An essay on the foundational films of Martin Scorsese's prolific career.
On November 17, Martin Scorsese will age into a new decade of his life at 80 years-old. Over the last 59 of those years, Scorsese has become one of the greatest filmmakers of all-time. In the 59 years, Scorsese has explored the mafia underworld, introspectively looked at his relationship with faith, built new worlds, adapted novels, and documented people, places, and moments. To say that Scorsese is versatile, would be an understatement. His creative muscles are flexible, and his ability to explore faces and places is unlike any other. The after hours of New York, the 1870s “Gilded Age” of innocence, Jesus Christ’s last temptation, The Band’s last waltz, and a filmography full of 30+ directorial efforts gives us the opportunity to experience so many sides of his personality.
In interviews, commentaries, seminars, and Q & As, Scorsese bursts with joyous passion for film and its history. He often cites Federico Fellini (8 1⁄2, La Strada), Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, Robert Rossellini's War Trilogy, and the French New Wave as his biggest inspirations amongst a varied list of others for his style. Many filmmakers cite Fellini and the New Wave as inspirations, but the personality within those films shaped how Scorsese verbalizes his love for film. Subsequently, we see that reflected in his work. The boisterous energy of Fellini is showcased in Goodfellas just as much as it is on stage when he cackles over interjecting a silly joke while praising Italian Neorealism. When Scorsese reflects, you see how he challenges the contemporary arts and the shortcomings of normalcy in a history of artistic defiance just as the French did in the late 1950s. Scorsese, like the masters he studied, built on the foundation as an opportunity to expand the canvas by making his marks on film history.
The Martin Scorsese Filmography Project No. 1 - Scorsese’s Foundation
You can date most filmmakers’ beginnings back to film school, or some variation of the theatrical arts. For Scorsese, it started while attending the Tisch School of Arts, where he made What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963) and It’s Not Just You, Murray! (1964). Short films that have a mouthful of a title, but two examples of every flourish, style, or signature that he would carry through the rest of his filmography. Both of these films do a great job of establishing a perspective. Something of which might be Scorsese’s greatest strength as a storyteller. Narration is a storytelling device that he implements time and time again, but it all started in Nice Girl when a writer becomes obsessed with a picture on his wall. It features freeze frames, frantic editing techniques, swift camera movements, and music that reinforces a mood to match the pace of the scene. Scorsese was heavily inspired by Fellini’s 8 ½, and elected to create something that best resembled the film and how he felt about it. You can see that chaotic, carnivalesque energy coursing through the film in its blocking. How characters move within an image is rambunctious. Almost like an uncoordinated dance where they waltz hand in hand to the tune of whatever music Scorsese has overlaid.
More specifically in Murray!, you can see the entire future of Scorsese’s career embodied in this feature. Fourth wall breaks, money, growing into a system, broken bonds, excess, are all devilish details that we’ll go on to see in Goodfellas, Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street, you name it, Murray! has got it. The protagonist is characteristically unlikable, but so emotionally interesting because they control the perspective. Our insight to what was, before it becomes what is, is fascinating when it predates all of his respective masterpieces. If the plot or story wasn’t enough evidence, how about ending it with, “I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.” Murray was the template for Henry Hill.
Scorsese rounded out the 60s with his first feature, Who’s That Knocking At My Door (1967) and another short, The Big Shave (1967). The former may not be amongst, “the best feature debuts of all-time”, but it is head to toe a Scorsese feature. There is a youthful energy to the film that greatly represents the 25 year-old’s ascent into the realm of feature length filmmaking. This also marks Scorsese’s first work with Harvey Keitel, and it begins with a shot of a religious statue. The presence of religion will reappear throughout Scorsese’s filmography, but the ties to his complications with faith and how he infuses Keitel’s J.R. with that personality is emblematic of his own. Like most small-time projects made by 20 year-old up and comers, their protagonist is often a vessel for the director. J.R. waxes about westerns starring John Wayne, dubbed Italian films, French magazines, and of course, referring to movies as “pictures’. It’s not so much a character as it is a surrogate for Scorsese, but the inspirations still service the story. It’s small-time, personal, grappling with the restrictions of faith and the contradictions of J.R. 's actions. Sex out of wedlock, violence, using God’s name in vain, are repeated offenses by his characters in the scope of a broader social text. Which makes …Knocking at my Door? Scorsese’s first attempt at honoring John Cassavetes and his work on Shadows (1959). The film that started the independent film movement thanks to its small budget and improvised performances. The genius of Scorsese is that he doesn’t bow to his inspirations and admit he’ll never be better than them. He takes them, understands what he loves about them, and expands the canvas to service his own ideas.
The Big Shave is a great prologue to Boxcar Bertha (1972) and Mean Streets (1973). Also known as Viet ‘67, this is Scorsese’s first response to the Vietnam War and the perils of youth. Over the course of six minutes, the sterile bathroom quickly becomes a surface coated with blood. Blood runs down the face of the young man, but he is contemptuous with the pain and suffering because it has become so normalized by the state of the world. The destruction of youth, the addiction to violence, tearing yourself apart with something as simple as a blade is a stark juxtaposition to the grander schemes of the world. Boxcar Bertha and Mean Streets are fascinating continuations of this idea as they release on the brink of the war ending. Although Bertha feels more like a Roger Corman production than a Martin Scorsese film, the history of violence and how that weeds its way into the impressions of youth is felt. Mean Streets is exactly the same, but that is through and through a Martin Scorsese film.
