Film Studies: A big cheese starts to fidget

First it was meant to open for Christmas 2001. Then it was aimed at the Cannes festival for 2002. At present, there's talk of a July opening. At the same time, there are reports that the picture is far from finished, that some important re-shooting is required, that the ending is "open". And now The New York Times has broken the story wide, on its front page last Sunday, with "Two Hollywood Titans Brawl Over a Gang Epic".

Well, the Times is making a number of odd and awkward gestures towards being a more popular paper. Maybe that's how it reckoned it could get away with labelling Martin Scorsese and Harvey Weinstein as "Hollywood" figures. They are that, of course, but above all they are devout New Yorkers, and the picture in contention, Gangs of New York, is likely to be a further celebration of the wondrously dangerous but character-building place New York is – in the heady if sometimes hallucinatory tradition of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, New York, New York and GoodFellas.

"Brawl" may also need some revision. There's no doubt that a dispute reigns over the film, but try compiling a list of movies that weren't the object of fierce, private arguments in the months before they were released.

Alert to the Times story, Scorsese and Weinstein made a sensible pact of silence, warning that no discussion had any point until the film was completed (which at least admitted that it wasn't finished yet), and then turned the field over to the competing leaks of their unnamed associates.

The dispute means a lot more because of the stature of the two parties. Harvey Weinstein is the high-profile boss of Miramax, the once independent outfit that has become a major studio, and which is now owned by Disney. But Disney and Miramax have both fallen on hard times. Talk magazine was shut down. Employees have been laid off. Miramax had a lean season at the recent Oscars. And, at Disney's insistence, Miramax relinquished its ownership of what would prove the very successful The Lord of the Rings.

Martin Scorsese is – the phrase still comes automatically – "the greatest working director in America". On the other hand, since Raging Bull 20 years ago, have his films really lived up to the power of those early pictures? Or has he found himself helplessly caught in the fast-talking underworlds of machismo and violence? Was GoodFellas really an advance? Was Casino much more than pretty picture-making? And do we see an artist maturing in The Age of Innocence, Cape Fear, Kundun and Bringing Out the Dead? Enthusiasts argue, but Scorsese himself shows signs of anxiety. Despite his fame, he has never won an Oscar, and never had a clear-cut commercial hit. He's 60 this November, and he'd like to feel more secure.

So that is the context for Gangs of New York, a story about bloody gang warfare in New York in the mid-19th century. It's taken from a 1927 book by Herbert Asbury. It will star Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis and Cameron Diaz. And it has apparently cost over $100m so far. An early trailer has been playing that promises a film of real violence and rare spectacle, but what else? Rumours say that a 220-minute version screened last October left many viewers puzzled by the story-line. Harvey Weinstein then asked Scorsese to see what he could do to shorten the film, and to make it more coherent. It is said that the latest version is something like an hour shorter – but still not done, and still not quite working.

Of course, an early story on the front of the Times (even one with forebodings) only draws mass attention to a movie. Nor does this feel like a summer release. So I would not be surprised if there is some re-shooting, and then more time on the editing for a November release. (Another apparent problem is that the film paints New York cops and firemen of that era as scoundrels – that may need all the distance from 11 September it can get.) Scorsese has taken extra time before: The Age of Innocence was held up a year, and in that time it grew a narrative voice to cover some story holes.

The moment is surely ripe for another Scorsese masterpiece, and the early life and times of New York (even if this was filmed in Rome) is a very promising subject. That polite term, "the melting pot", so often covers up the detailed history by which races and minority groups were beaten or terrorised into the American way. But that sounds tough and troubling, and at $100m already, Gangs will have to do far better than any Scorsese film has ever done. So Harvey Weinstein is fidgeting – that's the headline.

d.thomson@independent.co.uk