1. LITTLE ITALY
Growing up on the steamy, neon-smeared streets of Little Italy in New York, stifled by asthma, gazing at the city from his window, a mother's boy, unable to join the local kids in their games. Taking pity on him, and to escape the confines of the apartment, his parents took him to the movies. Thus began obsession that has never dimmed. An idea of entering the priesthood gave way to the religion of cinema. At Tisch School of the Arts he began making shorts, searching for a style. By 1967, he was looking to fund his first feature film.
Films: the experiments and short films Vesuvius VI (1959), What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963), It's Not Just You, Murray (1964), The Big Shave (1967)
2. REAL TO REEL
Scorsese's early films are charged with possibility. They are highly personal, setting down a template of what might be called realistic expressionism, a psychological portrait of the world. His world. On his debut, Who's That Knocking at My Door, he first worked with Keitel and Schoonmaker. Scorsese fell in with the Movie Brats, thrived in their company. But he struggled to make money, accepting an exploitation gig, Boxcar Bertha, from Roger Corman. There he learned to make little go far, and the taut, street-level, semi-autobiographical Mean Streets confirmed a great talent. He was the American Godard, the new Cassavetes. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore reveals a rare female focused story and won Ellen Burstyn an Academy Award.
Film: Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), Boxcar Bertha (1972), Mean Streets (1973), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
3. STREET LIFE (FOCUS)
Taxi Driver brought him acclaim, this jolt to American cinema, still electrifying today. A Vietnam story set on New York's crime-riddled streets, hot with neon and desperation, this is the tale of veteran Travis Bickle: taxi driver, avenging angel, God's lonely man. De Niro is unforgettable in the lead role; Cybil Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel all extraordinary; Bernard Hermann's final score breathtaking. But it is the marriage of place and character, how the film cuts through the veil of America that makes is a neo-noir classic. It remains Scorsese's signature film.
Film: Taxi Driver (1976)
4. RING MASTER
The three films that follow Taxi Driver mark the strange, dark, thrillingly experimental heart of Scorsese's career - this is the period for which he is given greatest acclaim, and for good reason. His version of an MGM-style musical (who else would dare that?), the expressionist cityscapes of New York, New York, are cover for the story of a fragmenting marriage. Pulling himself back from the brink of a fatal cocaine addiction, Raging Bull, encased in haunting black and white, is the harrowing biopic of Italian-American middleweight champion Jake LaMotta (a chameleonic De Niro), a man whose psyche rested permanently on the brink. For some, it is his masterpiece, voted the greatest film of the eighties by Sight & Sound. The King of Comedy offered little relief, a scorching, cringing, devastating satire of celebrity, with De Niro (the great muse) as the unhinged stand-up ravenous for fame. Scorsese's films were marked by their uneasiness. What he was willing to put audiences through. Cinema has never felt so alive.
Films: New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982)
5. CONTROVERSIES
There is a school of thought that in the mid-eighties Scorsese eased into the mainstream with two safer pictures: the black comedy After Hours and starry pool-shark sequel to Robert Rossen's The Hustler, The Color of Money, with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman. They may not quite have the visceral power of his early films, but frankly we needed the relief. And even then, the former is still a Kafka-esque fever dream, another New York nightmare and the latter a textured character piece. And if there was any hint he was going soft on us, Scorsese dared a biopic of Christ, pondering his life in human terms. The Last Temptation of Christ was swept up in controversy, decried as blasphemy, and banned in many places. It's often forgotten that it is simply a film. Understandably, perhaps, Scorsese then took cover directing one of the underwhelming New York Stories alongside Coppola and Woody Allen.
Films: After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), New York Stories - Life Lessons segment (1989)
6. MADE MEN (FOCUS)
Goodfellas is still Scorsese's definitive statement on the gangster genre and the gangster reality. This exhilarating portrait of life on the lower rungs of the New Jersey mob, with Ray Liotta, De Niro, and an exuberant Pesci, slants the view of Scorsese as America's chief chronicler of organised crime. In fact, until this point, only the highly personal Mean Streets slotted into the genre. In a sense, it is Goodfellas that begins Scorsese's fascination with gangsters, with Casino and The Irishman completing a trilogy of De Niro-led mob masterworks. It has one of the greatest voiceovers in movie history, and a tracking shot to die for. Scorsese was now unimpeachably an American artist.
Film: Goodfellas (1991)
7. ORGANISING CHAOS
There were more accusations of selling out with Cape Fear, one for Universal, the studio which had braved The Last Temptation of Christ. But this remake of a classic studio thriller, a ripe and raucous North Carolina tale of vengeance, is Scorsese at play and aswirl with formal experiments (the colour, the close ups, De Niro all but walking into the camera). In marked contrast, and declared a radical departure (are we so sure?), Edith Wharton adaptation The Age of Innocence locks the turmoil within. Under the spell of Welles and Visconti, Scorsese wanted to do a romantic piece. Naturally, it was devastating. Casino was safer turf, a coruscating depiction of the Vegas chapter of mob life (with De Niro resplendent in gleaming suits) with a good portion of marital chaos thrown in (that Scorsese speciality). Sharon Stone is fabulous. Too easily written off as a detour, Kundun was certainly a departure: not only in subject matter, the early life of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, but in its almost meditative style.
