New York Stories is not strictly a Woody Allen movie. It’s actually three famous directors – Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola – creating a trilogy of movies about their beloved New York City.

So each director gets, roughly, 1/3 of this 1989 movie’s two-hour length, give or take.

The first movie is “Life Lessons,” directed by Martin Scorsese, is about an abstract painter (Nick Nolte, 1941- ), who is obsessed by a pretty young ex-girlfriend (played by the very sexy Rosanna Arquette, 1959- ) and Procol Harum, whose music (especially “A Whiter Shade of Pale“) provides much of the soundtrack.

The second movie is “Life without Zoe” by Francis Ford Coppola. According to its entry on Wikipedia, “Life Without Zoe” is about,

Zoë (Heather McComb) is a schoolgirl who lives in a luxury hotel. She helps return to an Arab princess a valuable piece of jewelry that the princess had given to Zoë’s father (Giancarlo Giannini) and had been subsequently stolen and recovered. Zoë tries to reconcile her divorced mother, a photographer (Talia Shire), and father, a flute soloist.

Woody Allen’s segment of New York Stories is called “Oedipus Wrecks.”

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