In 1977, Martin Scorsese was on top of the world. Taxi Driver had just detonated across the culture, he was the most exciting young filmmaker in America, and he decided to follow it up with a lavish, big-budget tribute to the golden-age Hollywood musicals he had loved as a kid. What could go wrong? Almost everything, as it turned out. New York, New York opened against Star Wars, flopped hard, and sent its director spiraling into a cocaine-fueled depression so severe he thought his career might be over. For decades it carried the label of Scorsese’s great failure.
Time has been kinder, and stranger. New York, New York is now widely regarded as a fascinating, flawed, wildly ambitious near-miss, a film that fails on its own terms in ways more interesting than most films succeed, and one whose reputation keeps rising as the culture catches up to what Scorsese was actually attempting. Now MVD has given it a Collector’s Edition 4K UHD built around a gorgeous new restoration of the longer expanded cut, and the result is the best this divisive, gorgeous, exhausting film has ever looked. The New York, New York 4K is a definitive edition of a movie that has spent nearly fifty years refusing to be pinned down.
The short version
New York, New York is Scorsese’s ambitious, divisive, deliberately artificial musical about a doomed romance between two musicians, and it looks stunning in this new 4K restoration of the expanded 163-minute cut. The film is a demanding, sometimes abrasive experience anchored by a career-best Liza Minnelli and a deliberately unlikable De Niro, but the disc is a knockout, pairing reference-grade picture with a genuinely definitive slate of extras. The New York, New York 4K is the version to own.
- What it is: a jazz saxophonist and a singer fall in love and tear each other apart across the postwar music scene
- Who made it: Martin Scorsese, at the height of his fame and the depth of his personal crisis, with Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli
- The restoration: a new 2025 16-bit 4K scan of the original camera negative, HDR, in the original 1.66:1 ratio
- The cut: the longer expanded version, restoring the full “Happy Endings” number, with the shorter international cut on Blu-ray
- Best for: Scorsese completists, classic-musical lovers, and anyone drawn to ambitious, beautiful failures
Table of Contents
Love, Ambition, and the Slow-Motion Wreck
The story is deceptively simple, an old-fashioned showbiz romance rebuilt as a demolition project. On V-J Day in 1945, with New York erupting in celebration, a brash, relentless jazz saxophonist named Jimmy Doyle, played by Robert De Niro, aggressively hits on a lounge singer named Francine Evans, played by Liza Minnelli. He is obnoxious, pushy, and completely undeterred by her disinterest, and through sheer force of will he wears her down. They fall in love. They marry. And then the movie spends the next two hours watching that love slowly grind itself to powder.
The engine of the film is a fundamental incompatibility that has nothing to do with a lack of love and everything to do with the impossibility of two ambitious artists sharing one life. Jimmy is a jazz purist, difficult and volatile, temperamentally allergic to compromise. Francine has an easier, more commercial gift, and as her star rises with a hit recording and a Hollywood career, his resentment curdles into something toxic. They tour together, then apart. She gets pregnant. His jealousy of her success and his inability to bend for anyone slowly poison everything, and the film tracks their marriage’s collapse with an unsparing, almost documentary cruelty that sits strangely against its glossy artificial sets.
That tension is the whole point. New York, New York looks like a 1940s MGM musical, all painted skylines and studio-bound nightclubs and Technicolor sheen, but it behaves like a gritty 1970s character drama, full of improvised shouting matches and genuine emotional ugliness. Scorsese married the most artificial form in American cinema to the rawest, and the friction between the beautiful surfaces and the miserable people moving through them is either the film’s masterstroke or its fatal flaw, depending on the viewer. You can find the full cast and credits on the film’s Wikipedia entry and its IMDb page.
The Movie That Nearly Broke Scorsese
To understand New York, New York, you have to understand the state its director was in, because this is one of those films where the making and the meaning are impossible to separate.
Fresh off the triumph of Taxi Driver, Scorsese poured everything into this passion project, an attempt to fuse his gritty modern sensibility with the classic Hollywood musical he had grown up worshipping. The production was chaos. Famously, nearly all the dialogue was improvised, with Scorsese, De Niro, and Minnelli inventing scenes on the day, which created enormous problems in the editing room as the filmmakers struggled to carve a coherent narrative out of hours of loose, sprawling material. The shoot ballooned. And in the middle of it all, the married Scorsese began an affair with Minnelli and descended into heavy cocaine use, his personal life unraveling in step with the film.
