THE FILMS OF MARTIN

SCORSESE
THE FILMS OF MARTIN
SCORSESE

Eric San Juan

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
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Copyright © 2020 by Eric San Juan

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: San Juan, Eric, 1973– author.
Title: The films of Martin Scorsese : gangsters, greed, and guilt / Eric San Juan.
Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and
index. | Summary: “This volume looks at the 24 features directed by Martin Scorsese in
chronological order, providing an overview with some historical context, followed by a brief
synopsis, and other details per film. Eric San Juan provides an accessible analysis diving deep
into the themes, techniques, and innovations of each movie.”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019059449 (print) | LCCN 2019059450 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538127650
(cloth) | ISBN 9781538127667 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Scorsese, Martin—Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC PN1998.3.S39 S26 2020 (print) | LCC PN1998.3.S39 (ebook) | DDC
791.43023/3092—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059449
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059450

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
 CONTENTS

Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR? (1967)
2 BOXCAR BERTHA (1972)
3 MEAN STREETS (1973)
4 ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974)
5 TAXI DRIVER (1976)
6 NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977)
7 RAGING BULL (1980)
8 THE KING OF COMEDY (1982)
9 AFTER HOURS (1985)
10 THE COLOR OF MONEY (1986)
11 THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988)
12 NEW YORK STORIES: LIFE LESSONS (1989)
 13 GOODFELLAS (1990)
14 CAPE FEAR (1991)
15 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993)
16 CASINO (1995)
17 KUNDUN (1997)
18 BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999)
19 GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002)
20 THE AVIATOR (2004)
21 THE DEPARTED (2006)
22 SHUTTER ISLAND (2010)
23 HUGO (2011)
24 THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)
25 SILENCE (2016)
26 THE IRISHMAN (2019)
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

N
o book is written in a vacuum. My thanks to Stephen Ryan, whose
enthusiasm for the project lit a fire under me. This book would not
exist had he not lobbied for it. I am also in debt to Jim McDevitt, whose
frank feedback and thorough reading helped me improve every single page.
His work was tireless and his friendship unerring, and for that I am grateful.
Thanks also to Cary Christopher, whose eagle eyes were a big help in
correcting the text, and to Eric Preston and John Zarate, whose early
feedback helped me refine the chapter on Raging Bull. And thanks to
Robert San Juan for taking a road trip with me to see The Irishman.
Immense gratitude is also given to the giants on whose shoulders I
stand. The journalism and film criticism of Roger Ebert, Richard Schickel,
Amy Taubin, and many others not only proved a valuable resource in
researching this book, but it also helped guide the way for all who have
followed in their footsteps.
And finally, thanks to Martin Scorsese for creating the masterpieces this
book examines. They have been engaging, enlightening, and endlessly
entertaining.
 INTRODUCTION

F
ew mainstream filmmakers have as pronounced a disregard for the
supposed rules of filmmaking as Martin Scorsese. His inventiveness
displays a reaction against the “right” way to make a movie, frequently
eschewing traditional cinematic language in favor of something flashy and
unexpected and contrary to the way “proper” films are done. Yet despite
copious voice-over, freeze-frames, fast cuts, and dizzying editing, he’s
become one of the most influential directors of the last fifty years, a critical
darling (though rarely a box office titan), and a fan favorite. That makes his
body of work ripe fodder for a broad, movie-by-movie analysis.
Scorsese is perhaps the most unpredictable auteur of the last fifty years.
His best-loved work tends toward violence and kinetic energy and
innovative use of popular songs, but he’s much more than mobsters and
mayhem and music. He constantly surprises. From charming children’s
fables to somber meditations on the nature of faith, period pieces, sprawling
biopics, music documentaries, and (of course) gritty crime dramas, few
directors with as singular a vision as his can boast such varied work. He’s
even an award-winning documentary filmmaker, with more than a dozen
documentary films to his name (though this work is beyond the purview of
this book).
Yet he does have a singular vision. Dig deep, and you find a connective
tissue that ties his work together, a distinct sensibility that, despite its
eclectic nature, makes his movies uniquely Martin Scorsese. In the pages
ahead, I explore that connective tissue, pick apart the themes that tie it all
together, and celebrate the work of one of cinema’s greatest directors. I look
at the con men, the criminals, the gangsters, the moguls, and the nobodies
of his filmography. I examine the techniques that have made him stand out
as one of the most innovative directors in history: the needle-drop
soundtracks, the outbursts of violence, the daring camera work, and more.
And I look at the themes that are ultimately the engine driving all of this:
themes of self-sabotage, of alienation, of faith, and of guilt.
To fully understand the well from which Martin Scorsese’s work is
drawn, it’s first important to understand Scorsese himself because the best
of the director’s work is often deeply personal. Born in 1942 in Queens,
New York, his family moved to the Little Italy section of the city when he
was still young. His parents, Charles and Catherine, were both working-
class children of Italian immigrants who labored in the city’s garment
district. Due to severe asthma as a child, young Marty (as his friends still
call him) did not play sports or have much physical fun. Instead, he
observed life on the streets from his apartment window. Watching from
above gave Scorsese a bird’s-eye view of the people who populated his
neighborhood: how they interacted, the subtle power dynamics at play, and
more. Going to the movies with his father was his primary exposure to the
wider world outside the city. And it was a lot of movies. If it hit the screen,
they saw it, and he soaked it all in. These two formative experiences helped
him think visually when it came to expressing his observations to others.
“My movie camera really goes right back to when I was raised on the
Lower East Side. Because of asthma and other reasons… I had to
sometimes distance myself. The objectivity was almost like using a movie
camera,” he once said.1
You can’t separate Martin Scorsese from his Little Italy upbringing,
either. The two are inextricably intertwined. Those he observed from that
apartment window were working-class people, often poor, and street crime
was a normal part of what he saw. As he entered his teen years, he became
part of that world, albeit from a distance. In his neighborhood, trading
words on the street with someone could result in a fight or worse. Scorsese
himself was never a fullblown street crook, but he ran with some hell-
raisers in his youth, as depicted in semi-autobiographical films like Who’s
That Knocking at My Door? and Mean Streets. Witnessing those street
conflicts, verbal or otherwise, became an essential building block of his
work.
For all the music and violence and style of his films, Scorsese’s work is
very much about people: what drives them; what consumes them; what
obsesses them; and perhaps most important of all, what fills them with
guilt. Of all the human traits that run through his work, self-destructive
tendencies and the guilt that comes with them are arguably the most
notable. It may be a stereotype to associate this with the director’s
Catholicism, but Scorsese himself sees the two as being linked, and indeed,
as the oft-repeated story goes, as a teen he once considered becoming a
priest. Though he long ago abandoned that potential career path,
Catholicism never left him. Faith and all the contradictions that come with
it have always been a vital part of his worldview:
It’s always in you. My search for faith has never really ended from when I became aware that
there was such a thing as faith and started to look at how it’s acted out in your daily life. It’s
in Mean Streets and it’s in Taxi Driver and it’s in Raging Bull, ultimately. And then The Last
Temptation of Christ was a major step for me in trying to come to terms with these themes,
these ideas of the Incarnation of Christ—what does it really mean?2

