Scorsese leads effort to preserve old films
Movies aren’t just a career for filmmaker Martin Scorsese — they are an obsession. He and pal Steven Spielberg are leading the charge to save some of America’s early motion pictures that are crumbling before our eyes.
“More than half of the films made before 1950 are gone,” Scorsese says. “I don’t know how we’ll catch up. We’re trying to have a systematic form.”
Part of that form is his work with the Film Foundation (which he founded) and a new More than half of the films made before
1950 are gone. I don’t know how we’ll catch up. We’re trying to have a systematic form. agreement with Universal Pictures. They will restore a handpicked collection of
SCORSESE
Universal movies, including two versions of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers,” “My Little Chickadee,” “Destry Rides Again,” and “Winchester ’73.”
Older pictures were produced using film manufactured on an unstable cellulose nitrate base. Scorsese says he first became aware of the problem when he attended a Twentieth Century Fox retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “They were showing all nitrate studio prints and black-and-whites, and they were glorious,” he says.
“Then … I went to see ‘Niagara’ and ‘The SevenYear Itch,’ and the prints were pink. You could hardly see the eyes. You lose all the expression and emotion … that’s when I first realized.”
The nitrate base is not only unstable, it’s highly flammable. Through his Film Foundation, the 75-year-old producer-director has been leading efforts to convert the fragile resources to a more stable matrix.
For the man who made such classics as “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas” and “Casino,” filmmaking has
always been about learning something. That’s why he champions the works of some of the more obscure filmmakers.
But for him, the three American movies that influenced him the most were “On the Waterfront,” “Citizen Kane” and John Cassavetes’ “Shadows.”
“There are foreign films, too,” Scorsese adds. “The two that come to mind, for example, are ‘8½’ and ‘The Red Shoes.’ … When I was 5 or 6 years old, I saw neorealist films. And they also influenced me a great deal.”
One of his failings, he says, was avoiding silent movies. “I disregarded completely silent cinema until the late ’70s, early ’80s and mid-’90s,” he says.
Now the silent images of artists such as D.W. Griffith, F. W. Murnau and Frank Borzage fill Scorsese with admiration.
He says he’s trying to introduce younger filmmakers and cinema fans to the early masters and to some underrated B movies.
The problem is, budding movie buffs have little concept of the past, he says. “I talk to some student groups sometimes, I’ll mention ‘Sweet Smell of
Success.’ I’ll mention Andre De Toth, and I’ll mention John Ford’s ‘Wagon Master,’ and suddenly I realize they don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“And so I have to say,
‘OK, how many here have seen a De Toth film or Jacques Tourneur’s “The
Cat People”’? And you find that, unfortunately in many cases, film history starts with maybe ‘Forrest Gump.’ Maybe. But I said that yesterday, and I was told, ‘That’s too early,’ ” he says with a smile.
Many people would be surprised to learn that the grand scale Hollywood spectacle is one of Scorsese’s favorite genres. “I always admired the big epic films like ‘The Ten Commandments,’ ‘Ben Hur’ and, to a certain extent,
‘The Robe,’ ” he says.
“So that was the kind of picture I wanted to make,” he says. After more than 40 years Scorsese has delivered such movies as “The Color of Money,” “The King of Comedy” and “The Age of Innocence” — more character studies than sweeping sagas.
“I’m predisposed to these spectacles,” he laughs, “and when I started making movies, they’re all closeups.”