New York, New York

Director: Martin Scorsese

1977 / 163min / 35mm

A love letter to the classic Hollywood musical that scratches off the Technicolor sheen to reveal the depths of desperation hidden beneath their surfaces, Scorsese’s 1940s-era genre-deconstructing extravaganza features Liza Minnelli as a nightclub singer who rises in fame as her relationship to Robert De Niro’s hotheaded jazz saxophonist falls to pieces. The deliberate artifice of the film’s soundstage-bound musical numbers—including Minnelli’s grand finale performance of the famous Kander and Ebb title song, written for the movie—contrasts jarringly with the raw nerve realism of the performances, making for something like MGM’s Freed Unit colliding head-on with Cassavetes.

“New York, New York is a movie about falling in love with artifice—which provides more consistency, sometimes, than people can. It, like Bob Fosse’s films and some other Liza Minelli star vehicles, lingers in the shadowy side of show business, becoming a musical meditation on the inherent desperation of musical theater.”—Natasha Stagg

Extended introduction from writer, Natasha Stagg, on Saturday, October 28th

General admission seating for screening on Saturday, October 28th