That his faith has been an important part of his life is unsurprising,
given his upbringing in Little Italy of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. Today, the
neighborhood is just a small tourist trap with a smattering of restaurants and
shops spread over a few blocks of New York City’s Mulberry Street, but at
one time it was a thriving community filled with Italian immigrants.
Celebrations of faith were part of the lifeblood of the community. Religious
iconography was everywhere. Going to church was just an expected part of
life. Overall, the neighborhood and its people molded and shaped him,
helping develop the sensibility that would make him a cinematic innovator
who has always felt a little askew from the traditional Hollywood he loved.
But eventually, he’d move on.
In the 1960s, he attended New York University, earning a bachelor’s in
English and his master of fine arts degree in film. There he made several
short films, including an infamous anti–Vietnam War short called The Big
Shave (1967) that featured a man shaving his way to self-mutilation. In
1967, he directed his first feature-length film, I Call First, which stars
Harvey Keitel and was edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, both of whom
would become integral to his work. I Call First would later get additional
footage and be retitled Who’s That Knocking at My Door? becoming his
first theatrical release. The picture received a glowing review from a young
film critic called Roger Ebert. As Scorsese and Ebert grew in stature in their
respective fields, Ebert would become perhaps the most notable Scorsese
booster on the planet, dubbing him our greatest living director.
And so a career was born. By now the rest of the details are familiar to
most. A long-running creative collaboration with Robert De Niro resulted in
a string of classics, including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas,
regarded by many as the best in their respective decades. The director built
a reputation on kinetic violence and invented the needle-drop popular music
movie soundtrack style that today is an essential part of what makes movies
by filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, James Gunn, and others so exciting.
After years as an outsider, he’s now hailed as one of the greatest directors of
all time, joining the ranks of the very luminaries he used to idolize—all
from a skinny Italian kid in a little apartment in New York City.
So what makes Martin Scorsese movies tick? What can we learn from
them about cinema and, more specifically, about Martin Scorsese himself?
In the arts, a common area of debate is whether we can separate the art from
the artist, but a more apt question is, should we separate the art from the
artist? The answer to the former is an unequivocal yes. You can watch
GoodFellas with no real idea who Martin Scorsese is, why he is important,
and how his experience informed the movie, and it’s still going to be a
dynamic picture, visceral and truthful and a flight of pure, dark, supremely
entertaining fantasy. How the art on-screen makes you feel requires no
knowledge of its creator. It succeeds because it’s a brilliant piece of work
that operates on multiple levels, with surface-level style and the depth of
gripping character exploration. So yes, you can separate the art from the
artist.
But should we? That’s a larger question. Context is important.
Understanding where a work comes from allows us a more profound
understanding of what that work is. It provides a framework from which to
gain further insights into what a movie is trying to say. Scorsese’s films can
be appreciated without knowing anything about him, yes, but when put in
the context of who he is and what he has experienced—his upbringing, his
neuroses, his obsessions, his fascinations, his formative years, the highs and
lows of his life, his influences, his insecurities, the music he loves, the
books he reads—one gains a richer understanding of exactly what makes
these movies tick. The sense of anger, isolation, and rebellion in early
works like Taxi Driver; New York, New York; and Raging Bull are
reflections of Scorsese at that time in his life. The exploration of film
history and the desire to leave behind a legacy in Hugo or dwelling on the
past in The Irishman is all the richer when seen with an understanding of
who Scorsese was when he made them. The Last Temptation of Christ’s
quest to understand its titular character is more potent when you recognize
the director’s own personal journey of faith, not to mention the long
struggles he had trying to make the picture, and so on.
Most important in all this is that Martin Scorsese is a man brimming
with questions: questions about who we are, what compels us to act the way
we do, how we could be corrupted, or how we can corrupt ourselves.
Scorsese pictures are typified by many things—creative camera work,
antihero characters, swift violence, and copious profanity, among other
traits already mentioned—but at their heart, what Scorsese pictures are
really about are exploring the human condition, particularly the darker parts
of ourselves that lead us toward self-destruction. It’s a theme seen
repeatedly in his work: Men who have everything fall apart around them as
a result of their own actions. “I like to chart a character like that,” Scorsese
said, “see how far they go before they self-destruct.”3 It’s seen over and
over, from Raging Bull to GoodFellas, Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street, and
more.
Scorsese’s characters are richer, more believable, and more alive in no
small part because he is an actor’s director. He is unusual among the ranks
of auteurs in that his process is so collaborative in nature. Actors love
working with him, not merely for the prestige, but also because he affords
them so much creative freedom. “Of all the directors I’ve worked with,
Marty is the best at providing an atmosphere where actors can do their best
work. He trusts actors and involves them,” Ellen Burstyn once said.4 Many
of his best-known scenes were created through improvisation, either on
camera or during rehearsal sessions, that are then fine-tuned for the camera.
Joe Pesci’s “funny” scene from GoodFellas, De Niro’s famous “You talking
to me?” monologue in Taxi Driver, Pesci and De Niro’s final argument in
Raging Bull, Matthew McConaughey’s strange chants in The Wolf of Wall
Street, and many others sprang from the creative freedom he affords his
actors. “Marty loves that on the set, when an actor does something that’s not
expected, or something that just happened to happen. He loves that, he
capitalizes on it. He says, ‘Oh, that’s great. Let’s go further with that,’”
Schoonmaker said of him. “Accidents are very important.”5
He lets the characters speak for themselves, too, in a technique often
frowned upon in screenwriting classes but that he uses throughout his
filmography: voice-over. Narration is the exception in Hollywood, not the
norm, but in Scorsese’s hands it becomes just another tool in his vast
arsenal. “There’s something interesting about voiceover,” he said. “It lets
you in on the secret thoughts of the characters, or secret observations by an
omniscient viewer. And for me it has a wonderful comforting tone of
someone telling you a story.”6
To some extent, there is a narrative tying these pictures together that
reflects on the sweep of Scorsese’s life and career. Each chapter ahead
suggests angles from which to see any given film and sometimes aids in
seeing each movie in the context of Scorsese’s life and career. This is not a
biography. Little time is spent on the intimate details of the director’s life.
Nonetheless, the broad beats often come up when they pertain to his art,
whether it’s his early life in Little Italy, his struggles with drugs in the
1970s, his self-doubts in the 1980s, his series of rocky marriages and
relationships, or his examinations of the idea of legacy in the latter parts of
his career. When these topics come up, it’s because they’re important to a
specific film, they provide key context to understanding a creative period of
his life, or they help us understand an essential theme in his work.
There are a handful of ideas that come up repeatedly because they are
themes that permeate the director’s entire body of work. Some are obvious,
as they’ve been touched on in pretty much every Scorsese analysis ever
written. His use of music and the raw way in which he depicts violence are
two obvious examples, though I do not linger on either. The subject of guilt
is near unavoidable when taking a deep dive into the director’s catalog,
fueled by his devoutly Catholic upbringing and the self-doubt he grappled
with as a young filmmaker. Greed, sour relationships, and operating on the
wrong side of the law are also common themes. So, too, are protagonists
who are the architects of their own downfalls, a topic I return to repeatedly.
Scorsese has long been fascinated with rise-and-fall stories, tales of people
who seem to have it all and then lose it. Raging Bull, GoodFellas, The Wolf
of Wall Street, and others all deal with this, but a more telling element is not
merely the rise and fall aspect of these stories; it’s how the fall is usually the
protagonist’s own fault.
My goal is to get to the beating heart of his work. More than for the
sake of organization, this is why I discuss his films in chronological order.
That’s how I have done previous works on the movies of Akira Kurosawa
and (with author Jim McDevitt) Alfred Hitchcock, and that trend continues
here.
 There is value in viewing and analyzing the films of a single director in
chronological order. Certainly, any picture can be appreciated and examined
on its own, but when seen in the context in which it was made, when fit
snugly between the film that came before and the one that came after, we
get not just a greater appreciation of the circumstances that led to the
finished work being what it is but also a clearer picture of why certain
artistic choices may have been made. Movies are not created in a vacuum,
after all. The Last Temptation of Christ, for example, is not the sparse,
ragged picture it is because Scorsese intended it to be. It was an artistic
decision made of necessity, driven by budget limitations and the long
struggle to get it made in the first place. The preceding picture, The Color
of Money, was made in large part to prove to Hollywood executives that he
could still make them money after a series of box-office failures. The Age of
Innocence would likely look much different without the director’s previous
experiment in making a mainstream thriller (Cape Fear). The Aviator
happened in part because he liked working with Leonardo DiCaprio so
much on Gangs of New York, and so on.
In assessing a film’s critical success, I often cite the Academy Award
nominations it received. To be clear, this is not an indication that a movie’s
worth is measured by Oscars. The Oscars have only as much value as an
individual places in them. As a metric they are no more or less worthy than
any other. Still, in Hollywood the Academy Awards are the award, the most
prestigious of all the major award ceremonies and the one most followed by
the industry and public alike. Further, much like legends Alfred Hitchcock
and Stanley Kubrick, Scorsese’s history with the Oscars was at times a
rocky one. Until winning for 2006’s The Departed, Scorsese had been
nominated for Best Director five times and was denied five times (for
Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, Gangs of New
York, and The Aviator). He’d subsequently go on to be nominated for Hugo
and The Wolf of Wall Street, and the buzz as of this writing is that a
nomination for The Irishman is likely. Prior to that, it seemed he would
receive the same epic snub as Hitchcock and Kubrick, who were nominated
five and four times, respectively, but never won. I cite his award
nominations at various times in this book, But this should not be read as a
suggestion that the Academy Awards hold any significance beyond an
industry and cultural one. They do not speak to artistic worth as much as
they speak to industry recognition—and because Scorsese has always
thought of himself as an outsider working within the Hollywood system, it’s
an angle worth touching on. And for what it’s worth, he agrees: “I wish I
could be like some of the other guys and say, ‘No, I don’t care about it.’ But
for me, a kid growing up on the Lower East Side watching from the first
telecast of the Oscars, and being obsessed by movies, there’s a certain
magic that’s there.”7
Similarly, I often mention a movie’s budget and box-office take. This
isn’t because either say much about a picture’s worth as a piece of art—they
don’t—but rather because the hunt for funding has so often played a major
role in the creative choices he was able to make. Raging Bull would not
have happened if New York, New York did not flop, for example. Cape Fear
was a commercial obligation that, once successful, allowed him to do
Kundun. His final epic, The Irishman, would not have happened without
Netflix stepping in with funding, and so on.
In the pages ahead, each chapter opens with an overview that provides
some historical context for the movie, a brief synopsis, and other details.
The meat of each chapter is the analysis. Usually focused on a central thesis
related to the film, each takes a deep dive into the themes, techniques, and
innovations of the movie in question, noting what sets them apart and what
makes them worthy of study. Finally, a conclusion looks briefly at the
impact, if any, of the film and how it sets the stage for Scorsese’s next
work.
There is a lot to delve into here. On the surface, Scorsese’s work is
typified by shocking violence and rampant profanity. These are often loud,
brash films that appear to glorify the worst kinds of people. He makes
heroes of mobsters, thugs, con men, and murderers. Yet dig deeper, and you
find the true beating heart of his oeuvre: guilt, collapse, self-destruction,
spiritual turmoil, and the complicated hypocrisies of faith, among other
themes that are a constant in his work. What is Martin Scorsese trying to
tell us? Or rather, what is it bubbling out of his subconscious that gives rise
to these ideas in gangster movies, historical epics, biopics, and more?
Perhaps it’s his devoutly Catholic upbringing. Perhaps it’s that he came of
age in the turbulent tenements of mid-twentieth-century New York City.
Perhaps it’s an expression of his own often-insecure place in the Hollywood
hierarchy, where, for all his critical success, he’s often been seen as a
financial risk for studio heads. Or perhaps he just wants to tell us that,
despite surface-level stereotypes, human beings are far more complex than
they first appear. This book offers no definitive answers, but hopefully it
offers you fodder for your own discussions, dissections, and debates. And
that’s probably exactly as Martin Scorsese would want it.
 1

WHO’S THAT KNOCKING

AT MY DOOR? (1967)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: November 15, 1967
WRITTEN BY: Martin Scorsese
STARRING: Harvey Keitel, Zina Bethune
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Initially made in 1965 as a student short film
called Bring on the Dancing Girls, it was expanded in 1967 to a
full-length film titled I Call First. It was also released in 1970 as J.
R.

ABOUT THE FILM

I
t would be neither an insult nor inaccurate to call Martin Scorsese’s
debut picture a glorified student film. As a student at New York
University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Scorsese produced several shorts, and
not long after his 1966 graduation, he made The Big Shave (1967), a six-
minute short notorious for its graphic (for its time) self-mutilation. Shortly
thereafter, he finished his first feature-length, I Call First. It stars fellow
film student Harvey Keitel in a role loosely based on Scorsese himself. He
also enlisted the help of another film student, Thelma Schoonmaker, to edit
the picture. In a brief filmmaking class, Schoonmaker had previously
assisted the director with one of his shorts, What’s a Nice Girl Like You
Doing in a Place Like This? so he drafted her to edit his first full feature.
Neither realized at the time they would be forming one of the most fruitful
creative partnerships in cinema history. That feature-length work would
eventually become Who’s That Knocking at My Door?—an independent
and deeply personal debut that, though rough around the edges, helped
establish many of the core ideas, themes, and techniques that would come
to define Martin Scorsese’s career.
Who’s That Knocking follows the story of J. R. (Keitel), a young man
living an aimless life of drinking with friends, engaging in petty crime, and
subconsciously sabotaging relationships. The picture was an evolving piece
of work from the start, beginning in 1965 as a short film called Bring on the
Dancing Girls. That version centered on nothing more than J. R. and his
friends partying. Scorsese continued to revise and expand. By 1967, a
female character called the Girl was introduced—played by Zina Bethune,
the character is never given a name—and J. R.’s struggles with romance
became the story’s focal point. With the new title I Call First, this is the
version Roger Ebert saw and praised at the Chicago International Film
Festival, the first wider attention Scorsese received as a director. But despite
Ebert’s praise, his film was still mired in obscurity.
In 1968, his shot at getting a distribution deal finally arrived, but in
order to secure the deal, he was asked to add more sex to the movie. He
complied, and the film became Who’s That Knocking at My Door? (Even
that wasn’t the final title. For a 1970 reissue, the picture was renamed J. R.,
though the name would not stick.) The result was a picture that immediately
laid out many of the techniques and themes that would come to define
Martin Scorsese’s work.

