Correction — The King of Comedy was made before Last Temptation, so that theory of mine doesn’t stick exactly. What continues to amaze me about King of Comedy is how accurately it predicted how much harder it was going to become to be an artist (and a human being) in the 80s and beyond, so perhaps Scorsese saw some writing on the wall even then.
Also, when I say the Mafia movies are a retreat, I don’t mean they are bad — for any other director they’d be the apex. I see them as being about an insular world which tends to make people shut up, if you know what I mean. There’s a certain security there.
Great post. I have a lot of time for this film and it’s vastly under-rated. It’s one of De Niro’s greatest performances, and there’s a lot of humour in it too as well as all the drama. It’s a great clash of styles – the realism and and the artifice, and equally Mninell’s star performance against De Niro’s method. My favourite scene is where Jimmy proposes and asks the car to reverse over him – it has me laughing every time I see it.
Gosh yes, and he even breaks the window accidentally trying to wake up the justice of the peace. It’s a perfect scene.
Was going to watch this at the weekend; just bumped it up to right now! Well, after I watch La Strada (yeah, I kind of map everything out in advance).
Actually, they’d make a great doiuble feature — La Strada and New York New York — kinda long to watch together but they have similar themes.
I think Scorsese has one of the best filmographies out there. Most people use his big 3 (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas) when expressing admiration/disdain for him, but his career his filmed with underrated gems like The King of Comedy and the film mentioned above.
NY NY is one of Scorsese’s films that I don’t know as well as I know most of them. Scorsese has talked about it in terms of the improvisation/documentary techniques in the foreground and the artifice of the sets in the background . . . that and what a bad experience he had making it. I would like to be able to see the orginal 4-and-a-half hour cut.
I will watch this film next week. Another film I wouldn’t have considered without reading the discussions on this site.
I look forward to hearing the reactions of the people who are planning on watching this.
The dvd I have has deleted scenes, so you can sort of piece together much of the extended version.
I love this film. I haven’t seen it in awhile so I can’t fully discuss it, but now I want to give it a rewatch ASAP.
Now to tie this thread in with the Spielberg one — New York New York is how you recreate the 1940s.
Mr. Scorsese – if you read any of the stuff on here about you, I can only imagine how strange it must feel, to hear praise or criticism from people you’ve never met. I guess you might be used to it. Many of your films have been very important to me, and trying to figure out where they’re coming from is just my natural way of trying to figure out myself.
I watched it about 3 weeks ago, a fairly new 2 disc restored version, having not seen it since it’s release. I loved it! It’s better than I remembered…. it’s from my favourite era of American films, roughly 67’ to 80’ and it holds up superbly I think. Scorcese makes the balance between the old romanticism (referencing Sirk, Minnelli and Kelly/Donen, et al) and the new realism of the time, work incredibly well. The relationship bewteen the era’s is present in the relationship between the two leads. De Niro is at the height of his powers and Liza is perfect for the role.
Nice thread Justin! I think Marty’s work gets short shrift sometimes… shit, I even like Boxcar Bertha!
any director that can name Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Mean Streets, King Of Comedy, After Hours, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino and Taxi Driver deserves his place in the first rank of Yank directors. Now if he’d only re-make ‘The Spy In Black’ I’d die a happy man!!
New York New New is so off putting in so many ways, but I can watch it over and over for the visuals alone—the dialogue is usually poor and not only that but hard to hear a great deal of time—the songs are usually good, but I don’t listen too much to the dialogue—I believe Scorsese has made it off putting on purpose just as he did in King of Comedy which is a more fully realized movie.
It’s one of the great films maudits. Godard said with “A Woman is a Woman” that “I wanted to make a neo-realsit musical — which is a contradiction in terms.” With “New York New York” Marty made a John Cassavetes musical — an even bigger contradiction in terms. DeNiro’s character was largely based on Doris Day’s first husband — an abusive musician who nearly killed her. Marty trains his camera on male pride uncompromisingly.
Liza may be a punchline today but this is why she was great. “The World Goes Round” is her best number in the film — especially for the look of surprise on her face when she finishes it. She’s come into her own here — both the character and Liza.
Many problems when it was released. The film makes no sense without the “Happy Endins” number — which wasn’t restored until 1981. Marty shot it first and had such a grea time he thought the whole film would be easy. It wasn’t.
