MSN Movies Legend #4 - Martin Scorsese

"Growing up I saw power exercised in two ways," Martin Scorsese once revealed. "The power of the church and the power of the street, which was exercised through violence." No wonder the two diametrically opposed forces have held such a sway over this native New Yorker, a lapsed Roman Catholic who considered entering the priesthood prior to embarking on his acclaimed directorial career.

 

Precluded from outdoor activities by his severe asthma, the young Marty spent much of his childhood in picture houses developing the passion for film that would later see him become one of the world’s leading cinema conservationists. Enrolling in film school at NYU, his student shorts were accomplished enough to catch the eye of producer Roger Corman, for whom he directed the low-budget crime thriller Boxcar Bertha. But it was 1973’s Mean Streets that put Marty on the map, the director teaming up with Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel for a powerful study of a young man in Little Italy torn between his devout Catholicism and his day job as a gangster.

De Niro would soon become Scorsese’s muse, collaborating with him on films as diverse as the iconic Taxi Driver, bruising boxing biopic Raging Bull and the seminal mob drama GoodFellas. Scorsese, however, refused to be pigeon-holed, stretching his wings with the female-oriented road movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, dark satire The King of Comedy and the highly controversial Last Temptation of Christ. Along the way he made the Michael Jackson video Bad and found a new leading man in Leonardo DiCaprio, the star of costly period piece Gangs of New York, Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator and The Departed – a gritty return to the crime genre which saw Scorsese finally win the best director Oscar he’d been inexplicably denied on five previous occasions.

Finest Moment:
Some may say Taxi Driver; others will choose Raging Bull. As far as we are concerned, it doesn’t get any better than GoodFellas, Martin’s peerless chronicle of one New York mobster’s steady rise and dramatic fall. Based on the life of gangster turned FBI whistle-blower Henry Hill, this fast-paced adaptation of Nicolas Pileggi’s bestseller gives us an access-all-areas tour of the criminal underbelly, depicted in all its richness, ruthlessness and unexpected humour. The extended set-piece detailing its protagonist’s last day as a free man, meanwhile, is a Scorsese masterclass in kinetic editing, dynamic camerawork and the creative use of music.

 

In His Own Words:
"My whole life has been movies and religion. That’s it. Nothing else."

 

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