ANALYSIS
Who’s That Knocking at My Door? does not set out to deliver a tight
narrative. In fact, the plot is thin to nonexistent. J. R. lives a raucous
lifestyle, partying (often dangerously) with friends. He meets the Girl and
falls for her. She reveals she had previously been raped, and upset that she
isn’t a virgin, J. R. ends the relationship. He comes to regret it, but by then
it’s too late. That’s the entire movie.
Like so many student films, this is an experimental and personal movie,
a small window into the mind of the director but distorted here and there to
make it fiction. Many of the hallmarks of Scorsese’s work appear for the
first time, already fully formed: the use of popular music to punctuate a
scene, freeze-frames, an uncompromising look at life on the wrong side of
the law, uneasy relationships with women, internalized guilt, and a
subconscious penchant for self-destructive behavior.
Even at this early stage, it’s easy to recognize Scorsese’s unique touch.
His use of music is a big tell. The film opens on an Italian mother in the
kitchen, her poor family in an apartment with crumbling walls. A pulsing,
repetitive beat clangs in the background like some precursor to modern
industrial music, a genre characterized by harsh, mechanical percussion and
abrasive instrumentation. This out-of-left-field choice tells us we’re in a
working-class neighborhood where men break their backs for a living while
women toil away for their families in cramped apartments. The contrast
between the Italian home life and the percussive soundtrack seems to
suggest there is something fighting to break free from the shackles of
family life. When the soundtrack switches moments later to “Jenny Take a
Ride,” a bouncy 1966 rock-and-roll track by the nearly forgotten Mitch
Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the danceable tune is paired with young men
knocking one another around for no discernible reason. The music is
freewheeling. Carefree. Fun. But the imagery is not. The violence is
senseless. This contrast, this idea of making a party scene out of brutality,
somehow makes the violence seem all the more primal. It’s a technique
Scorsese would go on to use masterfully over the next fifty years.
At the same time, Scorsese’s choices as far as narrative and continuity
are concerned have an art-school looseness about them, shifting from
thought to thought and mood to mood in exactly the way you’d expect from
a film cobbled together over the course of three years. Though it frequently
teeters on the edge of falling apart, he’d later learn to rein in these sudden
mood swings and harness them for greatness. When the story of Jake
LaMotta’s life swings from a whisper in an apartment to a roar in the ring,
when Henry Hill’s veers from cool gangster hustle to frantic paranoia,
Scorsese taps into an approach he first explored in his very first feature
film. He does this with sound as often as he does with visuals and editing,
too, if not more so. Early on we see J. R. take notice of the Girl. There is a
quick cut to a shot of them in conversation, but the shot is silent. It’s not
immediately evident if this is a memory, a flash-forward, or J. R.
daydreaming about what kind of smooth talk he’d deliver in order to pick
her up. This manipulation of sound to suggest a warped state of mind, to
suggest desire, interest, even obsession, is used again to great effect in
Raging Bull, where LaMotta often seems out of sync with the world around
him when he’s observing his wife, Vickie. (And that’s just one example.)
It’s just one of many techniques seen here in embryonic form and later used
to greater effect in better movies.
Who’s That Knocking can be dizzying, leaping back and forth in time,
jumping from scene to scene in ways that sometimes make you question
whether you’re seeing reality or something in J. R.’s imagination. Is he
imagining talking to the Girl, or is this a real conversation? The answer is
not always clear. At one point the film shifts from date night at a movie to a
series of druggy sexual liaisons with unnamed women, then back to the date
again, the sex scene coming midconversation while J. R. waxes
philosophical about the difference between women and “broads.” You only
fool around with some women, he tells the Girl. “You don’t marry a broad.”
Scorsese’s utter disregard for clear continuity borders on the extreme here, a
boldness that demands trust from the audience. But these are all
affectations, techniques the director would come to use more effectively in
later pictures. More important than his stylistic choices is what he chooses
to say with this film.
Scorsese has called Who’s That Knocking at My Door?
semiautobiographical, at least insomuch as it depicts a time, place, and way
of thinking. At the very least, there is no doubt that the director sometimes
speaks through J. R. The character discusses film in obsessive and often
insightful detail, name-drops The Searchers, discusses Lee Marvin as a
villain, and generally shows a fascination with what makes film work. (A
later montage celebrates John Wayne’s Rio Bravo.) Can there be any
question that this is Scorsese showing through the character? That the film
itself is rooted in the director’s real-life upbringing, immersing us in the grit
of New York’s Italian neighborhoods of the era, lends further credibility to
the idea that much of Keitel’s character is a reflection of Scorsese himself.
And indeed, “That’s me,” he told film critic Richard Schickel.1 Much of it
is, yes, though given the attitudes on display late in the film one wonders if
Scorsese would want to lay claim to all of J. R.’s character traits.
That Bethune’s character is simply named “The Girl” is telling. Though
she is vital to the film’s (sparse) narrative and its exploration of J. R.’s
emotional maturity or lack thereof, her existence as an individual doesn’t
matter. Or more accurately, it doesn’t matter to J. R. She could be anyone.
Her individual wants, her individual needs and experiences, the things that
make her a person rather than a puzzle piece to fill a void in his life—none
of these things are important to him. (It’s important to note that Scorsese
himself does not agree with this interpretation of J. R.’s character.)
J. R.’s deeper character flaws are not evident at first. He is charming
and likeable. Sure, the people he hangs around with are rough, often
criminally so, but he’s young and handsome and charismatic, and he loves
to talk. In an early meeting between him and the Girl, the camera slowly
moves back and forth between them, luxuriating in their long conversation,
allowing us to be as charmed by him as she is. If there is darkness within
him, we don’t see it. He does, though. He sees his own darkness. He
recognizes his own flaws, or perhaps more accurately, he’s plagued by the
notion that he is flawed beyond repair, a deeply internalized guilt that has
no root or source. It’s just there.
In the first feature for both Scorsese and Harvey Keitel, Keitel and Zina Bethune depict the
first of many rocky relationships in Scorsese’s filmography. Warner Bros./Photofest

And so we come to another hallmark of the Scorsese filmography:

religion; faith; and most important of all, guilt (usually of the Catholic
variety). The religious imagery, tainted spirituality, and Catholic guilt that
run through so much of the director’s work is fully formed from the outset
of his career. J. R. and the Girl first kiss in front of Catholic iconography,
falling onto the bed together, with religious imagery decorating the room.
There is an aching quality to their passion; it’s close and tender and
vulnerable, shown in extreme close-ups yet never explicit. It’s not chaste
exactly, but neither is it sexual. It is deeply intimate. Perhaps that’s why J.
R. pulls away and stops before they make love. “Not now,” he tells her. She
wonders why. He won’t offer her a reason, simply saying that he is old-
fashioned: “If you love me, you’ll understand what I mean.” (During this
scene, we see J. R. slip off the bed, then there is a cut, and we see him get
off the bed a second time, one of the earliest instances where Scorsese’s
disregard for continuity shows itself.)
Calling J. R. old-fashioned is generous. His views on women are
antiquated. That’s not merely by twenty-first-century standards, either. Even
in the 1960s, his notion that women are either mothers or whores was
falling by the wayside. The so-called sexual revolution was coming into
bloom, yet J. R. wants purity from the Girl. He wants to sleep with her but
doesn’t want her to want to sleep with him. If she desires sex in the same
way he does, then she is impure. He believes she is a virgin and wants her
to stay that way. That he later fantasizes about sleeping with a series of
nameless women doesn’t make him impure, of course. His standards do not
apply to men.
(This sex montage, set to the sound of “The End” by the Doors, was
shot well after the film was completed and was inserted at the behest of
Joseph Brenner, a distributor of exploitation films. He told the director he
needed sex to sell the picture, so Scorsese obliged. It remains to this day
one of the most gratuitous scenes of the director’s career, though as he
points out, “That’s the only way we could get it distributed.”2)
The views on purity held by Keitel’s character are what ultimately lead
to his relationship failing and his return to the streets. One evening, the pair
talk, and the Girl reveals a terrible secret to him: She had been raped by a
former boyfriend. She and her ex went out on a night drive. They parked
and made out, and then he violently raped her. It’s a secret burden she’s
been carrying. Rather than react with sympathy or love or comfort,
however, J. R. reacts with disgust and disbelief, dismissing the story as false
and breaking up with her right after hearing it.
J. R.’s reaction compounds her victimhood, and the sense of mounting
disgust we feel is twisted into something even more grotesque by Scorsese’s
use of music. She tells her story, then we flashback to the incident and see it
for ourselves. It’s a normal date: a classic scene, a young boyfriend and
girlfriend in the car, practically an American cliché. The scene is set to the
romantic doo-wop tune “Don’t Ask Me to Be Lonely” by the Dubs. But
then the boyfriend gets aggressive. He wants to go further than she is
willing. The music begins to distort, the song slowing and slurring, folding
in on itself as her quiet date does the same. The scene becomes violent and
ugly. It would be disturbing even without the music, but few directors in
cinema have ever been as gifted at making musical choices as Martin
Scorsese, and here the choice lifts the scene from exploitative to masterfully
difficult to watch, a stark lesson in contrasts that shows how quickly our
sense of peace can be shattered by a bold musical choice.
That the scene is so grotesque makes J. R.’s callous reaction to what she
went through all the worse. He is angry at her. He does not believe her.
“How can I believe that story? It just doesn’t make any sense. How do I
know you didn’t go through the same story with him?” he asks. “You let
him take you out on some goddamn road, and you don’t mind it? It just
doesn’t seem real, does it? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
She is understandably crushed. That he is upset about her lack of
“purity” is an antiquated enough idea, but it’s an honest one in its depiction
of Italian American mores of that time and place. For the audience, we’re
not just struck by his insensitivity. We also realize she never truly meant
anything to him. How could she, if this is how he reacts? Much like the
religious iconography he surrounds himself with, she is a symbol and little
more. Her reality is meaningless to him except to the extent that it serves
him.
As noted earlier, however, Scorsese doesn’t see it this way. He sees J. R.
as torn between his Catholic ideas of virtue and genuine love for the Girl.
He says the idea is of “being in love with a girl who is an outsider, loving
her so much that you respect her and you won’t make love to her. Then he
finds out she’s not a virgin and he can’t accept that. It’s that whole Italian-
American way of thinking, of feeling.”3
Yet J. R. isn’t merely refusing to accept that she isn’t a virgin; he’s
ignoring that she was raped. He even goes as far as to suggest the story is
fabricated. This is more than a divide based on differing ideas of virtue.
Roger Ebert observed, “He is unable to reconcile his image of her purity
with the fact she exists in a sinful world, and has been an innocent victim of
it.”4 And indeed, that is the crux of J. R.’s tremendous character flaw: The
Girl is a victim, and she is being victimized a second time by J. R. himself.
Following their breakup, J. R.’s return to the world of partying and
carousing is hollow and empty. He drinks. He and his buddies blast music
and roughhouse. They flirt with girls. In one partying scene, Scorsese cuts
in quick freeze-frames of the Girl’s rape, suggesting that the stark reality of
what happened to her isn’t something he can truly dismiss. It gets under his
skin, but what understanding he comes to have remains a selfish one. His
thoughts are with himself, not with the pain she went through.
When he goes to her and apologizes, it’s not an apology at all. He says
he is sorry but quickly tries to make out with her. “I understand now, and I
forgive you,” he tells her. “I’m going to marry you anyway.” The Girl is as
floored by this reaction as the viewer is. What is he forgiving her for,
exactly? He’s going to marry her “anyway,” as if he’s being noble by
accepting what he sees as damaged goods? The realization that J. R. isn’t
the man she thought he was is painful. She knows she can’t marry him. Her
rape will forever shadow them. “You’ll always find a way to bring it up,”
she says.
And she’s right. He insists otherwise, but a slip of the tongue proves her
point. He accidentally calls her a “broad,” a callback to their previous
conversation. He tells her, “I feel the way any reasonable guy would feel,”
but she isn’t buying it, so he takes the route of the stereotypical rejected
nice guy and starts to call her a whore. There is no future in this
relationship, and the blame rests entirely on his shoulders. Like so many
Scorsese protagonists, J. R. is the architect of his own self-destruction.
The film wraps with upbeat music—the song is “Who’s That Knocking
at My Door?” by the Genies—and rapid-fire Catholic imagery: statues and
the Virgin Mary and close depictions of Jesus’s bleeding wounds. J. R.
kisses a statue of Christ on the feet, and J. R.’s mouth bleeds. Images flash
of a woman’s leg being fondled, then pantyhose being torn and muffled
howls of pain. A cut to J. R. and his friend on a city street. “All right, talk to
you tomorrow. See you later,” they say, and on that nonchalant note, the
film ends. It’s as if all the emotional trauma had never happened.
There is a great deal of honesty in that ending, the emptiness of it, the
suggestions of lingering guilt that J. R. doesn’t have the emotional maturity
to confront, much less to fully grasp. All his macho bravado is just a wall
around him. He seeks penance. He seeks forgiveness. But he’s not even sure
what he’s seeking forgiveness for, which makes his efforts all the emptier.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Scorsese is not kind to this film, though that hardly makes him unusual.
Artists are often their own harshest critics, and this being his first feature-
length movie, it’s not surprising that he sees it for what it is: an early but
flawed piece of work. “Who’s That Knocking I never got right, except for
the emotional aspects of it—I got that,” Scorsese said. “I dislike it. Only
because it took me three years to make.”5
 Who’s That Knocking at My Door? premiered at the Chicago
International Film Festival in November 1967 and quickly won accolades
from Roger Ebert, who said it made a “stunning impact” and was a “great
moment in American movies.”6 It would be Scorsese’s first taste of
acclaim. He was just twenty-five.
And though imperfect, it proved to be a clear statement of vision that
provided an early sketch of what would inform the next fifty years of
Martin Scorsese pictures. He’d return to this familiar territory in 1973 with
Mean Streets, but before getting there, he’d first get a taste for corporate
filmmaking through an unlikely source: exploitation film legend Roger
Corman.
 2

