New York, New York looks at first glance like a tolerably successful pastiche, full of wayward longueurs that perversely assert themselves as being among its major pleasures. On reflection, one realises that Scorsese has simply inverted the basic premises of the musical, a move that requires a certain adjustment in the spectator. The protracted opening sequence (after a brief evocation of the V-J Day celebrations in Times Square), for instance, is entirely concerned with Jimmy Doyle's tortuously ingenious attempts, after seeing his pick-up routine rejected by two other girls, to deny Francine the privilege of saying no. Linguistically and dramatically speaking, it should outstay its welcome; but the peculiar pleasure of the sequence is that, being structured musically in a sort of rondo form (theme, variation, return), it assumes the role that would normally be played by a ballad in stating the hero's initial attraction to … the heroine…. Several other dramatic (i.e. non-musical) scenes emerge, in an analogous sense, as musical numbers, formally choreographed rather than dramatically staged…. In consciously quoting the Hollywood musical, these scenes have a little fun with its clichés: in making his last-minute dash for the train, Jimmy leaves it a little too late, and is last seen on the platform, forlornly trying to hold back the already departing train; and when he knocks up the J.P., he inadvertently breaks a pane of glass in the door, starting the proceedings off on a distinctly ominous note. The effect, rather than comic, is strangely moving; as though these hapless misquotations acknowledged that a whole world of simplicity and security could never be recaptured. Contrariwise, the musical numbers in the film are used to carry its entire burden of plot, characterisation and conflict. Almost invariably seen fragmented in rehearsal, or as snatches of performance staged without the usual production values or choreographic embellishments …, they are neither elaborate enough nor inventive enough to claim status as 'numbers'; their function is rather to elucidate the character tensions between the protagonists …, and to chart their inevitable progress to marital breakdown. Struggling, typically of a Scorsese hero, to escape a private hell, Jimmy Doyle is also typically unable to articulate the resentments he is only obscurely aware of and which thereby reinforce the vicious circle in which he is trapped: it is the music they want to make and the music they have to make which defines the exact nature of the rift between Jimmy and Francine. It is unfortunate that, in perhaps the one real weakness of the film, this dramatic role played by the music is undercut by the fact that the jazz (or bebop) Jimmy plays by choice is louder but otherwise only barely distinguishable from the sweeter swing he despises. On the other hand, this lapse may possibly be intentional, since the film is on the one hand about little romantic heartbreaks rather than grand tragic passions, and on the other about artistic trends that find their fulfilment in success rather than about creative discoveries that endure. The final reconciliation, at all events, is effected with magnificent appropriateness through the final "New York, New York" number…. [It] not only brings the hitherto disparate musical and dramatic elements together for the first time, it not only rings out as the "major chord" Jimmy talks about (a reconciliation in which the important things in life assume their proper order and relation to each other), it also brings a new note to the film: the unmistakable, triumphant call of the Broadway musical which might be said (trend-wise, at least) to have driven, with Oklahoma!, one of the first nails into the coffin of the Big Band sound. (p. 195)