10 Thoughts After Finally Watching ‘New York, New York’

Did a belated look at one of Scorsese's least-loved films reveal a misunderstood masterpiece? (Spoiler: No, but it is a fascinating oddity.)

When it comes to filmmakers I love, I’ve come to consider myself a slow-motion completist. I have plans to watch, say, every Hitchcock movie at some point, but they’re a bit hazy. I pick away at my Ingmar Bergman, Agnes Varda, and Federico Fellini box sets every once in a while with the intention of getting to the end someday. When? Who knows? I could bear down and check off every film from one of these directors but, even putting aside the fact that a lot of my watching time is taken up with movies for various work projects, there’s part of me that resists closing the loop on these filmographies.

On some level I’m glad there are Akira Kurosawa films I’ve yet to watch. It would make me sad to know there’s nothing left for me to discover. I sometimes think about Jonathan Lethem and Philip K. Dick. Lethem’s not just a huge fan of Dick, he cites Dick as a primary influence and served as co-editor of the massive The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, the sprawling journal Dick kept after his transformative 1974 vision (or descent into mental illness, depending on how you look at it). Lethem has never read one of Dick’s early, minor novels for just this reason. In some ways, I suspect this is a hedge against my own mortality. As long as there’s more to watch, I can’t be done. “Sorry,” I’ll tell whatever mortal illness will eventually take me, “I haven’t seen Jamaica Inn or The Woman Next Door yet. You’ll have to wait.”

All of which is a long way of attempting to explain why I didn’t watch New York, New York until this week. When I was first digging into the Martin Scorsese filmography, I skipped the 1977 film because of its iffy reputation. There were other, more vital-seeming Scorsese movies I felt I needed to watch first. After a while, it just became a habit to keep this one for later, whenever later arrived.

That day came yesterday. Every new Scorsese film brings in Scorsese Season so, in addition to writing about Kundun for another publication, I decided to mark the occasion by finally seeing what New York, New York was all about. Some thoughts:

1. I’m not sure what I expected, but it was not what I got. I understood New York, New York to be a dark take on the classic Hollywood musical informed by a New Hollywood sensibility (specifically Scorsese’s). And it is that, just as it’s the story of a couple falling in and out of love. But I wasn’t anticipating the sourness that’s present from the start.