BOXCAR BERTHA (1972)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: June 14, 1972
WRITTEN BY: Joyce H. Corrington, John William Corrington
STARRING: Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus, Bernie
Casey, John Carradine
RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

W hen you are a struggling young artist, you have to take any
opportunity you can get. Such was the case when Martin Scorsese
was hired by legendary exploitation director and producer Roger Corman,
who built a legacy filling the screen with bullets, blood, booze, and boobs.
Given their wildly differing sensibilities, in retrospect it seems an unlikely
pairing.
Corman brought a slew of films to the screen throughout the ’50s and
’60s, most low-budget affairs and many with gloriously trashy titles like
Night of the Blood Beast (1956) and Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). He
enjoyed some genuine critical and commercial successes during those early
years, too, including 1958’s gritty noir Machine-Gun Kelly, which helped
launch Charles Bronson into stardom; House of Usher (1960), starring
Vincent Price, one of eight Edgar Allan Poe adaptations directed by
Corman; and The Wild Angels (1966), which received lukewarm reviews
but which prompted star Peter Fonda to make Easy Rider (1969), one of the
most influential films of the era.
Corman also had a minor hit in 1970 with Bloody Mama, a low-budget
crime drama featuring Shelley Winters as a mother who organizes her sons
into a crime syndicate. (Playing one of her sons in none other than Robert
De Niro in one of his earliest roles.) On the heels of its success, Corman
decided to make another female-led crime film. He came across Sister of
the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha, a novel by anarchist Ben
Rietman about a female criminal called Bertha Thompson. Chock-full of
sex, violence, and counterculture politics, the story was ideal fodder for
Corman’s edgy sensitivities. He’d serve as producer. All he needed was a
director.
He found one in Martin Scorsese. Who’s That Knocking at My Door’s
uncompromising grit caught his eye, and Scorsese wanted to work, and so a
brief union was born. Filmed in just twenty-four days and starring Barbara
Hershey and David Carradine, who were dating at the time, the movie is
what you’d expect from a Corman-produced picture—there is no shortage
of bullets, blood, booze, or boobs—but with the earnestness of a young
Scorsese.
From an artistic standpoint, Boxcar Bertha is not an important film in
Scorsese’s oeuvre, telling us little about his sensibilities as a filmmaker and
the themes that would come to dominate his work, but it’s at the very least a
fun picture with a delightfully twisted performance by Hershey and just
enough directorial flair to make it worth a visit. It also proved to be an
integral step in the director’s career, prompting him to have a clearer idea of
the kind of films he did and did not want to pursue.
The movie tells the story of “Boxcar” Bertha Thompson (Hershey), a
wild young woman with disdain for authority who falls for “Big” Bill
Shelley (Carradine), a Robin Hood–like train robber who wants to smash
Depression-era railroad barons and uplift workers ground down by life on
the rails. The pair become fugitives, tearing their way through the railroad,
robbing the wealthy, sparking worker rebellions, and evading the law until
they can’t run anymore. In a bloody climax, Bill is killed, and Bertha is left
alone. So while exploitation is not exactly Scorsese’s typical fare, it does
concern criminals and violence, two things he would become a master of
presenting.

ANALYSIS
Boxcar Bertha opens and closes with a young woman losing a man she
loves. Between those two losses, she spends her time stealing and
murdering, so in a way, this is a movie about pained rage.
The first shot is a deep close-up of a pair of eyes looking overhead, so
close it calls to mind the work of Sergio Leone, whose The Good, The Bad,
and The Ugly (1966) still influences directors today. Those eyes are looking
at a plane flying overhead. It’s young Bertha’s father, who, pushed to work
by his railroad bosses despite unsafe equipment, crashes and dies. The crash
is all fast cuts and violent impacts, terribly cheap looking but effective. This
is our introduction to Bertha. She is young, and her smile lights up the
screen, but she is portrayed with such sweet innocence by Hershey that the
titillating way in which she’s depicted often feels wrong somehow. But
that’s part of the point. That contrast, that contradiction between her girlish
exterior and her ruthless interior, is how Bertha is able to spearhead an
anarcho-crime spree, and it’s what makes watching her take on the corrupt
Depression-era railroad barons so perversely delightful.
This is a Corman production, though, so even scenes of female
empowerment are prone to be tainted with exploitation. When Bertha and
her love interest, Big Bill Shelley, first get together, he pushes himself on
her. She resists at first, but an old cliché rears its ugly head, and she soon
finds herself enjoying his aggressive advances. That’s how their on-again,
off-again romance begins. It never advances much further than that, either.
Sex is a powerful means of controlling or manipulating Scorsese’s
antiheroes—Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) in Raging Bull, Karen (Lorraine
Bracco) in GoodFellas, Ginger (Sharon Stone) in Casino, to name a few—
but his ant-heroes rarely ever are women. Whether it’s Bertha doing the
controlling is questionable, too. Bill and the others largely follow her lead,
despite her actions being more than a little unhinged, but if there is an
obsessed party in the relationship, it is Bertha herself. Typically, it’s
Scorsese’s men falling over themselves for women. Here, it’s the woman
who seems driven by a love or obsession (or both) for a man.
After her introduction and encounter with Bill, Bertha goes on the road.
She meets up with a Yankee gambler, Rake Brown (Barry Primus), who
gets caught cheating at a card game. One of the gamblers rants about
“reds,” the supposed communist menace, and she kills him. Later, Bill’s
name comes up in conversation. For the railroad barons and their
supporters, he’s seen as a villain; a communist sympathizer; and, in their
words, a “nigger lover” (one of many times the word is used in the film).
Bertha and Rake then bounce around, disrupting the railroad and bringing
attention to themselves. A healthy amount of crime and chaos follow.
Interestingly, Big Bill and his allies are not committing crimes for
selfish ends; they are doing so with a cause: They are fighting for workers’
rights. Bertha, on the other hand, is doing it purely out of sadistic joy. And
she ends up the ringleader of this band of outlaws.
Bertha may have an unhealthy obsession with Bill, but her influence
over him is undeniable. His enemies note that “he gets his orders from a
broad.” He’s not always comfortable with the direction she points them in,
either. At one point he tells her, “I ain’t used to this kind of life.” Though he
is seen as the leader of a growing antiestablishment movement fighting for
workers’ rights, in truth she is the instigator behind his worst deeds. He
follows her lead. They all do. His motivation truly is justice—at one point
while robbing a party filled with rich folks, he says, “I don’t want your
watch.… I just want to smash a railroad”—but Bertha cares less for social
justice. The thrill of the chaos she causes seems to be what drives her.
The finale is a riot of absurd bloodshed, bullets blazing, men flying
through the air. It would be campy if Scorsese didn’t treat the material
seriously, and even then, it flirts with camp. Bill is badly wounded in the
action and is nailed to the side of a boxcar like a crucifixion—that sounds
quite Scorsese, but it was actually in the script before he came onboard—
and the train rolls away as Bertha runs after it, until finally it rumbles off
into the distance, leaving her alone. With the only person she ever loved
other than her father gone, the credits roll. When Bertha lost her father, she
went on an aimless crime spree. With all that pent-up hurt and rage inside
her now, one wonders what this second loss will trigger in her.
CONCLUSION AND IMPACT
For all its violence and nods toward social politics, Boxcar Bertha is mostly
concerned with delivering cheap thrills—and in that it succeeds. The sheer
fun Bertha has causing chaos is evident, in no small part because Hershey
and the cast enjoyed making the picture. Granted, it’s no surprise they had
fun. Hollywood legend is that Hershey and Carradine had unsimulated sex
during their sex scenes—and that’s not mere rumor; it’s the actors
themselves making that claim.1 (Even if true, you’d never know by what is
captured on film. There are numerous nude scenes, but the sex is tame
enough by today’s standards that with some judicious editing it could be
shown on network TV.) More noteworthy is how fondly the cast look back
on the film. Hershey in particular has called it the most fun she ever had
making a picture, and it comes across on-screen.
She and Carradine may have gotten lost in the process, so to speak, but
Scorsese didn’t. The shots are occasionally stylish and creative—a one-shot
first-person search for a pair of giggling lovers in an abandoned house
stands out, calling forward to the many excellent oners (long single shots)
in his career—but the low budget is also evident throughout. This is
especially true of the film’s look. Boxcar Bertha is set during the Great
Depression, but it looks like a 1970s film through and through, right down
to the hairstyles. There is little to suggest this is the work of a future genius
with notorious attention to detail. Overall, the direction is capable but
largely unremarkable. It’s sometimes hard to believe you’re watching
Scorsese. The bloodshed isn’t bold or shocking or stylish; it’s cheap and
loud. The sex isn’t sensual or suggestive; it’s gratuitous. (An opportunity to
show off a little of Hershey’s legs is never missed, which feels especially
tawdry given that she is presented like a sweet, misguided innocent.) All of
this is, of course, Corman shining through. Martin Scorsese may have
directed it, but it was undoubtedly a Roger Corman film. There is no
embryonic version of Scorsese tucked away here, no toying with hidden
symbolism, no deep character exploration. This is the work of a talented
young man earning a paycheck. And there is nothing wrong with that.
The director credits Corman and this production with teaching him
discipline, how to stay on schedule and budget, and how to get work done.
The lessons would stay with him. So would some of the crew. The director
called Boxcar Bertha a “learning experience which gave me the crew for
Mean Streets. Without it, without having made Boxcar, there was no way I
could’ve made Mean Streets.”2
The director also began to refine the way he prepared movies. Early in
his career, Scorsese would meticulously storyboard entire films, planning
each shot in advance the way Alfred Hitchcock famously did. He told
Richard Schickel that, when Corman asked if he had done any prep prior to
the film, “I started showing him these pictures. And then explaining, ‘This
cuts to this, and this goes this way, and this is just normal coverage, but
then there’s a move this way.’ He said, ‘Wait a minute. Do you have this for
the whole picture?’ I said yes. He goes, ‘I don’t have to see anymore.’”3
This film also taught Martin Scorsese what not to be. It may seem
strange to say that a little-seen, often-forgotten “trash” film made at the
dawn of his career was a pivotal work for Martin Scorsese, but it was.
Among those who knew the director’s potential, Boxcar was seen as a near
disaster that didn’t at all reflect his unique vision. When screened for
friends, “It was like a wake. They couldn’t disguise their shock,” Scorsese
said.4 John Cassavetes, whom Scorsese greatly admired, told him, “You’ve
just spent a whole year of your life making a piece of shit.”5 Cassavetes’s
advice? Go make something personal. Go make something that means
something to you. Go make a statement. Martin Scorsese took it to heart.
His next film would be Mean Streets, an uncompromising look at life on
the streets of Little Italy during some of New York’s roughest years. With it,
the Martin Scorsese we know today was truly born.
 3

