Part of Musical Matinees & I Love New York
Friday, September 17, 2021, 2:30 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image - Redstone Theater

Dir. Martin Scorsese. 1977, 164 mins. New 35mm print. With Robert De Niro, Liza Minnelli, Lionel Stander. Scorsese’s ode to classic MGM musicals and 1940s jazz marked a departure for him, combining his gritty hard-boiled realism (he had just made Taxi Driver) with a celebration of the surreal artificiality of Hollywood. Undoubtedly one of the director’s masterworks, the film brilliantly depicts the difficulty of a marriage between two independent creatives, and Scorsese pushes the story of the doomed relationship between a jazz singer and a saxophonist into dark, exhilarating territory. The final half hour, when Scorsese gives the film over to pure movie musical magic, makes for one of his most sustained feats of grand filmmaking, while Minnelli’s climactic belting of the now-classic title song (written by Fred Ebb and John Kander for the film) is a true show-stopper.