Mean Streets begins with a montage of still photography until it transitions into a full screen format with a statue of Jesus looming over the streets below. Within moments, Scorsese expresses his love for images and being able to envelope us into a world he created that is directly attributed to his experiences. So few do it as seamlessly as he does. In his first film with De Niro (his second with Keitel), Scorsese paints a picture of the violence that plagued his 20s. The world’s obsession with that action and the repercussions of their blood lust. In some ways, it feels like Scorsese uses De Niro’s Johnny Boy to best express this, and his end is a direct consequence of the world he found himself in. There is almost always a visceral, violent consequence in Scorsese’s films, and the fabric of that was stitched together here. It is infused with diegetic and non-diegetic sound coursing from scene to scene. There is a boyish clumsiness that wants to take on the world, but he has to take care of his characters first. I find Mean Streets a bit messy in this regard, but it is so attentive to current events and how it inspired his form, that you have to appreciate it as one of the most important steps in independent film. Only Scorsese could have made it.
The late 70s may be the most important phase of Scorsese’s career. Homegrown documentaries, feature films, and a swinging concert film capped off an exhilarating decade.
We often talk about Scorsese’s partnership with De Niro, DiCaprio, and Keitel, but it always started with his mother, Catherine. In Italianamerican (1974), Scorsese lets his parents Catherine and Charlie control the film. Seated on plastic covered cushions with sugo (red pasta sauce) cooking in the kitchen, and telling stories of New York, fig trees, and life in Sicily. Charlie and Catherine are storytellers. If you ever wondered how Scorsese became a great storyteller with tons of personality, watching Italianamerican will give you proper insight. Not only will his parents make you laugh, but the way he frames his mother tells us just how special she was to him. The way she flips through photographs and tells stories about them appears to be a trademark of the Scorseses. All of the pace, empathy, humor, and style is not in the structure of Italianamerican, but in the stories his parents share. Not only is it his first documentary, but it’s one of his greatest films. In the same year, Scorsese would team with Ellyn Burston, Kris Kristofferson, and Harvey Keitel to make Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. If the casting of Lelia Goldoni (the star of the aforementioned Shadows) didn’t make it obvious enough, Alice is a Scorsese-ified homage to Cassavetes. Slick with humor, dialogue, and romance, this has to be Scorsese’s most underrated film. It isn’t an overarching crime saga, or a violent documentation of the streets of New York, it’s a charming character study with an Oscar winning performance leading the way. Scorsese greatly understands the melting pot of Tucson, Arizona and the mishmash of cultures and personality in one of the Southwest’s finest towns. It’s Scorsese, it’s Cassavetes, it’s Ellyn, it’s an underrated success in a career full of many great ones.
In 1976, Taxi Driver would force the audience to reevaluate the potential of Martin Scorsese. It’s another feature alongside De Niro and Keitel, but it’s his first partnership with screenwriter/filmmaker Paul Schrader, and this film would reshape how audiences understood him at the time. With a few independent films under his belt, Scorsese positions himself inside the taxi cabs of New York. The politically drenched sidewalks, apartment buildings, and personalities of New York are drawn out with incredible precision. The searing neon signs, the rusted fenders of taxis, the violence tucked into the tightest corners, and political promise branded across town makes for a fascinating contrast. The influence of politics places a stranglehold on Travis Bickle and how it comes to form his isolated state of mind. In some sense, Scorsese/Schrader view politics as another institution that binds the subjects of their stories. That belief in a power, a system, a life changing proposition by its leaders is deconstructed as the film goes along. Taxi Driver is much like Goodfellas, much like Gangs of New York, and very much like The Irishman. It serves as the template for so many Scorsese and Schrader films ahead, and many would contend that it is one of the greatest American films of all-time.
This success wouldn’t last much longer, as New York, New York (1977) would be a critical and financial failure for Scorsese, and it would cause him to reevaluate his career. On a personal level, he spiraled into addiction, and the road ahead was unclear. He jumped back into filmmaking with the documentary profile of Steven Prince, and the rock-umentary, The Last Waltz (1978). The window into Steven Prince’s life is an emotional 55 minutes of film. There is an energy that matches Scorsese’s in how he chronicles the stories of his life that refract the youth that was lost in the home videotapes that precede every chapter. In some sense, it feels therapeutic for Scorsese just as The Last Waltz does. In Scorsese’s capture of The Band, it is a rocking goodbye to the road in preparation for who is to follow. Leaving the life of rock and roll, long nights and endless roads behind for the future around the bend. It’s a celebration of what was, and what will become, and it is a breathtaking tether between the failure of New York, New York, and the re-emerging success in Raging Bull (1980).
The foundation of Martin Scorsese is a vibrant, varied, and vital era in film history. This is only the beginning, but they are the stepping stones of a career that showcases how punctual he is as a storyteller. His personal struggles with faith, drugs, and war influenced the perspective that strangled his youth. In some sense, his attempts to reckon with these corners of the world he found himself in was his chance to break out of the institutions that bore down on his youth. The first phase in Scorsese’s career is boyish, wide-eyed, excited, and maybe in over his head just a bit, but his adoration for the craft, the production of major motion pictures, and how to expand and develop on his inspirations is undeniable in its greatness. To think at this phase of his life he really considered moving on from filmmaking. Just to go on and have one of the greatest runs in history over the next two decades is unbelievable. The rejuvenation began with Raging Bull. The film Scorsese used to break free from the shackles of institutionalized youth to trademark the 1980s as the decade of Scorsese.