When New York, New York opened in the summer of 1977 and failed, both commercially and critically, it hit Scorsese hard. He has spoken openly about how the film’s reception drove him into a deep depression and a serious drug problem, a low point he barely climbed out of. In a real sense, the raw, self-lacerating energy of Raging Bull three years later was the sound of a man clawing his way back from the crater this film left. New York, New York is the great cautionary chapter in the Scorsese story, the moment the golden boy overreached and paid for it, and knowing that history charges every frame with a melancholy the film could not have intended.
What makes it fascinating rather than merely sad is how much of that turmoil is visible on screen. This is a film about two artists whose ambition destroys their love, made by an artist whose ambition was in the process of nearly destroying him. The autobiography bleeds through. And the fact that the culture has spent decades reassessing it, gradually elevating it from embarrassment to underrated near-masterpiece, mirrors the way we have come to reassess so many ambitious commercial failures of the New Hollywood era once the initial disappointment faded.
The commitment that went into the film, even amid the chaos, is genuinely striking, and one detail captures it perfectly. To play a convincing jazz saxophonist, De Niro spent months learning the instrument, studying with the veteran swing-era player Georgie Auld until his fingering and posture looked authentic on camera. His actual playing was ultimately overdubbed by Auld, who also appears in the film as bandleader Frankie Harte, but De Niro’s physical performance is precise enough that you would never guess. That kind of obsessive preparation, in service of a role designed to be as off-putting as possible, is emblematic of the whole strange project: enormous talent and effort poured into making something deliberately difficult, on a production that was quietly coming apart at the seams. Nobody was phoning New York, New York in, which is part of why its failure cut so deep and its reassessment has been so thorough.
Minnelli Soars, De Niro Corrodes
Whatever anyone thinks of the film, almost everyone agrees on the two people at its center, and they pull in fascinatingly opposite directions.
Liza Minnelli is magnificent, and New York, New York is the fullest showcase her film career ever got. As Francine she is warm, funny, vulnerable, and when she sings she is transcendent, delivering some of the finest musical performances ever captured on film. Her rendition of the title song, written for this movie by John Kander and Fred Ebb and later immortalized by Frank Sinatra, is an all-time showstopper, and the huge “Happy Endings” production number is a dazzling film-within-a-film that justifies the whole enterprise on its own. She is the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli standing inside the exact tradition her parents defined, and she inhabits it completely. It is a genuinely great star performance, and the fact that she was not nominated for an Oscar remains one of the era’s real injustices.
There is a lovely irony in the fact that the single most enduring thing to come out of this notorious flop is a song. “Theme from New York, New York” was written for the film, introduced by Minnelli, and then, three years later, recorded by Frank Sinatra in a version that became one of the most famous recordings of the twentieth century, a civic anthem played at ballparks and New Year’s celebrations the world over. The movie failed; the song it birthed became immortal. Minnelli has performed it at nearly every concert she has given since, and most people who can sing along to that soaring final “New York, New York” have no idea it originated in a two-and-a-half-hour Scorsese drama about a marriage falling apart. That cultural afterlife is its own quiet vindication of a film the world initially rejected.
Robert De Niro is doing something much thornier, and much more divisive. His Jimmy Doyle is, by design, deeply unlikable, an aggressive, selfish, emotionally abusive man who is difficult to spend two and a half hours with. This is intentional. De Niro, working in the same period that produced Travis Bickle and just before Jake LaMotta, plays Jimmy as a study in charmless volatility, a man whose talent cannot excuse his cruelty. It is a brave, uncompromising performance, and it is also the single biggest barrier to enjoying the film, because the movie asks you to invest in a romance where one half is genuinely hard to tolerate. Some viewers find this a fatal miscalculation. Others find it the honest, unsentimental core that saves the film from nostalgia. Both are defensible. What is not debatable is the commitment of the performance.
The chemistry between them, such as it is, is a chemistry of friction, and the improvised dialogue gives their fights a raw, uncomfortable authenticity that no polished script would have produced. When New York, New York works, it works because you believe these two people are genuinely destroying each other. When it does not, it is because you wish you did not have to watch.
Beautiful, Bloated, and Impossible to Dismiss
I promised honesty, and honesty about New York, New York means acknowledging that it is a difficult, flawed film even at its considerable best.
The length is the most obvious problem. At 163 minutes, the expanded cut is long, and it feels long, sagging badly in its middle stretches as the couple’s fights begin to repeat and the narrative loses momentum. The improvised approach that gives individual scenes their raw energy also robs the film of shape, so that it meanders where it should build and lingers where it should cut. This is a movie you admire in pieces more easily than you love as a whole, and even its most passionate defenders tend to concede that it is a mess.