MEAN STREETS (1973)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: October 14, 1973
WRITTEN BY: Martin Scorsese, Mardik Martin
STARRING: Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, David Proval, Amy
Robinson
RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

M ean Streets is the first fully formed example of the director’s vision
at work. Countless familiar elements are refined and focused here
into a piece that is unmistakably Scorsese. The music. The acting. The
dizzying swirl of the camera. The violence. The uneasy way in which it
walks the line between glorifying antisocial behavior and recoiling from it.
Faith, guilt, sin. And, of course, the way in which its characters bring
misfortune on themselves. It’s all classic Scorsese. In some ways it feels
like an unofficial sequel to his first picture, in which he first dabbled with
these ideas, and in fact it almost was. The lead role was written for Harvey
Keitel, who was also the lead in Who’s That Knocking, and in the earliest
drafts of the script, it was intended to be the same character. But Mean
Streets became its own thing.
In a roundabout way, Mean Streets would not exist were it not for Roger
Corman, famed producer and director of exploitation films. Scorsese
directed Boxcar Bertha for him, a production that taught Marty how a
professional film production works but that did not satisfy his need for
personal expression. Rather than take another studio job, at the urging of
friends he decided to pursue something closer to his heart.
And indeed, Mean Streets is the director’s most explicitly personal film.
Later pictures may offer keener insights into the things that obsess him
—“Life Lessons” from New York Stories, The Aviator, and The Last
Temptation of Christ are just a few examples of movies that speak more
deeply about what makes Scorsese tick—but this film is nakedly personal
insomuch as it’s a snapshot of the things he saw growing up, populated by
the kind of people who hung out on the corner in his neighborhood. If rural
kids lived Stand by Me and Old Yeller and suburban kids lived The Goonies
and American Graffiti, then Scorsese lived Mean Streets. It’s little wonder
that his work so often presents a perverse yet honest look at violence, given
the nature of his neighborhood growing up.
The movie nearly went in another direction, and if it had we may have
never experienced the Martin Scorsese we all know today. The reason?
Mean Streets was almost a blaxploitation film. The genre exploded in the
early 1970s, featuring tough black characters and an uncompromising, often
over-the-top and outlandish look at life on the streets. Best known for
landmark pictures like Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), Shaft
(1971), Super Fly (1972), and Foxy Brown (1974), blaxploitation films
tackle the struggles of black Americans with larger-than-life characters and
explosive violence. Much of the swagger you see in the work of directors
like Quentin Tarantino is directly lifted from the genre.
With the genre exploding, Corman saw an opportunity to make more
money with Scorsese. He read the Mean Streets screenplay and liked it but
would only agree to finance the film if all the characters were black. Young
and still trying to get a foothold in Hollywood, the director almost agreed. It
was actor and director John Cassavetes (Rosemary’s Baby, The Dirty
Dozen) who talked him out of it, telling him he should instead focus on
making something meaningful to him. The result was Martin Scorsese
telling the world, here I am, this is what I do. “In my mind it’s not really a
film, it’s kind of a declaration or statement of who I am and how I was
living, and those thoughts and conflicts,” the director said. It was the “final
culmination of everything I was to do and who I am.”1

ANALYSIS
This was Martin Scorsese’s life. Mean Streets captures the streets of Little
Italy in New York City circa the late 1960s and early 1970s more accurately
than any film ever made. It’s a slice of Americana that has since
disappeared. Little Italy is no more, now just a short strip of Italian
restaurants catering to tourists, a once-ethnic neighborhood swallowed by
Manhattan. Where once upward of 90 percent of its residents were of Italian
origin and Italian was as commonly spoken as English, today only about 8
percent of residents there claim Italian origins, according to the 2000
census.2
The last remnants of this cultural island in the middle of New York City
are the axle upon which Mean Streets turns, focused especially on the Feast
of San Gennaro, during which the film is set. Immigrants from Naples
started the festival in 1926 on Mulberry Street, the heart of Little Italy. It
began as a one-day religious commemoration but soon grew to a sprawling
eleven-day affair with huge displays; music; parades; and of course, food,
food, and more food. The festival still exists today, but it’s organized by
people outside the neighborhood and is largely designed for tourists, more
of a temporary Italian theme park than an actual religious celebration. In
2007, a member of Community Board 2 in the neighborhood even said, “No
one likes San Gennaro who lives here.… Residents complained it was
better organized when the Mafia ran it.”3
The Feast of San Gennaro at its height forms a backdrop for the movie,
and it’s a vital one because it provides the sights, sounds, and colors
essential to immersing us in the ethnic richness of Scorsese’s old
neighborhood. The concept is much the same as setting a movie about
small-town America during the county fair, an event so mom-and-apple-pie
it provides a clear window into the kind of America such movies aim to
depict. The same holds true here. Setting the story during the feast allows
Scorsese to dial up the Italian American imagery and fully sink the
audience into this unique urban landscape.
All this context may seem extraneous, but to truly dig into what
Scorsese was trying to capture, it’s vital to understand the time and place in
which it is set. There is a reason the opening titles feature a rounded frame
with a typewriterstyle font. They look like snapshots from the era, pictures
from a dusty photo album stored in the drawer underneath the huge family
Bible. This was Scorsese’s life. Portions of the film were shot at actual
places from his youth, actual places he hung out, actual places where people
he knew caused trouble. People from the old neighborhood are featured in
the movie, friends and neighbors and even his mother, who would famously
go on to be in eight Scorsese movies and a documentary. It isn’t just about
the vibe and aesthetic, either. Some scenes are plucked directly from true
happenings in the neighborhood, such as Robert De Niro’s character
standing on a rooftop firing a gun off just for kicks.
From the moment Mean Streets opens, it’s clear we are not going to see
a sanitized version of life in the city streets. We see someone shooting up
drugs in a bathroom, only to be kicked out. Our first look at Johnny Boy
(De Niro in his initial pairing with Scorsese) is of him blowing up a
mailbox, the mix of mischievousness and violence that defines the character
in one short scene. Then we cut to Charlie (Harvey Keitel) in a church, our
first view of the Catholic imagery that obliquely hints at the complex but
unseen psychology that motivates both the director and the character.
As narratives go, Mean Streets is fairly lightweight. Johnny owes some
money to the local loan shark, Giovanni Cappa (Cesare Danova), and is
irresponsible about paying it back. Charlie runs interference on his behalf,
trying to buy his friend some time to do the right thing, but Johnny doesn’t
have the right thing in him. He’s too wild for that. When another loan shark
comes around to collect, Johnny pulls a gun on him. He and Charlie try to
leave town but are shot by the shark and his henchmen. They survive but
are badly wounded. The end.
Yet delving into the intricacies of the plot or the lack thereof misses the
point of Mean Streets. This is an exploration of a time and place and a way
of living, not an attempt to tell an engaging story. Moment after moment is
about painting the world more than about advancing plot. And the vivid
exploration of this world goes hand in hand with the exploration of Charlie,
who Scorsese says includes elements of both himself and his father.
 Charlie exists on the fringes of neighborhood crime. He’s not a mover
and shaker; he’s a low-level street guy just getting by any way he can. So
are his closest friends. There is solidarity in their collective (and often
criminal) behavior that speaks to the tightness of the community, even in
the face of violence. When a brawl breaks out at a pool hall and the police
arrive, the combatants quickly stop. “We’re just friends,” they insist. Police
are outsiders in the neighborhood, unwanted. The cop takes a bribe, and the
fight resumes. This is a New York that was still a city of a thousand tightly
packed towns, every few blocks not just a different neighborhood but also a
different world.
An integral part of Scorsese’s world is music—music blaring from
apartment windows; music on a car stereo; and, of course, music in the
movies—and here he begins to first show just how powerful popular music
can be in the hands of a great director. He has a way of drawing the viewer
into a moment in a way suited for music videos, and it’s showcased here to
great effect. A party scene midway through the film is lengthy and hazy,
with long stretches of blaring tunes and dizzying camera work that offers an
altered sense of reality. Charlie is drunk, soaring, reeling, stumbling,
celebrating, and we’re in the moment with him. As he’d later do in films
like Raging Bull and Casino, he indulges in manipulating time, camera
speed, angle, and (of course) sound and music to give us a warped sense of
perspective. We see Charlie as if from a fishbowl, staggering with him
through the club, the lights and sounds seeming to encompass the world.
It’s these brief moments of daring that make Scorsese pictures what they
are.
These scenes are effective in part because he designed them from the
start with specific music in mind. He often builds scenes around those
music choices rather than the other way around, sometimes going as far as
to film with the song playing on set so camera movements can be timed to
the song being played. This is not a normal approach. Typically, a movie’s
soundtrack comes later in the process, after the footage has been shot. For
Scorsese, right from the beginning, it’s a vital part of the creative process,
an approach that has influenced modern directors like Quentin Tarantino
(Reservoir Dogs), Edgar Wright (Baby Driver), and James Gunn
(Guardians of the Galaxy).
Music in scenes like this is important not merely because it creates a
more compelling scene. It also immerses us into the world on-screen. It’s an
integral part of the lives Charlie and Johnny lead. It’s part of the tapestry of
their lives, just as it was for Scorsese himself. It’s true for all of us. Each of
us has a soundtrack that defines us. Our choices in music say something
about us; music punctuates key moments in our lives; and for many,
specific songs are inextricably linked to specific people, places, and
relationships. Therefore, to know Charlie and Johnny, we must know their
music, too.
It sometimes seems like music is the only tie that binds the two. Some
viewers will have an understandable desire to question their friendship.
Johnny is a bit of a jerk. Worse than that, actually. He owes people money
and taunts them about it. He’s sarcastic and irresponsible. Even when he’s
being given chances others wouldn’t be given, he shrugs them off. No clear-
headed person should trust Johnny. Charlie’s loyalty to him might seem
baffling, if one doesn’t understand the dynamic of neighborhoods like Little
Italy, but the concept of loyalty among certain communities of Italian
Americans ran (and still runs) strong. Therefore, Charlie has his friend’s
back. He gets Mike to agree to lower Johnny’s debt. If Johnny doesn’t pay,
then Mike will have his legs broken. (It’s a cliché but one rooted in truth.)
When given a job, however, Johnny doesn’t show up. It’s an insult that
later puts both he and Charlie in danger. Charlie sticks by him regardless.
Part of this is the value placed on loyalty in the Italian American
community, both loyalty to friends and loyalty to your neighborhood. Much
of this stems from the way Italians emigrated to the United States and how
they settled, especially in urban areas. A great wave of Italian immigration
to the United States began around 1880, with four million arriving (usually
in New York) by 1924, fully half of them between 1900 and 1910.4
However, Italian unification in Italy did not fully coalesce until after World
War I. That means Italian immigrants often identified more with their home
villages and towns rather than with Italy as a whole. This had a direct
impact on the makeup of Italian American communities in the United
States: “Fellow villagers and people from the same region or province
ended up clustering together in self-segregated neighborhoods within the
broader Italian settlements.”5 This culture of solidarity lingered for decades
in these ethnic communities and was a major part of the director’s early life.
He explains:
 The Neapolitans, when they came over, somehow they wound up on Mulberry Street. So
Mulberry Street became Little Naples. The same thing happened with Elizabeth Street and
the Sicilians. But Naples is one city, and Sicily is a lot of little towns, and very often my
mother would say, “Oh, yeah, he married so-and-so, but she was a different nationality.” A
different village, she’s talking about.6

