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Sep 12, 2023 · Along the way, he meets Cameron Diaz's Jenny Everdeane, and he falls for her despite some initial conflicts in their relationship. Gangs of New York was loosely based on a real story, which Scorsese learned about after reading Herbert Asbury's book The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld. The book covers the time period as ...
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- Overview
- Early life and work
- Films of the 1970s: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and New York, New York
Martin Scorsese is an American filmmaker known for his harsh, often violent depictions of American culture. From the 1970s Scorsese created an ambitious body of work that made him one of the most important filmmakers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He reflects in his films both a cynicism toward modern culture and an obvious love of the cinema.
How has Martin Scorsese advocated for film preservation?
In an essay that Martin Scorsese wrote in 2018 for the Encyclopædia Britannica Anniversary Edition: 250 Years of Excellence, he recounted his efforts since the 1970s to save the history of filmmaking. He was successful in instilling a new focus on film preservation; however, he explains, “[i]n the future the memory of the actual film image will have to be preserved as carefully and lovingly as an ancient artifact at the Met.”
Martin Scorsese (born November 17, 1942, Queens, New York, U.S.) American filmmaker known for his harsh, often violent depictions of American culture. From the 1970s Scorsese created a body of work that was ambitious, bold, and brilliant. But even his most acclaimed films are demanding, sometimes unpleasantly intense dramas that have enjoyed relatively little commercial success. Thus, Scorsese bears the not totally undeserved reputation as a cult director who works with big budgets and Hollywood’s most desirable stars. In terms of artistry, he was perhaps the most significant American director of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Scorsese was a frail asthmatic child who grew up in the Italian American neighbourhood of Little Italy on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His early interest in film returned after he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood, and he went on to earn undergraduate (1964) and graduate (1966) degrees in film from New York University, where he subsequently taught. His student films showed a wide range of influences, from foreign classics to Hollywood musicals. Among them were shorts such as What’s a Nice Girl like You Doing in a Place like This? (1963) and It’s Not Just You, Murray! (1964).
Scorsese’s first theatrical film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967), was an intimate portrayal of life in the streets of Little Italy. Harvey Keitel (who went on to do five more films with Scorsese in the 1970s and ’80s) starred as Scorsese’s alter ego, a streetwise but sensitive Italian American Catholic plagued by the knowledge that his girlfriend (Zina Bethune) had been raped. The film earned Scorsese encouraging reviews, and he was offered the position of assistant director and supervising editor on Woodstock (1970), which translated into converting the more than 100 hours of raw footage of the 1969 rock concert into a 3-hour movie that won an Academy Award for best documentary.
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Scorsese directed a less widely seen documentary about protests against the Vietnam War, Street Scenes (1970), and he then worked as an editor on the concert films Medicine Ball Caravan (1971) and Elvis on Tour (1972). Producer Roger Corman invited him to direct Boxcar Bertha (1972). Scorsese made the most of the opportunity with an exciting if ultimately empty yarn about train robbers (Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, and Bernie Casey) wreaking havoc in the Depression-era South.
Far more significant was the boundary-breaking Mean Streets (1973), Scorsese’s reworking of the themes introduced in Who’s That Knocking at My Door. Filled with violent sequences, rapid-fire dialogue, and blaring rock music, the film was typical of his early work in its realistic detail and its naturalistic performances. Keitel starred as a small-time collector for the mob in Little Italy, stricken with guilt over his affair with his epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson) and frustrated by his inability to control his dangerously unhinged friend (and Teresa’s cousin) Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro, who did eight films with Scorsese between 1973 and 1995). The moving, often hilarious performances of Keitel and De Niro were as much responsible for igniting this low-budget masterpiece as Scorsese’s atmospheric locations, shockingly frank language, explosive violence, and showy camera technique.
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After making the documentary Italianamerican (1974) about his parents, Scorsese went to work on his first mainstream studio picture, the tamer Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), which had little of the pyrotechnic invention of Mean Streets. But in its own subdued way, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was an effective drama about a widow, Alice (Ellen Burstyn), who strikes out from New Mexico to California after the death of her abusive husband to make a new life for herself and her adolescent son (Alfred Lutter). Burstyn’s Oscar for best actress helped convince the Hollywood establishment that Scorsese could discipline his maverick talent.
Having proved that he could make a fairly conventional movie, Scorsese then shocked filmgoers with the neo-noir classicTaxi Driver (1976), a hellish tour of a disturbed Vietnam veteran’s peculiar madness. Brilliantly written by Paul Schrader, photographed by Michael Chapman, and scored by Bernard Herrmann (his final film), this unsettling work is as fascinating as it is horrifying. De Niro gave what is regarded as his definitive performance as the pathetically alienated but dangerously unhinged Travis Bickle, and Keitel exuded menace in the small but key role of the seductive pimp Sport, who keeps the 12-year-old Iris (Jodie Foster) in thrall. Perhaps the most controversial, and the most disturbing, Oscar nominee for best picture to date, Taxi Driver also earned Oscar nominations for De Niro, Foster, and Herrmann. Scorsese cast himself in a small but telling cameo as a murderously jealous husband, and the film was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. Many rank it as Scorsese’s best work.
- Michael Barson
- On January 1st, 1970, the title of a book caught Scorsese’s eye: ‘The Gangs of New York,’ by Herbert Asbury. He started to read it and thought “certain aspects of it” would make for an incredible film.
- The opening battle scene is a series of intercuts of people fighting. It was inspired by Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight, which Scorsese praises for having one of the finest battle scenes ever made.
- A majority of the opening fight was done in three weeks, in bits and pieces. Vic Armstrong took drawings of Scorsese’s and shot even more bits and pieces for six weeks whenever the sun was right.
- Scorsese did not want to be literal with Gangs of New York, hence the use of Peter Gabriel music for the opening battle.
Martin Scorsese. Producer: Killers of the Flower Moon. Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of ...
- November 17, 1942
Martin Charles Scorsese [6] [a] was born in the Flushing neighborhood of New York City's Queens borough on November 17, 1942. [8] [9] He grew up in the Little Italy neighborhood of the city's Manhattan borough. [10] Both of his parents, Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, worked in the Garment District.
Aug 16, 2002 · Martin Scorsese talks about his controversial saga ''Gangs of New York,'' which stars Leo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz and took 25 years to finish -- an excerpt from the Aug. 23, 2002, cover story of ...
