Del Amitri’s Justin Currie introduced one of his favourite Martin Scorsese movies at the GFT

For almost a year now, the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) has been showing a Martin Scorsese classic each month which has included the likes of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Raging Bull.

Scorsese is one of the most celebrated and recognised directors and producers of all time and the GFT has pledged to show one of the 80-year-old’s movies every month until they have completed his back-catalogue.

This month it was the turn of musical drama ‘New York, New York’ starring Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli which was released in 1977.

It’s one of the lesser-known Scorsese movies but it was chosen by Del Amitri lead singer Justin Currie, who revealed before the screening why he had chosen this particular film.

“I was very chuffed to be asked to choose a film and immediately thought of New York, New York because I’d not seen the damn thing since it first came to Glasgow.

“I think I saw it probably in the early eighties in the Grosvenor cinema late at night. I loved it when I first saw it.”

He then proceeded to ask the audience whether many people had seen the film, with less than half the audience raising their hands.

“I think there’s a reason for that, it’s not really been widely available or shown on broadcast television very often which mystifies me.

“From a personal perspective, I went to see Taxi Driver again late at night at the Grosvenor obviously when I was far too young to see such a disturbing and unsettling film but I kind of loved it and came here to the GFT to see Mean Streets which I absolutely adored because it’s more of an art house film and it’s a bit funnier than Taxi Driver.

“Before I saw Raging Bull I saw this film which confounded me because it didn’t seem to have any links to Mean Streets or Taxi Driver and I just loved it for what it extensively is which is a homage to MGM 1940s musicals.

“The projectionist very kindly showed me the first twenty minutes today.

“It isn’t a very typical Scorsese movie although I know later on there’s a lot of marital strife which is a very common theme of his in films like Casino and it also has what you don’t expect to see in a musical or romantic comedy as it has this utter detestable male lead character playing against an ineffably charming old Holywood cartoon eyes character.

“You know that something destructive is going to happen.”

He went on to talk about the music in the film, including the famous signature tune from the score: “I didn’t know that the theme song was anything other than a 1940s standard when I saw the film. In fact, I sang ‘New York, New York’ in New York assuming it was written in the 1940s. Fortunately, I wasn’t booed off even though I should have been.

You’ll see in the film that ‘New York, New York’ was written especially for this film by the guys that wrote Chicago and Cabaret.”

The next Scorsese feature the GFT will be showing is ‘The Color of Money’ on Monday 15 May and tickets are available to purchase here.