Even today, aspects of this linger in areas of New York, New Jersey, and the
surrounding region. (I am of Italian American heritage, and anecdotally,
many Italian Americans still place a great deal of emphasis on the region of
Italy their relatives emigrated from.) In short, sticking together is
considered a big deal.
But Charlie’s loyalty to Johnny isn’t merely a manifestation of lingering
ethnic solidarity. There is something more at play that reveals itself in part
through Johnny’s self-destructive behavior and how that behavior affects
Charlie. Johnny’s antics catch up with them in the end. In a surprise
ambush, the pair are attacked while driving through the city. Johnny is shot
in the neck. (De Niro will be shot in the neck again a few years later in Taxi
Driver.) Charlie is shot in the hand. Vibrant, red blood spurts, a blend of the
gratuitous violence of the exploitation genre Scorsese had just dabbled in
with Boxcar Bertha and the real-world grit that peppers his most audacious
work. Music blares. The pair crash into a building. They live but are badly
wounded and are taken in by authorities. It might be seen as a tragic end
had the pair not brought it upon themselves. As is so often the case in
Scorsese films, the protagonists are the cause of their own troubles. They’re
not victims of outside forces; they’re actively making choices that upend
their own lives.
For Johnny, it’s juvenile recklessness and a disregard for authority. He’s
a young man without much to lose and no sense for his own mortality, a
born troublemaker who lives to snub his nose at anyone he feels is trying to
control his life, even his own friends. Charlie is different. Charlie’s worst
choices stem not from an aversion to authority or recklessness or, as is the
case with a number of Scorsese antiheroes, greed. They come from guilt.
Guilt for what is an open question, though perhaps the answer isn’t
important. The concept of Catholic guilt is a well-known one, so much so
that it often becomes a cliché, yet it also seemed inescapable for some
Italian American communities. Certainly, for Scorsese, the concepts of faith
and sinfulness, prayer and contrition, and Catholicism and guilt are
intertwined. Why else would his protagonists so often be surrounded by
religious iconography, despite being people of sin?

Charlie’s Catholic guilt is a silent but potent motivation behind everything he does, a theme
that continues throughout the director’s work. Warner Bros. Pictures/Photofest

Scorsese himself suggests that Charlie’s motivation in protecting

Johnny comes from a desire to seek penance for unaddressed sins. “He’s
doing it for himself,” the director notes. “He’s not doing it for Johnny. He’s
doing it so that he can feel better, so he can have the guilt taken off his
shoulders for whatever the hell he’s thinking or whatever he did, or what he
thinks he did.”7 In a sense, Charlie is seeking penance for past wrongs, even
if, as Scorsese suggests, he doesn’t even know what those wrongs are. He
wants to become a good person, and Johnny is his way of proving to
himself he can be noble. Perhaps elements of J. R. from Who’s That
Knocking remain in Charlie’s character; in some alternate universe where
the films are still connected, maybe Charlie would have felt immense guilt
over his treatment of the Girl in the first film.
Whether it’s even possible for a man to absolve himself of sin in this
way is not a question the movie attempts to answer. Here, it’s an
unanswerable question, especially because Charlie isn’t even conscious of
what he’s trying to do. He doesn’t know what drives him to play guardian
angel to his uncontrollable friend. He doesn’t even think about it. He just
does it, driven by something inside himself he’s not ready to confront. And
perhaps he never will be.
This notion of guilt is one of the hallmarks of Scorsese’s filmography,
arguably the most important repeated theme in his body of work.
Discussions on this have usually revolved around the idea of Catholic guilt,
for obvious reasons—it’s a deeply rooted part of the Italian American
culture in which the director was raised—but as I get further into his career,
I delve into guilt as a theme removed from Catholicism. Guilt for previous
wrongs torment Sam Bowden in Cape Fear, for failing to address a
spouse’s mental illness in Shutter Island, and for an inability to prevent
death in Bringing Out the Dead.
So here we have a dizzying swirl of almost pathological guilt, street
violence so commonplace the characters take it for granted, the thrilling
surge of music punctuating key moments of life, not to mention rocky
relationships—Charlie’s relationship with Teresa Ronchelli (Amy
Robinson) is a mess—street-level solidarity; characters who engage in self-
destructive behavior; and the everlooming, often uncomfortable presence of
faith in the midst of all this.
When Martin Scorsese calls Mean Streets a declaration of statement, it’s
apparent why. These are thematic hallmarks of virtually every picture he
ever made. Many contain most or all of these elements—all of them at least
one. This movie is Martin Scorsese.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Mean Streets won acclaim by critics—Pauline Kael praised its “unsettling,
episodic rhythm”—though it was not a crossover success.8 Mainstream
audiences did not flock to see it. What it did do, however, was attract the
attention of Hollywood insiders, who took note of the young director’s
penchant for uncompromising realism and emotional turbulence. Among
them was actor Ellen Burstyn, who saw a screening at the urging of Francis
Ford Coppola. As soon as she saw it, she knew this young up-and-comer
would be the perfect director for the next picture Warner Bros. executives
wanted her to make, a drama called Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. It
would end up being Scorsese’s mainstream breakthrough.
 4

ALICE DOESN’T LIVE

HERE ANYMORE (1974)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: December 9, 1974
WRITTEN BY: Robert Getchell
STARRING: Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, Jodie
Foster, Alfred Lutter
RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes
OTHER NOTES: The inspiration for the TV sitcom Alice, which ran
from 1976 to 1985.

ABOUT THE FILM

A
single mother’s often humorous journey toward self-actualization
does not sound like Martin Scorsese material, yet not only does that
describe this Scorsese picture, but it also proved to be his mainstream
breakthrough—so mainstream, in fact, that it was spun off into a highly
successful sitcom that ran for nine seasons and 202 episodes—this from the
man whose next picture would be about a psychopathic introvert obsessed
with a teenage prostitute.
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore tells the story of Alice Hyatt (Ellen
Burstyn), a woman struggling to build a new life for her and her son,
Tommy (Alfred Lutter), after being suddenly widowed. The pair travel
together, making their way to where she grew up in Monterey, California,
with a dream of starting a career as a singer. Life repeatedly sidetracks
them, however, until, while working as a waitress, she encounters David
(Kris Kristofferson). A rocky romance is sparked, and the pair make a go at
a life together.
Originally attached to Shirley MacClaine, Warner Bros. offered the role
to Burstyn after MacLaine turned it down.1 Burstyn was in production on
The Exorcist (1973) at the time, when Warner Bros. asked whom she’d be
interested in working with for the upcoming Alice. All she knew was that
she wanted someone who would bring a realistic edge to the story. After a
call to Francis Ford Coppola, she screened Mean Streets by a young
director named Martin Scorsese, and that was all it took. She knew this was
the guy.
For Scorsese, taking the job was a career move. After making Mean
Streets, some said he couldn’t direct women (a somewhat dubious claim,
given Boxcar Bertha had just come out, though it is fair to say that
Scorsese’s filmography is deeply male-centric). Friends advised him to grab
an opportunity to prove otherwise.2 Meanwhile, Burstyn wanted a director
who could bring grit and truth to the story, someone who could subvert the
thenstereotypical view of what life for women in America was and should
be like. The pairing served both.

ANALYSIS
The women’s liberation movement emerged in the late 1960s, but though it
was picking up steam by the mid-1970s, there remained cultural norms so
ingrained in American society that the idea of a single woman who wasn’t
dependent on a man was still unusual in 1974. So for Burstyn, Alice Doesn’t
Live Here Anymore was a chance to subvert America’s expectations of
women, especially single mothers, and Martin Scorsese was the right
director to bring it to screen.
The subversion Burstyn was looking for is evident in the very first shots
of the film. The opening scenes are bathed in a sunset glow, almost
otherworldly, as if plucked from some alternate universe version of The
Wizard of Oz. It’s a pastoral setting, a slice of pure Americana that exists
only in fantasies. Charming music plays. We’re in Monterey, California.
Here we meet Alice as a young girl, but this isn’t the dainty, dreamlike
America of the golden age of Hollywood. “I can sing better than Alice
Faye. I swear to Christ I can,” Alice declares, and we hear her mother
yelling for her, threatening to “beat the daylights out of her” and saying, if
anyone doesn’t like it, “they can blow it out their ass.” This is not Dorothy.
This is not Kansas. This is not the American dream. This is the troubled
truth of the working class.
We then flash-forward twenty-five years or so to adulthood. Alice is in a
loveless marriage. Her husband, Donald (Billy “Green” Bush),
acknowledges her only to complain about her inadequacies as a spouse. At
night, she lies next to him in bed and cries. She’s funny and vibrant and
sarcastic, but he is squeezing the life out of her.
That doesn’t mean her life isn’t shattered when he is killed in a freak car
accident, however, leaving her alone to raise their son, Tommy. Left with
nothing, she has to reinvent herself and rediscover who she is—who she
really is when not under the yoke of a spouse who grinds her down. It’s
significant that Alice is forced into this. It’s not a choice or decision she
made. Rather, fate dealt her a seemingly bad hand, and she must find the
inner strength necessary to deal with what will come. This affords her a
kind of growth that would not be possible if she had made a conscious
decision to leave Donald. Her need to carve out an identity of her own is a
surprise, and as such, that means she is initially unprepared for what she
will have to face. She doesn’t begin with the strength she needs to make it
on her own. She has to find it.
Alice’s sole partner in facing the difficulties of her new life is Tommy.
She has a pair of romantic interests in the film, yes—one goes violently
bad, the other provides a happy ending—but the one anchor she has is her
son, and vice versa. Alice is his one island of stability in a sea of
uncertainty. He is the same to her.
Ellen Burstyn won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Alice, a story of
female empowerment by a director most often associated with maledominated stories.
Warner Brothers