Films: Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Kundun (1997)
8. LOST SOULS
Another sidelined as lesser Scorsese, there is a lot to be said for Bringing Out the Dead. For one thing, written by Schrader, it is a spiritual sequel to Taxi Driver, studying mental disintegration of Nicolas Cage's New York paramedic, who sees the ghosts of those he couldn't save. After which, Scorsese's ambitions gain more than a glint of the epic. His budgets soar, as does his scope, and how personal were these films? Leone-influenced birth-of-America extravaganza Gangs of New York is flawed but monumental, and finds Day-Lewis in fine fettle. With DiCaprio now the flavour of choice Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator is both a glistening portrait of Golden Era Hollywood and another study in mental disintegration. Multi-faceted, star-laden, and hugely entertaining (which often gets categorised as a negative when it comes to Scorsese), Boston-set crime thriller The Departed almost plays as black comedy, with the director entertaining himself royally within the tropes of the police movie. That it finally one him his Oscar is all part of the joke.
Films: Bringing Out the Dead (1999), Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006)
9. ILLUSIONISTS
Scorsese is by now untouchable. We simply awaited his next film, assured there would be loss of quality. Or intensity. There were arguments raised that he was taking it easy, enjoying the fruits of his exalted position. No more hustling for money - he and Spielberg alone could do as they pleased. But that is another fallacy. Shutter Island on the one hand has the hallmarks of a B-movie (a stylistic choice), and hinges on the cliche of a big twist, but it is film that cries out for a second viewing to savour the virtuosity of the filmmaking. Hugo too is easily dismissed as Scorsese's attempt at a children's film (and an experiment in 3D), but within its steampunk fantasy is a love song to the birth of cinema. The Wolf of Wall Street is a major work in a zany tenor - a heady, hilarious portrait of greed unleashed and the American Dream as rampant farce. Scorsese stands aloof, daring us to enjoy the antics of DiCaprio's corrupted anti-hero. Centring on a vivid clash of cultures in period Japan, Silence couldn't be more contrasting, but there is a shared exploration of monomaniacal obsession (are they self-
portraits of the director's creative obsessions?) as illicit missionary Andrew Garfield is driven on and deluded by an unwavering faith.
Films: Shutter Island (2010), Hugo (2011), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Silence (2016)
10.THE LONG GAME
The older, longer, grander Scorsese is determined to tell his tales with novelistic scope,American history pouring into his restless camera. The Irishman is (perhaps) his culminatingstatement on how tightly organised crime is woven into American life. Yet it is still a portraitof an unreachable psyche: that of the hitman who must finally assassinate his friend, fabledand problematic union boss Jimmy Hoffa. What a cast: De Niro, Al Pacino, Pesci (persuadedout of retirement), Keitel. It is lavish and superb in so many ways, but in its volume was therea loss of the early electricity? Killers of the Flower Moon, ostensibly a Western, or a crimethriller, or a historical drama, or another sketch of a faulty marriage (or all of the above), toldof the Osage people who discover oil under their reservation and the white men who trickedit from them by foul, murderous means. It is extraordinary, but we wonder if a tighter filmexisted under its skin. Can there be such a thing as too much Scorsese? So where next, forthere is no loss of appetite? There is talk of a Sinatra biopic with DiCaprio, a Roosevelt picture,a new Christ-bio in The Life of Jesus (in which he might act), or an adaptation of MarilynneRobinson's song to Midwestern life Home. Wherever he goes, we will still follow.
Films: The Irishman (2019), Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), future projects
Sidebars
SAVED BY CINEMA
Scorsese has had two religions in his life, Catholicism and cinema. But it was cinema that saved him and gave him a life. He still worships and still watches. This sidebar is a summary of all the key films and filmmakers that have influenced him. A roll-call of love.
PERSONAL JOURNEYS
Quite aside from his features films, and as another testament to his unquenchable creativity, Scorsese is one of the great modern documentarians. He has covered music: Woodstock, The Last Waltz, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan. He has made epic poems to cinema (essential viewing): A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Films, My Voyage to Italy. Personal documents, including Italianamerican, about his parents. And tributes to American culture: Public Speaking (about Fran Lebowitz) and The 50-Year Argument (a history of the New York Review of Books).
MARTY AND BOBBY
A small but significant portrait of Scorsese's relationship with De Niro. How they met. Why they clicked. And why they remain one of the greatest actor-director double acts we have ever known. To the both of them, it is still something of a mystery.
