Any list of the greatest directors in film history must include William Wyler, John Ford, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. Wyler is the only one on that list who’s been nominated for a Best Director Academy Award more times than Scorsese (Wyler’s 12 vs. Scorsese’s 9). This week Martin Scorsese releases his 26th narrative feature film, “Killers of the Flower Moon”, and the younger of our writing duo has seen it and confirms it is destined for greatness. That shouldn’t be a surprise for a director whose films have garnered 91 Oscar nominations and won 20 statues.
Martin Scorsese, along with Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman, was at the forefront of the New Hollywood Era in the late 60s and early 70s. Scorsese’s films often explore the male ego, crime, and concepts of guilt and redemption. His use of slow motion, freeze frames, and tracking shots have been widely emulated. The violence in his films is graphic, and the dialogue naturalistic, with a liberal dose of profanity.
It would be easy to review his most famous films like “Taxi Driver” (1975), “Raging Bull” (1980), “Goodfellas” (1990) and “The Departed” (2006), the latter of which was the winner of Academy Award for Best Picture and Director. But we are not easy writers, and today we look at some of his lesser-known works.
Take One
“Hugo” (2011) is a rare family-oriented film from Scorsese, based on the children’s book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick. It’s a delightful tale of a lonely boy who lives in a Paris railway station in the 1930s and his encounter with an elderly shopkeeper who just may have been the greatest director in the early days of silent film (the mythic George Méliès). The film mixes historical fact with fantasy and appeals to all ages. The recreation of 1930s Paris is spot-on (it won Oscars for Art Direction & Visual Effects) and the film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Director. The cast includes Asa Butterfield as Hugo, Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle, and the incomparable Ben Kingsley as the legendary Méliès.
1995’s “Casino” is Scorsese at his best, and most fun. It’s an epic crime saga based on real incidents, with three hours chock-full of action, suspense and violence—a portrait of mob-run Las Vegas in the 1970s, starring Robert DeNiro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, the overseer of a corrupt money-laundering gambling house, his hustler wife, Ginger, played by Sharon Stone in an Oscar-nominated performance, and Joe Pesci as an out-of-control mob enforcer. Based on the book “Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas” by former mob hitman Nicholas Pileggi, who also wrote the book that “Goodfellas” is based on. Drinking game: take a slug every time you hear a 4-letter word and you’ll soon end up in the Emergency Room.
Take Two
Scorsese, nursing a terrible drug habit, vowed that “Raging Bull” would be his last film, but thankfully its success propelled him to a new height of filmmaking. One of his most striking peaks came immediately after the boxing masterpiece with 1982’s “The King of Comedy,” a vivid psycho-drama about Rupert Pupkin (played eerily and with total abandon by Robert DeNiro), a borderline-psychotic wannabe television host who becomes obsessed with an older comedian who looks like, sounds like, and – is in fact- played by Jerry Lewis in one of the most remarkable performances of his entire career. Viewers today may recognize the plot and style of the film in Todd Field’s 2019 “Joker” movie, which “borrowed” (or maybe stole) heavily from several aspects of Scorsese’s picture, with far less nuance and composure.
Most people think of Scorsese as the patron saint of Old New York, but in 1985 he took a detour to the hip up-and-coming neighborhood of SoHo in the throes of gentrification and the center of the NYC art world. His movie “After Hours” is a surreal, fever dream of a movie, a comedy which bears little connection to his signature subject matter. With a decidedly quieter-than-usual cast, Griffin Dunne plays Paul Hackett, a working stiff who becomes entrenched with the likes of fellow yuppies like Rosanna Arquette and hardcore punks like Verna Bloom. To see Scorsese so accurately depict this budding artist mecca is revelatory. The film also launched an entire sub-genre of movies now known as the “yuppie nightmare cycle”, which include other classics like “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985) and “Something Wild” (1986).
All films available on streaming services.