This mother-son relationship is the heart and soul of the movie. Tommy
asks why she married Donald, and her response is a pat “Because he was a
great kisser.” No reflection on the failed relationship, and indeed, doing so
would have undermined the idea that the two of them are now alone in the
world. The future is theirs. Their interactions are natural and effortless.
They joke and play. At one point they even have a raucous water balloon
fight in a rented room, trashing the place and soaking one another to the
bone. Alice is not June Cleaver, all prim and proper and preparing apple pie
while dressed in a pristine apron. They are not a white-picket-fence family.
Tommy talks back to her, though rarely is it due to a lack of respect for her.
Alice reciprocates at every turn. This isn’t to say Tommy can’t be a handful.
He can. But it’s not until another man enters Alice’s life that he becomes
truly difficult. The sarcastic exchanges and joking interactions between
mother and son underscore the unspoken freedom both feel without the
oppressive shadow of Donald looming over them. We don’t need to be told
that, despite the difficulties Donald’s death has thrust upon them, both are
happier having started over.
Still, the often-lighthearted nature of the film can turn on a dime, a
brutal and realistic reminder of what women faced when entering a world
once largely dominated by men. For example, after meeting Ben (Harvey
Keitel, in his third role for Scorsese), a forward and charming younger man
interested in spending some time with her, Alice begins a fling, which she
keeps secret from Tommy. It doesn’t last. Alice discovers Ben is married.
Ben’s wife, Rita (Lane Bradbury), comes to the room Alice rents and
reveals the truth. Ben and Rita have a child together. She is tearful and hurt,
and Alice is deeply upset at having inadvertently damaged someone’s
marriage.
But when Ben shows up at the apartment, he is no longer the charmer.
He turns violent. He’s brutal and controlling, filling Alice with terror. He
abuses his wife—“Don’t ever tell me what to do. I’ll bust your jaw!”—and
threatens Alice, telling her in no uncertain terms that their affair will
continue. It’s a harrowing scene, difficult to watch in its starkness,
disturbing because you see how trivial it would be for Ben to hurt Alice,
and ultimately, it’s a showcase for why Scorsese was hired in the first place.
It would have been easy for this film to be sentimental. The obvious choice
would be for it to be sweet and uplifting and Hollywood, but despite the
music-video glitz he brings to screen, Scorsese isn’t particularly
Hollywood. There is a deep cynicism about humanity that permeates his
work. People are ugly creatures, too often cruel to one another, and the
cruelties we inflict often cannot be shrugged off with a swell of John
Williams music and some soft lighting. Real toxicity leaves real scars—
scars that can’t be seen, to be sure, but scars nonetheless.
This is what Ben’s intrusion into the story offers. It’s the metaphorical
slap of reality. It’s the reminder that, though liberated, though free to forge
her own path and create her own destiny, Alice can still be victimized by
those who see her as lesser or subservient. The scene adds an undercurrent
of uneasiness to everything that comes after because we see how easy it is
for a single woman alone in the world to suddenly find herself in a
dangerous situation. When David (Kristofferson) finally comes along, we’re
not ready to trust him. Not yet. We’ve already seen where trust can lead us.
In some ways, David is an interloper. He’s invading the special
relationship Alice and Tommy have. What starts as a quick bond between
him and Alice’s son becomes one filled with tension. Tommy begins
pushing David away. He acts like a punk. He talks back. During a guitar
lesson, he puts on loud music simply to disrespect David and his home. In
response, David breaks the record Tommy is playing. Tommy hurls
profanity at him. David strikes the boy. A fight ensues between David and
Alice, and they break up. She’s in love with him, yes, but Tommy will
always come first. They’ve struggled together in ways no one else could
ever understand.
Regardless, Alice’s new relationship puts a strain on her relationship
with her son. After the fight with David, Alice and Tommy get into an
argument in the car. This, too, gets ugly, uglier than any clash they’ve
previously had. At her breaking point, Alice pulls over and makes Tommy
walk back home, but Tommy, frustrated and overwhelmed by the emotional
turbulence in his life, doesn’t walk back home. Instead, he meets up with
his friend, the rebellious free spirit Doris/Audrey (Jodie Foster). The young
pair get drunk and are caught shoplifting. Alice has to pick him up at the
police station. This whole sequence isn’t about Tommy per se, but rather it’s
about the impact David has on Alice and Tommy’s relationship. The kid
feels cut out. He feels lost. It’s another swell in the turbulent ocean of his
life and one he is not equipped to handle.
The one thing the pair cling to is the idea of going to Monterey. We hear
about Monterey again and again. This is the final goal, the destination
where Alice and Tommy will truly start life anew, a place for a new
beginning and a better life. But the truth is, Monterey is just a symbol. It’s
not a real destination; it’s a goal meant to represent having reestablished
herself as her own person. It’s the greener grass on the other side; it’s the
“somewhere” over the rainbow, the city of Shangri-La. Here the cliché
holds true: The journey is more important than the destination.
A major part of that journey involves Alice struggling to find her place
in the world. Her goal is to become a singer, like she was before her
marriage to Donald. She struggles with auditions at seedy little bars run by
brazen misogynists—“Look at my face. I don’t sing with my ass,” she
scolds one of them—and here Scorsese’s living, probing approach with the
camera comes alive. In one audition at a piano bar, the camera is in constant
motion, swinging around the scene, people and objects at the fore of the
frame like something from an Akira Kurosawa film, giving us a sense of
busyness and energy and motion. Much like Alice herself, Scorsese is not
shy about breaking the “rules” here, either. Twice Alice looks directly at the
camera, fleeting fourth-wall breaks the director would later take to a bold
extreme in 1990’s GoodFellas and 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street.
This isn’t a standard, uplifting, Hollywood story, either. Alice is not
destined to have a miracle breakthrough as a singer. She isn’t going to rise
to stardom. Instead, she becomes a waitress at a divey eatery. When we
finally arrive at Mel’s Diner, the direction becomes as cluttered and chaotic
as the diner itself, full of noise and people and movement. This is where
Alice meets the indomitable Flo (Diane Ladd), a fierce, foul-mouthed
waitress who is on the surface crude and uncouth but who underneath has a
world-weary wisdom that helps give Alice the fortitude needed to cope with
the madness of Mel’s. Alice may represent feminist ideals in her struggle
for personal fulfillment, but Flo is already there. She’s been there, done
that, bought the T-shirt. She knows exactly who she is and makes no
apology for it. After having been beaten down by failure after failure, she is
just the sort of person Alice needs in her life, too.
But Flo isn’t the end of Alice’s journey. It is at Mel’s that Alice meets
David, and it’s David who alters the course of her life. Whether for good or
ill depends on your idea of what constitutes a happy ending. They fall for
one another, and though there are difficulties, Alice decides to stay in
Tucson with him.
In some ways, David (and, with it, domesticity) becomes Alice’s new
Monterey. She still wishes to go, yes, and David offers to give everything
up to go with her, but that’s symbolic, too, the result of a somewhat-
misguided compromise in the screenwriting. Neither Scorsese nor Burstyn
wanted Alice to land with another man, at least not in such a traditional
way, but studio pressure forced an approach that would make audiences
happy. “We tried to work as truthfully as possible within the conventions of
the genre,” Scorsese said, “and within the conventions was the studio chief
telling me, ‘Give it a happy ending!’”3 This is perhaps the one area that
undercuts Alice’s agency and is the only major blight on an otherwise
potent empowerment narrative. Free of a bad marriage and on her own path
to self-discovery, she ultimately finds herself in another relationship.
Instead of reaching the place where she could fulfill her dreams, she settles
down into another traditional pairing. She even says at one point, “I don’t
know how to live without a man.” It’s a slight stain on an otherwise
progressive journey.
 Not that Scorsese saw it as a progressive journey: “To tell you the truth,
the reviews that praise Alice as a feminist picture couldn’t have surprised
me more. I don’t like to think of it as a woman’s picture, but as a human
picture—if that doesn’t sound too corny.”4 That Alice Doesn’t Live Here
Anymore seems as progressive as it does is as much a commentary on our
own times as it is on the times in which it is set. It came during the height of
the 1970s women’s movement, when reproductive rights, sexual liberation,
the passage of Title IX in 1972, and female entry into the workforce in huge
numbers revolutionized American culture. “This idea that we were primary
in our own lives, to ourselves, was astonishing,” Burstyn said.5 She had just
gone through a divorce and was feeling that uneasy mix of empowerment
and uncertainty about the future. The world women inhabited was
changing. Expectations were changing. More and more women were taking
what were then unconventional paths through life. The idea of single moms
as people to be championed was only just beginning to enter the
mainstream. Eight years later, the Washington Post reported, “The increase
in single-parent families is one of the most striking social developments of
the past generation.”6 So in its day, Alice was a sign of the times.
Fast-forward forty-five years, and the story remains relevant. In 2017,
the Brookings Institute noted, “Women’s labor force participation has
increased substantially in the U.S. over the second half of the 20th century,
yet this growth has stagnated and reversed since 2000. Today, large gaps
remain between men and women in employment rates, the jobs they hold,
the wages they earn, and their overall economic security.”7 Women are still
seen as the primary caregivers of children, making the balance between
home and career especially difficult for single mothers. As of 2017,
domestic violence murders were even on the rise for the first time in four
decades.8
So Alice remains as powerful and relevant a story today as it was in
1974, a story that set out to subvert expectations—and succeeded.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

The picture struck a chord with audiences. It was a breakthrough hit,
earning a huge box office ($21 million domestically, on a $1.8 million
budget) and garnering sweeping critical accolades. Burstyn won the Oscar
for Best Actress, while Diane Ladd and Robert Getchell were nominated for
Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay, respectively. The
movie also won Best Picture from the British Academy of Film and
Television Arts (BAFTA), and Scorsese received a Best Director nod,
losing to Stanley Kubrick’s work on Barry Lyndon (1975), which years later
would influence Scorsese’s Age of Innocence (1993). The director was
nominated for the Palme D’Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, too.
Perhaps the greatest symbol of the movie’s mainstream success, though, is
also the most unlikely, when one considers Scorsese’s overall body of work:
It was adapted into a highly successful television sitcom.
Focusing on the ups and downs of working at Mel’s Diner, Alice ran
from 1976 to 1985, spanning 202 episodes and earning high ratings for
most of its run. It was a top-ten show for four of its ten seasons and a top-
thirty show for all but two; it also earned an Emmy nomination in 1984.
The show had some light callbacks to the movie—Vic Tayback reprised his
role from the film as Mel, and Diane Ladd returned to Mel’s for two
seasons, though playing a different character (for the TV series, Flo was
played by Polly Holiday)—but it largely forged its own path. Its most
significant contribution to popular culture was introducing the classic “Kiss
my grits” catchphrase into the lexicon. Scorsese had nothing to do with the
series, but regardless, the idea that such a light piece of TV entertainment
sprang from one of his movies is a delightful footnote to his career.
That kind of lightness is not a natural fit for Martin Scorsese, however,
and his next film would be a bold example of that. It tells the story of a
disturbed taxi driver looking for an excuse to go on a killing spree, and it
would make legends of both Scorsese and the supporting actor from Mean
Streets, a lanky rising star named Robert De Niro. It would also result in
one of the most artistically fruitful partnerships in film history.
 5

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: February 8, 1976
WRITTEN BY: Paul Schrader
STARRING: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Harvey
Keitel, Cybill Shepherd
RUNNING TIME: 113 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

I f Martin Scorsese never made another film after Taxi Driver, he’d still be
regarded as one of the most important directors of the 1970s, and it
would still be regarded as one of the most important movies of the era.
That’s how powerful a statement of vision it is.
Taxi Driver was the brainchild of screenwriter Paul Schrader, who
would go on to write Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and
Bringing Out the Dead for Scorsese. Written during a time when he was
struggling with a profound sense of isolation and personal frustration, the
script was a deeply personal meditation by Schrader, one that revealed parts
of himself most would rather keep hidden from view. Because of this, he
was picky about who would helm the film. He found a pair of kindred souls
in Scorsese and Robert De Niro, both of whom caught his attention after he
saw Mean Streets. Working on reduced salaries in order to keep the
production within budget, the trio created one of the most compelling
depictions of social alienation and the violence that can explode from
emotional repression ever put to film. “You’ve got to understand that the
original idea came from him,” Scorsese said of Schrader. “And that’s
something that I think over the years, when they say ‘Martin Scorsese’s
Taxi Driver,’ that’s something that can be very painful to Paul. It’s really
his.”1
The film centers on Travis Bickle (De Niro), a Vietnam War veteran
who takes a job as a cab driver and in his spare time fumes about a city he
believes is immoral. After poisoning a date with a young political campaign
worker, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), by taking her to a porno theater, he
becomes obsessed with a teenage prostitute, Iris (Jodie Foster). Under the
pretense of rescuing her but in truth satisfying an inner urge to lash out with
violence, he shoots up the apartment in which she stays, liberating her from
her pimp (Harvey Keitel) and getting painted as a hero by the press as a
result. But Bickle’s motivations weren’t pure, and the film ends with a tease
that darkness still lurks within him.

