New York, New York

1977 musical romance

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A horny saxophonist falls for a singer, and they have a troubled romance.

Begins and ends with a shot of Robert De Nero's shoes, that first shot preceding a remarkable crane shot over a large crowd and this neon arrow pointing right at our male lead with this ridiculous New York City Hawaiian shirt. Immediately, I love the way this thing looks, a great artificiality just like 40's movie musicals that I believe Scorsese is borrowing sets from. There's even a big stage number like in Minnelli's The Band Wagon. One early shot where De Niro is watching a dance, ghostly illuminated by a passing train, floored me. I also loved how the music was filmed, editing that reminded me of Damien Chazelle although that might be because these characters and their relationship forced me to think about La La Land.

De Niro and Liza Minneli are both great even when they're not playing characters who are very consistent or realistic. They're as artificial as characters in those artificial 40's movie musicals although it's the darker flipside of that artificiality. These are characters who fall in love like they might in a movie from that decade, but they also say really terrible things to each other and beat on each other. De Niro learned sax for this role and is convincing enough as a guy who is really good at playing a saxophone. He's more convincing as this guy who seems to be teetering on multiple edges at the same time. Minneli's eyes dominate the screen, and she gets plenty of opportunities to show off her vocal chops. That "World Goes Round" song? Man, she really belts that out!