The central experiment, too, remains genuinely unresolved. Scorsese never quite lands the collision between artificial musical spectacle and gritty emotional realism that the whole film is built on. The two modes coexist without ever fully fusing into a clear statement, and viewers have argued for decades about what, exactly, he was trying to say by pouring so much misery into so glossy a container. Is it a critique of the fantasy the old musicals sold? A tragedy about the incompatibility of art and love? A confession? The film never resolves the question, and that irresolution is either its richness or its failure.
And yet it is impossible to dismiss. For every stretch that drags, there is a sequence of jaw-dropping beauty or emotional force. The musical numbers are extraordinary. The recreation of the period is meticulous and gorgeous. The ambition is staggering, and the willingness to make a big commercial musical this prickly and downbeat is genuinely daring. New York, New York does not work, exactly, but it fails in a way that is more interesting and more alive than most films’ successes, and that is precisely why it has endured. It is a beautiful wreck, and there is nothing else quite like it.
Golden Age Gloss in 4K
Now to the disc, and this is where the New York, New York 4K becomes a genuinely easy recommendation. A note of transparency first: I am assessing this presentation from its confirmed restoration provenance and the disc’s stated specifications rather than a frame-by-frame screening of my own copy, so read my confidence as informed rather than eyewitness.
The headline is the restoration, and it is a strong one. The film has been given a new 2025 4K scan and restoration taken from a 16-bit scan of the original camera negative, presented in 2160p with HDR in the film’s correct 1.66:1 aspect ratio, and it is the longer expanded cut that receives this treatment. That is exactly the right decision on every count. New York, New York is one of the most visually sumptuous films in the entire Scorsese catalogue, a movie whose whole reason for being is the lush, saturated, deliberately artificial beauty of its recreated 1940s world, and it is precisely the kind of film that 4K and high dynamic range were invented to serve.
This is a movie of deep reds, golden nightclub light, painted skies, and the shimmer of sequins and brass, and a proper HDR grade should let all of that register with a richness no previous home video version could approach. The meticulous production design, the work of a cinematographer as accomplished as László Kovács, the whole enormous effort that went into building this fake, gorgeous New York finally has a presentation worthy of it. For a film whose defenders have always argued that its beauty is the point, a reference-grade restoration is not a luxury but a vindication. If you want a demonstration of why 4K matters for classic studio filmmaking, this belongs on the same shelf as showcase restorations of glossy musicals like High Society.
Here are the technical particulars, for the buyers who want them:
- Format: Collector’s Edition, 4K Ultra HD plus Blu-ray
- Video: 2160p, new 2025 16-bit 4K scan and restoration of the original camera negative, HDR
- Cut: the expanded 163-minute version on 4K; the shorter 136-minute international version included on Blu-ray
- Aspect ratio: 1.66:1, the film’s original ratio
- Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 stereo
- Subtitles: optional English
- Region: check listing before import
- Packaging: reversible artwork
Music That Deserves the Lossless Treatment
The audio arrives in a choice of DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround and the original LPCM 2.0 stereo, and for a film this dependent on its music, that lossless presentation is essential rather than optional.
New York, New York is, first and last, a musical, and the quality of its audio is not a technical footnote but a core part of the experience. Minnelli’s voice is the instrument the whole film is built around, and a clean, full lossless track is what lets her extraordinary vocal performances land with their full power. The Kander and Ebb songs, the jazz standards, the swing arrangements, and the enormous orchestral sweep of the “Happy Endings” number all demand fidelity, and the disc supplies it. The 5.1 track opens up the big musical set pieces with room to breathe, while the LPCM 2.0 stereo option preserves the more intimate original presentation for purists who want it.
Offering both is the right call, and it reflects the care that has gone into this release. A film where the music is this central lives or dies on its audio, and this disc treats the soundtrack with exactly the respect it deserves. The optional English subtitles round out a presentation clearly built for both serious cinephiles and casual viewers who simply want to hear Liza sing.
From the Vaults: Scorsese, Kovács, and the Full Story
This is where the New York, New York 4K stakes its claim as a definitive edition, because MVD has assembled a genuinely comprehensive slate of extras that documents nearly every angle of this famously troubled production.
