Even if you’ve never made it to New York City yourself—experienced the humid rush of the subway trains, seen the wiggling trash bags as rats rummage through them or walked underneath the towering skyscrapers of Billionaires Row, Wall Street and Times Square—you’ve been to the city through cinema. The city has been so widely depicted that those who have paid close enough attention to the quintessentially New York City traits may be somewhat underwhelmed at how much the city is just like it is on film; nothing is exaggerated. It’s bustling, mind-bogglingly diverse and every downfall can be forgiven for the simultaneous opportunities constantly presented.
New York Stories from 1989 takes the time to allow three prolific American directors to tell yet another story about the city. Divided into three segments: the first is Life Lessons directed by Martin Scorsese, the second is Life Without Zoë directed by Francis Ford Coppola and the third is Oedipus Wrecks by Woody Allen. Each of the three directors set some of their most acclaimed and widely recognized films in the city: Coppola’s The Godfather, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Allen’s Manhattan are just some of the most obvious examples. But New York Stories presents these filmmakers with a unique opportunity. They couldn’t make a sprawling cross-generational epic, a dialogue-heavy drama or even have the time to really display the cinematic qualities of the city. All three shorts, credits included, are packed into the film’s hour and 58-minute runtime.
Despite the brevity of Scorsese’s Life Lessons, many common themes from his New York-based films are still explored. The segment opens with a burly and unshaven Lionel Dobie (Nick Nolte) attempting to complete a series of large-scale, abstract paintings before a gallery show, opening in three weeks. He’s curt with his manager, shooing him away despite the man’s attempts to assure the artist he has faith that the paintings will be ready and impressive. Still, Dobie is curt and distracted; he needs to pick up his assistant, who’s just landed back in the city after a trip to Florida. As soon as Dobie spots the 20-something Paulette (Rosanna Arquette), she quickly chastises him for assuming she needed to be picked up and admits she was on a trip not with friends but with an up-and-coming comedian (featured later in a performance by Steve Buscemi) with whom Dobie is familiar. “What the hell is a performance artist?” he gruffly asks, demeaning the man’s creative endeavors despite being deeply insecure in his own.
As Life Lessons progresses, it reveals how deeply insecure both the characters are: Paulette over her confidence in her art and potential to be great, and Dobie in his ability to secure a real relationship that’s not exploitative, transactional or forced. He can’t accept that Paulette wants to only be dependent on him for his teachings, as opposed to financially, artistically and physically, as she was before the film’s start. Directly after he assures her they no longer have to sleep together as long as she says, he describes kissing her feet, then has intimate visions of them in glorious blue lighting. “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum plays, recurring throughout and serving as their theme song. The masculine inability to understand female sexuality and autonomy is hardly a new theme in Scorsese’s work–just think Taxi Driver when Travis Bickle brings a girl to a porno theater for their first date together. Paulette realizes that perhaps her decision to attach herself so directly to a man was a mistake. Both Bickle and Dobie are lonely and confused about their masculine presence in one of the world’s biggest, most bustling metropolises.
New York Stories shifts drastically in tone for the following two segments. Life Without Zoë, written by Coppola and his daughter Sofia, tells the story of a wealthy 12-year-old girl, the daughter of highly successful and somewhat absent parents (her mother played by Coppola’s sister Talia Shire and her father by Giancarlo Giannini). As a result of their absence, she is far more mature than the average preteen; she helps return a valuable piece of jewelry, befriends a homeless man camped out on the street with chocolate kiss candies and ultimately helps mend her parents fractured marriage—all in under an hour. Life Without Zoë looks at how New York City can foster growth and confidence in youth, the exact opposite of what happened to Paulette in Scorsese’s portion. Paulette comes to the city and is forced to reckon with mediocrity that perhaps her dream was just that—nothing more than a dream.
Allen’s portion of the film looks at New York City through a third, completely different caricature of the city—the highly successful Jewish lawyer Sheldon Mills (played by Woody Allen himself), constantly annoyed by his mother. She’s so beyond irritating that he takes up much of his therapy sessions complaining about her. She truly is annoying; she talks loudly and is often too busy blabbering about his balding head or non-Jewish girlfriend (Mia Farrow) to ask him questions. One day, during a magic show, she is plucked from the audience to partake in a trick and literally disappears. No one can find her anywhere until she appears as nothing more than an imposing orb-like face floating over the Manhattan skyscrapers for days on end telling embarrassing stories about her son to the broadest audience yet. If Mills thought it was bad before, it’s so much worse now. That is until he finds himself a new girlfriend, a Jewish one this time, and, suddenly, his mother is back in the living room, seemingly unaware of what just happened. Oedipus Wrecks finds a more lighthearted way to deal with an insecure, middle-aged man than Scorsese’s character Dobie. Where Dobie is confrontational, blundering and intimidating, Mills is meek, allowing his mother to keep up her antics. It’s a more refreshing depiction of masculinity than in Scorsese’s segment.
In the breadth of Scorsese’s work, New York Stories is hardly where one would begin to explore the prolific director, and it’s nobody’s favorite Scorsese film. Nevertheless, if the overt gore and violence of his other works is too unsettling—a fair criticism—this may be a more appropriate choice. This segment’s ability to string together a cast of unrelated characters and stories around nothing more than a city’s physicality proves exactly why people keep moving to New York to pursue their dreams. And even more so, it demonstrates why these directors, Scorsese specifically, keep finding their films set in the city; the city’s cast of characters provides endless content to inspire the artist.
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