Film

New York, New York

Martin Scorsese's tribute to and autopsy of the classic Hollywood musical, shot entirely on gloriously artificial studio sets that never let you forget you're watching artifice. De Niro's arrogant saxophonist and Minnelli's rising singer marry, then unravel, as her career climbs while his stalls. It's long, moody and gorgeous — less a toe-tapper than a slow bruise, for people who like their musicals bruised.

TMDb rating6.5

If you liked this

La La Land2016

Damien Chazelle's love letter to old Hollywood musicals runs the exact same equation: jazz purist, rising star, a love that can't survive two competing careers. Gorgeous colour, aching final act — the spiritual grandchild of this film.

But Its sweetness and modern gloss can feel thin next to Scorsese's bitterness — the same story with the edges sanded off.

La La Land poster

Cabaret1972

Liza Minnelli again, this time inside the collapsing glamour of Weimar Berlin — a showbiz romance staged with genuine musical numbers and real historical dread underneath the sequins.

But The Nazi-era backdrop gives it a menace New York, New York never has, which can feel like a tonal swerve if you came for romance.

Cabaret poster

A Star Is Born1954

The template this film is quietly answering back to: one partner's career rises as the other's collapses, and the toll a marriage takes when love and ambition point in opposite directions.

But Three hours of Judy Garland at her most heartbreaking is a big, weepy commitment, and the melodrama is pitched even higher.

A Star Is Born poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Jazz on a Summer's Day1960

Scorsese built his film as a deliberate, artificial monument to this era's jazz culture; this documentary shows you the real thing it's imitating, unfiltered and unscripted.

The real 1950s jazz world New York, New York painstakingly recreates on soundstages — actual musicians, actual crowds, actual light, shot with a photographer's eye at the Newport Jazz Festival.

But There's no story, no romance, just performances and faces in the crowd — pure atmosphere for people who want the music without the melodrama.

Jazz on a Summer's Day poster
More like this (8)

Raging Bull1980

De Niro and Scorsese again, dissecting a man whose talent and self-destructiveness are the same muscle. Different arena, same diagnosis: brilliance that curdles into cruelty toward everyone who loves him.

But It's brutal, black-and-white, and about boxing, not music — expect punches instead of trumpets, and no romance to soften it.

Raging Bull poster

Whiplash2014

Swap the trumpet for drums and the romance for a brutal mentor, but the engine's identical: obsessive musical ambition that treats every relationship as acceptable collateral damage on the way up.

But Tighter and meaner than New York, New York — a sprint, not a slow-burn marriage, so the emotional wreckage lands very differently.

Whiplash poster

The Rose1979no page yet

Bette Midler, barely disguised as Janis Joplin, burning through fame and love at the same terrifying speed — the self-destructive musician movie played raw and loud instead of stylised.

But It's rock, not jazz, and pitched at screaming intensity throughout — less elegant, more visceral than Scorsese's slow-motion collapse.

All That Jazz1979

Bob Fosse's own showbiz autopsy: a philandering, self-destructive director-choreographer staging spectacular numbers while his personal life implodes, artifice and anguish tangled together just as deliberately.

But It gets stranger and more surreal as it goes, tipping from backstage drama into something closer to a fever dream.

All That Jazz poster

Funny Girl1968

An earlier, sunnier version of the same trade-off: a comedienne's stardom rising as her marriage quietly falls apart, with showstopper numbers doing double duty as emotional exposition.

But It's warmer and more conventionally uplifting than anything in New York, New York — the wound here stings a lot less.

Funny Girl poster

'Round Midnight1986no page yet

A much quieter, more melancholy jazz film — an ageing saxophonist in Paris, friendship instead of romance, but the same reverence for the music and a life organized entirely around it.

But It's slow, sparse and largely plotless, more mood piece than drama — a very different pace than Scorsese's operatic scale.

A Woman Under the Influence1974

Same core relationship — a magnetic, unstable partner and the person who loves them anyway — but stripped of every musical number and studio gloss New York, New York wraps around it.

Cassavetes' raw, handheld portrait of a marriage buckling under one partner's volatility — no orchestration, no sequins, just a camera that won't look away from two people hurting each other.

But It's emotionally exhausting and stylistically the opposite of comfortable — expect long, uncomfortable scenes with nowhere pretty to hide.

A Woman Under the Influence poster

Black Swan2010

Both are studies of an artist whose need to be the best devours the person who loves them; Aronofsky just swaps the bandstand for a ballet studio and adds a scream.

Ambition curdling into self-destruction, restaged as psychological horror: a dancer's obsession with perfection consumes her identity and every relationship around her, the same engine wearing a much darker costume.

But It's genuinely disturbing and body-horror adjacent — if you wanted a musical's warmth, this replaces it with dread.

Black Swan poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by

La La Land, A Star Is Born