The centerpiece is the historical material straight from the master himself. There is a new introduction by Martin Scorsese, and, crucially, a full-length audio commentary pairing Scorsese with film critic Carrie Rickey, which is exactly the kind of in-depth authorial context a film this complicated and this personal cries out for. Scorsese is one of cinema’s great talkers, endlessly generous with insight into his own work, and a commentary on the film that nearly ended him is close to essential listening. Layered on top of that is a second, cinematography-focused commentary by the great László Kovács, giving a technical, craft-level perspective on how this gorgeous artificial world was actually lit and shot.
The video supplements are equally rich. The accompanying Blu-ray houses the shorter international version of the film alongside a substantial documentary suite, headlined by The New York, New York Stories in two parts, a detailed look back at the making of the film. There is a featurette devoted specifically to Liza Minnelli’s performance, a wealth of alternate takes and deleted scenes that speak directly to the film’s chaotic, improvised, over-shot production, a photo gallery, and the original theatrical teaser and trailer. Together these extras do not just pad the disc; they tell the whole story of a legendary near-disaster, from ambition to collapse to reassessment.
On the physical side, the Collector’s Edition comes with reversible artwork, a nice touch for a film with such a strong visual identity. It is a thorough, respectful package that treats New York, New York as the significant, complicated work it is, and it comfortably supersedes every prior home video edition. This is the kind of comprehensive catalogue treatment usually reserved for canonized classics, the same care that makes definitive editions of golden-age landmarks like The Searchers so valuable.
Who Should Take the Stage
If you are deciding whether the New York, New York 4K belongs on your shelf, here is the honest breakdown.
Scorsese completists should consider this essential, no question. This is a major, revealing chapter in the career of America’s greatest living filmmaker, the great failure that shaped everything after it, and it has never looked better or come with more context. The Scorsese commentary and introduction alone make it a must-own for anyone serious about his work.
Lovers of classic Hollywood musicals have a lot to chew on here, provided they know what they are getting. This is a musical that deconstructs the very tradition it celebrates, gorgeous and knowing and far darker than the films it pays tribute to, and for viewers who love the genre and are open to seeing it interrogated, it is fascinating. The musical numbers are worth the price on their own.
Liza Minnelli fans should buy it without hesitation. This is the great screen showcase of her talent, containing some of the finest work she ever did, presented in the best picture and sound quality it has ever received. For admirers of one of the great performers, this is the definitive document.
Casual viewers and newcomers to Scorsese should approach with clear eyes. New York, New York is long, difficult, and deliberately abrasive, built around a genuinely unpleasant lead performance and a romance designed to hurt. It is not a fun, breezy musical, and it is emphatically not the place to start with Scorsese. If you are new to him, begin with Taxi Driver or Goodfellas and come to this once you are ready to watch a great director fascinatingly overreach. Approached as a light night in, it will exhaust you.
The Ballad of the Beautiful Failure
New York, New York is not a great film, and nearly fifty years of debate have not resolved whether it is even a good one. It is too long, too abrasive, and too unresolved, built on an experiment its own director never quite pulled off, and anchored by a lead character many viewers will actively despise. None of that is in dispute, and I would be lying to you if I pretended otherwise.
But it is also gorgeous, ambitious, deeply personal, and utterly singular, a beautiful wreck that keeps drawing people back precisely because it refuses to be neatly filed away. It contains some of the best musical performances ever put on film, a fearless and uncompromising piece of acting from De Niro, and a level of visual splendor that few films of any era can match. It is the sound of a great artist reaching past his grasp and falling, and there is something more valuable in that noble failure than in a hundred safe successes. MVD has given this endlessly fascinating movie the definitive edition it has always deserved, a stunning restoration wrapped in a genuinely comprehensive package, and for anyone drawn to the ambitious, the flawed, and the unforgettable, that is cause for celebration. For the film, a recommendation with real caveats. For the release, an enthusiastic one.
The bottom line: Scorsese’s ambitious, divisive, deliberately artificial musical gets a definitive Collector’s Edition from MVD, built on a stunning new 4K restoration of the expanded cut. The picture is reference-grade, the lossless audio does full justice to Liza Minnelli’s extraordinary vocals, and the extras, headlined by a Scorsese commentary and a full documentary suite, tell the complete story of a legendary near-disaster. The film remains a beautiful, exhausting, flawed fascination, and this is unquestionably the version to own. Essential for Scorsese and Minnelli devotees, a considered watch for everyone else. 87 out of 100.
New York, New York is now available on 4K UHD from MVD
You can order the New York, New York Collector’s Edition 4K UHD through MVD, or find it at major retailers including Amazon. It pairs the expanded cut in stunning 4K with the international version and a mountain of extras, making it the definitive home for one of Scorsese’s most fascinating what-ifs.
