Martin Scorsese at 80: all hail the little giant of Hollywood cinema
• Over nearly five decades, the director has established himself as the poet of US cinematic violence
In 1993, avant-garde noise rockers King Missile released a song called Martin Scorsese. In it lead singer John S Hall shouts lyrics that declare — in the safe-for-work version: “He makes the best films. If I ever meet him I’m gonna grab his neck and just shake him and say thank you thank you for makin’ such excellent movies. Then I’d twist his nose all the way around and rip off one of his ears …” You get the idea.
Scorsese, who turned 80 on Thursday, has for the better part of five decades established himself as the grand poet of US cinematic violence; the chief surgeon responsible for dissecting the machismo of the beleaguered fragile American male ego; and the sly religious philosopher whose giddying, distinctive aesthetic wraps his provocative contemplations about life’s biggest questions in a satisfying and oft-imitated pop art veneer.
Long before a low-culture obsessed former video clerk named Quentin Tarantino came along to set off explosions that collapsed the barriers between high art and pop, a movie-obsessed asthmatic kid from New York’s Little Italy had already drawn a path in the shifting sands for him to follow. By the time King Missile penned their part-tribute, part-ironic takedown of Scorsese’s signature, often violent, film-history-obsessed style, the director had made 14 feature films including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas —
three regularly on lists of the 100 greatest movies ever made.
The year of King Missile’s tribute also saw the biggest departure for Scorsese when he released the Edith Wharton adaptation Age of Innocence,
starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
As he entered his 50s, Scorsese had already created more iconic and influential films than most of his golden age Hollywood heroes managed in their careers; had survived depression, cocaine addiction and four marriages ending in divorce; and won every major award in the cinematic universe except for a best director Oscar.
His identification as a lapsed Roman Catholic was inspired as much by his inability to avoid divorces as it was by the controversy caused by his 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ. On orders from the church, millions of Catholics — often without seeing it — staged furious protests and made angry threats against cinemas that dared to show it.
His longtime collaborator Robert De Niro, who had worked with him since 1973’s Mean Streets, had become one of the most lauded and acclaimed actors of his generation. His 1970s American New Wave friends Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Brian De Palma had all established themselves as legends and powerhouse players in the US movie business.
By the time he and Leonardo DiCaprio first paired up for 2002’s epic historical drama Gangs of New York, the actor was already one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood and it would be he and not De Niro who would star in the 2006 Boston crime drama The Departed that netted Scorsese his Oscar.
It might be easy to herald Scorsese for his feature film contributions and divide them neatly into the De Niro and DiCaprio periods.
FEMINIST
But that would be a disservice to a director whose other work included such popularly overlooked but critically important films as 1974’s early feminist drama Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1985’s black comedy exploration of the foibles of ’80s capitalist excess
After Hours, 1997’s compassionate Dalai Lama biopic Kundun, 1999’s madcap
Bringing Out the Dead and 2016’s haunting historical faith in crisis meditation Silence.
Scorsese has managed to make the films he wants to make without bowing to the conformity of commercialism and popular taste, and while the budgets may have increased, the independent, by-anymeans-necessary spirit that fuelled his early work continues to be the bedrock of a cinematic journey that seems unstoppable. His 25th feature, Killers of the Flower Moon, will be released in 2023.
That’s not even to mention the groundbreaking work that Scorsese has done in the field of music documentaries, from his ahead-of-its-time concert record of The Band in The Last Waltz to his two very different but equally intelligent Bob Dylan films, No Direction Home and Rolling Thunder Revue, and his exhaustive tribute to the life of Beatle George Harrison, Living in the Material World.
TRIBUTES
LOST CLASSICS AND PIONEERING WORKS OF GLOBAL CINEMA HAVE BEEN SAVED FROM THE DUSTBIN
His films about the history of the movies — 1995’s A Personal Journey Through American Movies and 1999’s My Voyage to Italy are two of the most informative and loving tributes to the giants of golden era Hollywood and Italian neorealist cinema that any movie junkie needs to watch repeatedly.
Finally, there’s the indispensable work that Scorsese champions in the arena of film preservation, which has ensured that lost classics and pioneering works of global cinema, and Africa in particular, have been saved from the dustbin of history, thanks to the efforts of his film foundation, World Cinema and African Film Heritage Projects.
If you love the movies, you can’t help but love Scorsese, so if you see the 80-year-old diminutive director on the street, maybe don’t grab his neck and shake him, but you could shout, “thank you, thank you for makin’ such excellent movies”, and hope that he continues to make them for as many years as he has left.