Every sound stage on every lot in town was used. When DeNiro exits the club at the end he’s standing in front of the “Harmonia Gardens” from “Hello Dolly!” The hallway and elevator Liza is seen at at the end is actually the basement screening room in the Thalberg building on the MGM (now SONY) lot.
Dihanne Abbott is phenomienal. She should have been a BIG star.
Love the moment when DeNiro is standing on the El platform and sees a couple dancing on the street below. Real magic, boys and girls
Thanks Musycks.
Thanks for the great info David. Watching Diahanne Abbott in the club scene — who knew she could sing?! — made me wish she had played Billie Holiday instead of Miss Ross the Boss. I like the comparison with Cassavetes — the rehearsal scene where tensions build and build and it could go in so many different directions. The World Goes Round number is phenomenal because it’s one take — Scorsese begins in long shot, gradually coming in closer to Minelli, and then about three quarters of the way through the song he darkens the stage and isolates just Liza’s head and shoulders in a spotlight, and then when he brings up the lights again she seems so much closer — “bigger.” It’s something I’ve never seen in a musical but it’s another of those magic-dreamlike moments.
I liked Liza Minelli more than I thought I would, but this film pales in comparison to King of Comedy
Justin Vicari
I just reconnected with this film which I actually watched when I was like 12 and it had more of an enormous psychic influence on me than I ever realized. I also happen to think it’s a masterpiece of pure cinema.
Scorsese has been a somewhat polarizing director on this site, and surely this may be the film of his that elicits the widest swing of critical opinions in terms of extreme reactions. The film shouldn’t work, but it does. The mix of rambling, bruising, naturalistic dialogue and acting set against the lavish and artificial sets and mise en scene — well, it totally reminds me of Fassbinder. This, The King of Comedy, and The Last Temptation of Christ are I think the films of Scorsese’s that most remind me of Fassbinder.
I guess what amazes me the most is that this film was even made. What a decade the 70s were. Scorsese had made only cultish pictures — Taxi Driver being arguably the biggest breakthrough or crossover — and yet he was given what was clearly an enormous budget to make this film. And to make it in his own way, which is to say — highly avant-garde. Compare a close-up of Liza Minelli’s eyes as she confronts the dissolution of her marriage with the opening close-up of the woman’s eyes in Un Chien Andalou, and you’ll see what I mean. In fact, I bet you’ll understand Un Chien Andalou in a different way after watching Scorsese’s homage.
Speaking of Minelli, of course she does her thing, and it’s as hard to take at times as it always is. But she never looked, sounded, acted more like her mother than in this movie. Which means that in some ways Scorsese seems to have channeled her father, Vincente Minelli. Those studio-built New York sidewalks are as fertile in their imagination as the ones in The Clock, for instance, and they are as beautiful in their refined way as the locations in Mean Streets are beautiful in their gritty way.
Three things -
There is an amazing scene where Liza, pregnant and without her husband, De Niro, is hanging a mirror in her apartment with a female friend. Nothing could be sadder than this mirror, it’s the cousin of the mirrors in Sirk which fill space and reflect loneliness. Then, de Niro makes a surprise appearance — he comes home and we see him in this mirror. When Liza sees him too, she drops her end of the mirror and it clatters back and forth on the wall. Her reunion embrace with deNiro is filmed in this clattering mirror.
In one scene, deNiro is thrown out of a nightclub for being drunk and disorderly — hey, he ain’t no cupid. There is a long shot (and long take) of him being dragged through what appears to be a tunnel made entirely of neon light. It’s the entrance to the club but for a moment we are on the spaceship in 2001 except even druggier.
In another scene, deNiro and Liza have one of their argumentative, sad/happy reunions in an artificial woods that is a study in the color white. White snow, white birches, and they are both wearing different shades of white/offwhite. Whiteness as a horrifying or tragic color appears again in the hospital where Liza gives birth to deNiro’s son and deNiro refuses to see him.
And of course the ending is totally uncompromising, like the rest of the film. It’s become my belief that Scorsese was at the height of his powers when he made this film. There are very few films in which everything — all of it — can be said to be “made” by the director, as if built entirely with his vision and energy. I think the brutal incomprehension which greeted Last Temptation of Christ caused him to retreat into Mafia films — I do see it as a retreat. The King of Comedy was his sardonic, complex farewell to the truly audacious maverick that he was. The rest, with a few exceptional moments here and there, would be variations on a theme of innocence lost to the corruption of the world, and to the sadness of missed possibilities.