resents her for it, and he begrudges every concession he has to make to her.Second, Jimmy is obnoxious, arrogant, and pushy, and Francine is submissive and passive, to the point that a lot of people see her as a victim. But Danny Peary, in his "Cult Movies 3," argues that "it is Francine who constantly victimizes Jimmy and who ultimately destroys (their professional and personal) relationships. He may do bad things, but she is the villain." (p. 152).Regarding the sequence of events already discussed, Peary argues that she promised Jimmy to perform with him, and that she knew that without her, he would lose the job. Well, the fact that Jimmy is not good enough to hold down the job on his own is not her problem. She was willing to help him out as long as she had nothing else going on in her life right then, but when something came along that was really important to her, she was not about to sacrifice her own career for someone she just met the day before. In other words, what people like Jimmy do not understand is that people like Francine only appear to be submissive and passive because they are good natured and easy going. And so it comes as a great shock to Jimmy that Francine really is not under his thumb after all, but is capable of bending that thumb back when it comes to the things she cares about. Call her a "villain" if you want, but let this movie be a cautionary tale to those like Jimmy who think they can dominate women like Francine.Danny Peary is my favorite critic, which is why I have given his Francine-as-villain analysis so much attention. He gives several more examples of what a villain she is, but this one really floors me: "Francine became pregnant without discussing it with Jimmy." In other words, I guess Francine should have discussed it with Jimmy before she decided not to use a condom.Jimmy's pushiness arises from an egocentric delusion. He thinks that what he wants, what will make him happy, will therefore make Francine happy. If she is reluctant to do what he wants, it is only because she just does not understand what is best for her. And so he just cannot believe that she stubbornly keeps wanting to do things her way, when he just knows that her true happiness lies in her doing exactly what he says she should do.She goes on to be a big movie star, while he manages to have some minor success owning his own night club, finally giving him almost enough self-confidence to tell her that he is proud of her in her dressing room where there is a party going on celebrating her successful return to New York. I say "almost," because in his inimitable, small-minded way, he immediately qualifies the compliment by saying, "in a way."He goes down to a payphone and calls her, asking her to meet him, because there is something he wants to talk to her about. Impulsively, she agrees. But then she gets to thinking about the important thing he wants to talk to her about, which obviously is about their getting back together. Not wanting to go through another scene of telling him "No," she goes home instead. When she does not show up, he realizes that she does not need him and just wants him to go away, which is what she tried to tell him at the beginning of the movie. At long last, he finally learns to accept this brute fact.
