Other Titles • New York Stories • New Yorker Geschichten (1989)
Synopses for New York Stories (1989)
1.
Three views of life in the city of all cities comprise this film, with segments directed by Woody Allen, Francis Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. The best of the three is "Life Lessons," directed by Scorsese, about an artist (played by Nick Nolte) who uses his hypersuccess to lure beautiful young aspiring artists to serve as his assistant/lovers. The segment is an astute portrait of the nature of the New York art world. In "Life Without Zoe," Coppola portrays the life of the privileged Zoe, the daughter of a world-renowned flutist, whose adventures on the Upper East Side (in the upper echelons of society) play like something approaching a cartoon. Woody Allen finishes up the film with his "Oedipus Wrecks," a typical Allen number about a successful New York lawyer who's still hounded by his mother--the title tells you all you need to know. Though stronger segments to complement Scorsese's would have made this film much more interesting and enjoyable, it does provide an accurate glimpse into this wondrous city and is a must-see for anyone fascinated by New York. --James McGrath
2.
NEW YORK STORIES is a feature-length film consisting of three shorts directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen. The stories are linked only by their New York City setting and show three very different facets of New York life.
Scorsese's "Life Lessons" is the bittersweet tale of an aging Abstract Expressionist painter whose young live-in girlfriend and artistic protégée decides to leave him just as he's preparing for an important gallery opening. Tired of living in the shadow of her famous lover and disappointed in her own lack of artistic talent, the girl torments him with tantrums and brazen acts of infidelity as the painter furiously attempts to fill his canvases in time for his show.
Coppola's "Life Without Zoe" is a candy-coated look at the life of a poor little rich girl who resides alone at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel under the care of a butler while her neglectful parents flit around the world. Zoe attends fanciful parties with other fabulously wealthy children and becomes involved in the search for a pair of missing diamond earrings that eventually reunites her with her parents.
"Oedipus Wrecks" is Woody Allen's comic nightmare about a 50-year-old man still suffocated by his overbearing Jewish mother. When she disappears mysteriously one day, he thinks his troubles are over--until she reappears as a giant apparition looming in the sky above Manhattan.
3.
Three stories happening in New York. The first is about a painter who falls in love with his apprentices. The second, a fantasy story about a little rich girl who tries to reconciliate her parents. The third is a Woody Allen comedy about a jew who cannot get rid of his mother, even after her death.
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