New York, New York

A movie that I had on my old DVR back at the old place before I moved was New York, New York. I was disappointed in not getting around to watching it before having to switch DVRs, so the next time TCM showed it, I made a special point to record it to be able to do a post on it. It's getting another airing on TCM, tonight at 8:00 PM, so now I've watched it to be able to do that review.

The movie opens up on V-J Day in New York City, or at least a stylized rendition of New York as conceived on a studio backlot since the whole movie is very stylized. Someone is throwing a military uniform out of a window, and later we see a man walk out of that building in an outfit reminiscent of a Hawaiian shirt, although they didn't call it that back in the day, I don't think (and the pattern isn't expressly Hawaiian). That man is Jimmy Doyle (Robert DeNiro), and he goes to the USO club where he's set to meet one of his friends. At the club, he sees Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli), who entertains the soldiers going through the club and also wants to be a singer. Jimmy, thinking he's a smooth operator, keeps trying to chat up Francine, although she keeps turning him down, at least until Jimmy's friend, who's found a date here, tries to set Jimmy up his date's friend, who turns out to be Francine, of course.

At Jimmy's hotel, the manager is pissed, because Jimmy turns out to be a smooth operator in dealing with hotel management, not only in trying to pick up women. Jimmy has run up a large tab that he has no intention of paying, and no ability to pay either. Surprisingly, this plot strand doesn't really get explored over the course of the movie. Instead, Jimmy and Francine wind up together the following morning again. Jimmy is a saxophonist who has an audition at a club out in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, he's been doing arrangements that are decidedly not what the club owners of the day want. Francine, hoping to get work as a singer, decides to have Jimmy play a standard to which she can sing along. The club manager is impressed and offers her a job -- but only as part of a double act with Frankie.

This is a problem, since Francine still doesn't really like Jimmy. But, as is the nature of a movie like this, you might guess that they fall in love. That does in fact happen. Not only that, but Jimmy gets his own band with Francine as a singer, and they go out on the road together. However, things hit a snag when, at some point after their marriage, Francine gets pregnant. A pregnant Francine could probably still sing in a studio and cut a record, but traveling with a band is a problem. And Jimmy is none too happy with his wife's pregnancy, even though he should have known this was a consequence of having sex with her. When the baby comes, Jimmy doesn't want to see the kid, and Francine eventually leaves him.

Jimmy stays behind in New York, opens a club of his own, and eventually records the standard "New York, New York", which was actually written for this movie and not a song of the early 1950s. Francine, for her part, has gone out to Hollywood and made it big there, doing the sort of movie musical that was soon to go out of style. When she returns to New York, she and Jimmy eventually meet again. But will they be able to reconcile?

New York, New York was not a success on its original release back in 1977, and frankly it's easy to see why. One big reason is that Robert De Niro is playing a character for whom the audience is supposed to have sympathy, but he's such a jerk to everybody around him that it's difficult to find that sympathy. Secondly, there's the production design of the movie. While watching New York, New York, I found myself thinking of the movie Pennies from Heaven, which was also set several decades in the past but has a look of being a way too antiseptic version of that past. Liza Minnelli looks way too like a product of the 1970s, and everything looks rather off. Maybe that look of artificiality was deliberate, but I don't think it works.

Perhaps the biggest issue is with the movie's running time. Supposedly, the original cut of the movie ran to over four hours, forcing a lot of edits. The version that got released to theaters ran a bit over two and a half hours, which is still too long. On a re-release, a scene depicting Francine's big number in her Hollywood hit was added back in, bringing the movie to a bit over 160 minutes. Frankly, New York, New York is the sort of thing that should have come in under two hours.

The one thing the movie will always be remembered for, however, is that title song, which Frank Sinatra would also sing and turn into a standard. That is not enough, though, to make New York, New York a good movie.