ANALYSIS
Alienation can turn a man into a monster, and once one starts walking down
that path, it can often be a one-way journey. Right from the opening titles,
Taxi Driver immerses the viewer in an ominous cloud of paranoia. It’s a
dreamlike sequence, an anonymous taxi rolling through dirty city streets
and dense wafts of steam, horror-tinged strings providing sinister
background music. The hazy music makes a sudden switch to sensual jazz
—the Taxi Driver theme was among the last pieces written by legendary
composer Bernard Herrmann for this, his final score—the soothing sax and
images of neon lights suggesting a romance with the city. But it twists
again. The music warps. The sinister strings return, and the images become
blurred, telling us there is a dark side to the city; telling us that this romance
is unclean; and most important of all, planting the seeds for the manic
nature of our protagonist, a man who can barely contain the demons eating
him from the inside out.
The first face we see is Bickle’s. Coming right after the title sequence,
the viewer subconsciously associates the gloomy, contradictory tones of the
titles with Bickle himself. The music, the images, the sound: They sum him
up better than any brief biography ever could. “Thank God for the rain that
washes the trash off the sidewalks,” he narrates, and we’d almost agree with
his assessment of 1970s New York if there wasn’t something so disturbing
about his tone. “All the animals come out at night.… Someday a real rain
will come and wash all the scum off the streets.”
For viewers of the era, these statements would be especially uneasy to
hear, in no small part because they wouldn’t have been all that difficult to
agree with. New York City in the 1970s was a dangerous, crime-ridden
metropolitan area that came to represent the worst aspects of the era’s rise
in crime. In 1972, there were 1,691 murders in New York.2 That number
would not dip below 1,500 until 1984, peaking at 1,826 in 1981. (The city
would beat even that record in 1988, 1989, and again in 1990, when an
astonishing 2,245 murders were recorded.) By contrast, there were just 290
murders in New York City in 2017.3 It’s a staggering difference.
The city often looked like a wasteland of crime, too. Subway cars were
so covered in graffiti they’d create the visual language of the 1979 cult
classic The Warriors. In the summer of 1974, the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority (MTA) shut down the rear cars of its subways due
to a wave of violence sweeping the trains. At times, upward of 250 crimes
were reported per week on the New York subway system. And Times
Square, today a by-comparison pristine tourist trap filled with blazing
lights, street performers, and overpriced chain restaurants, was in the 1970s
a seedy strip of adult movie theaters, peep shows, street prostitutes, and
drug dealers.
This was the very real New York in which Taxi Driver was set, so it
would be understandable for some viewers to initially sympathize with
Bickle’s cynical view of the city and the mass of humanity who inhabited it.
But there is an edge there, a darkness that most people will find alien. It’s
uncomfortable to agree with a man like that, even if we agree that the city
was in dire need of cleaning up.
 But Taxi Driver isn’t about the city, as much as it seems to be on the
surface. It’s a character piece, an exploration of a broken man’s psyche, a
look at what social isolation can do to a person. Throughout the film,
Bickle’s detachment from society is repeatedly reinforced for us, usually by
Bickle himself. He says he doesn’t follow politics, he doesn’t follow music,
he doesn’t follow movies. He’s entirely alienated himself from society. With
nothing else to drive him and either an inability or lack of desire to connect
with people—he has chosen to remain distant from his family for reasons
that are never stated—Bickle begins to look outward at those around him,
and he feels resentment. He doesn’t see it as resentment, though. He recasts
those feelings as something else.
Roger Ebert once noted that everyone quotes De Niro’s famous “You
lookin’ at me?” line, but they neglect the one that follows—“Well, I’m the
only one here”—when in fact that is the “truest line in the film.”4 It’s a
small line, but it’s key to the character.
Bickle thinks himself a hero in waiting. He craves a purpose; he
believes he is somehow important, that he has vision that others lack, and if
given a chance, he will do something meaningful for the world. “I don’t
believe a person should devote their life to morbid self-reflection,” he says.
He’s waging a war no one else realizes he is waging. He’s not merely angry
at the world; he wants nothing more than an excuse to act out on his violent
impulses, justifying them in a veneer of justice and righteousness. If Bickle
lived in twenty-first-century Florida under its “stand your ground” laws,
Bickle would be following Skittles-bearing teens home from the
convenience store, hoping for a confrontation that would give him the
opportunity to gun someone down.
Seeing the way Bickle’s mind works is especially disturbing when
watched in the context of late-2010s social politics. The so-called incel
movement (incel is short for “involuntarily celibate” and refers to an
Internet subculture devoted to frustration with women, sometimes
manifesting itself in violent fantasies about rape and retribution), the
QAnon movement, with its proponents fantasizing about a bloody
revolution sweeping the United States clean of undesirables, among others
—these groups all reflect aspects of Bickle’s character. Read online forums
and discussion groups focused on these movements, and you find strikingly
similar sentiments to those expressed by Bickle. For example, on May 23,
2014, a twenty-two-year-old self-proclaimed incel named Elliot Rodger
murdered six people before turning his gun on himself. His goal was to
punish women, whom he saw as unclean and beneath him. In a chilling
video made shortly before the murders, Rodger said, “I’ve been forced to
endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires all
because girls have never been attracted to me.… I’ve had to rot in
loneliness. It’s not fair.”5 Following the murders, Rodger “has been
virtually canonized by some fringe communities online.”6

Taxi Driver’s violent exploration of a man alienated from society was shocking in the 1970s
and remains just as relevant in the Internet age. Columbia Pictures

Similarly, the QAnon movement has embraced a Bickle-like view of the

world, one in which the masses cannot see reality before them, and the only
path to enlightenment is, according to some, by cleansing the world through
violence. Books embraced by the movement include titles like QAnon and
the Battle of Armageddon: Destroying the New World Order and Taking the
Millennial Kingdom by Force and QAnon: An Invitation to the Great
Awakening. Believers think we are in the calm before the storm, the “storm”
being the belief that President Donald Trump will institute a justified
martial law and through imprisonment and execution will cleanse the
country of Satanic socialists.7 Despite these beliefs sounding more like
trashy fiction than reality, the movement has prompted several would-be
vigilantes to act out, including an armed man who attempted to take control
of a cement plant in Arizona, convinced it was a front for a child sex-
trafficking ring.8 (A key plank of the movement’s beliefs is that Democrats
are secretly abusing and murdering children as part of a Satanic child sex
ring.9)
In that context, Bickle’s thoughts are especially chilling because we can
see them reflected in the social and political landscape before us. His
opening narration reads like a manifesto penned by an unhinged Twitter
user, fringe hashtags surrounding extremist memes: “Listen, you fuckers,
you screwheads—here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man
who stood up to the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a
man who stood up.” Indeed, “There are Travis Bickles out there—only now
they are being brought together and radicalised on the internet.”10
Reflecting this worldview wasn’t the intent of the film, of course. To be
clear, Bickle is not a right-wing character and isn’t meant to represent any
kind of specific political leaning. He doesn’t have an ideology. In fact, he is
apolitical, unaware of the political landscape outside of some sparse surface
knowledge. After picking up presidential candidate Charles Palantine
(Leonard Harris), Bickle tells him he’s a big supporter. When pressed to
explain why, Bickle admits, “I don’t follow political issues much.” When
asked what he wants from a presidential candidate, he tells Palantine, “Well,
he should clean up this city here. It’s full of filth and scum. Scum and filth.
It’s like an open sewer. I can hardly take it. Some days I go out and smell it,
then I get headaches that just stay and never go away. We need a president
that would clean up this whole mess, flush it out.”
So no, Bickle is not political, even if we can see aspects of his state of
mind reflected in today’s more extreme sociopolitical subcultures. He has
no agenda. He has no belief system. He has no real ideology and no real
principles beyond being angry at the world. Rather, he is alone, frustrated,
and looking for a place to point that frustration. Rather than being about
political radicalization, the film is about the self-radicalization that can
occur through alienation. It’s about the damage that can be done via
isolation, the mental and emotional decay of urban loneliness. It’s
something Schrader knew well. Written during a time when his life was in
shambles, alcoholism consuming him and his marriage shattered into
pieces, writing the screenplay was an exploration of his own personal
demons. Travis Bickle wasn’t intended to be a political radical or a template
for fringe extremism; it was meant to be Schrader himself. “It’s me, without
any brains,” he told film critic Pauline Kael.11
The significance of making Travis Bickle a Vietnam veteran will be lost
to some viewers under a certain age, but Taxi Driver came in the midst of a
time when Vietnam veterans were increasingly depicted in entertainment as
disturbed, emotionally scarred loners often prone to violence. The first
serious film to use the trope was Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968), in
which a disturbed Vietnam vet murders his family and then goes on a
killing spree, though the boob-obsessed Russ Meyer got there first with the
decidedly less-serious Motorpsycho (1965), a campy exploitation picture in
which a deranged vet leads a motorcycle gang in a series of rapes and
murders. (Motorpsycho is also notable for leading directly to the production
of Meyer’s best-known cult classic, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! [1965],
which is effectively a female-led version of the previous movie.) Such
major pictures as The Deer Hunter (1978), for which Robert De Niro
received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and the
actionfocused Sylvester Stallone vehicle First Blood (1982), helped cement
the trope into the public consciousness, though, even at the time of Taxi
Driver’s release, the perception was there. Making the character a Vietnam
veteran, even if only mentioned in passing, would have been a cue to the
audience saying, “This guy probably has some issues.”
Interestingly, Bickle likely knows in his heart that there is something
wrong with him, even if he can’t acknowledge it. When he first stalks Betsy
outside the campaign headquarters at which she works, he speeds off when
approached by her colleague, Tom (Albert Brooks in his first film role).
This could simply be a case of not wanting to be caught at the scene, but
one can read a degree of guilt in his reaction. In fact, he would have little
reason to speed away were it not for a realization, even if subconsciously,
that he was beginning to dabble in a dangerous game. He knows in his gut
that his growing obsessions are dark and wrong. That’s in part what his
monologues are all about. He is trying to convince himself of his own
righteousness in order to allow himself the freedom to finally act out on his
antihero fantasies.
Scorsese presents this brilliantly in a brief scene during which Bickle
takes an antacid. He drops the tablet into a glass of water, and the water
begins to bubble and fizz. In this context, however, it looks more like the
water is boiling. The camera lingers there longer than is comfortable, the
popping, roiling water a metaphor for Bickle’s very soul, disturbed and
unable to be at rest.
Bickle’s inability to recognize social norms allows him to be forward
and persistent in a way most people wouldn’t. When he approaches Betsy
for a date, the situation is awkward. He’s insistent to an uncomfortable
degree, but she sees some kind of charm in him and agrees to meet for
coffee. Was it mere curiosity that drew her in, or did she truly see
something appealing in Bickle’s rambling, intrusive approach? Sheppard’s
performance portrays her as naïvely intrigued by him on an intellectual
level. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone quite like you,” she says during
their first lunch. Bickle is awkward throughout, offering long, unsolicited
opinions on Tom that say more about Bickle than they do about the target of
his criticism. Tom doesn’t respect you, he tells her. These attempts to drive
a wedge between them sharply illustrates Bickle’s character, in no small
part because they ring so true. Like the classic “your boyfriend doesn’t treat
you right” nice guy, Bickle sees every other man as a threat and seeks to
isolate the object of his affections by eroding their trust in others. Unable to
rise without tearing another down, Bickle paints the rest of the world as an
enemy and from the very start attempts to imprint that worldview on Betsy.
If he can isolate her from society just as he is, then he can control her.
The final manifestation of this desire to control her comes when Bickle
takes her to the movies. It’s a classic choice, the traditional choice. By the
1970s, going to the movies had been the quintessential American date for
decades. That’s what makes Schrader’s choice to have their bad date
involve a pornographic movie so powerful. Once commonplace in New
York but now a relic of the 1970s, pornographic theaters used to dot the
Manhattan landscape, symbols of seediness and the decay of the city. When
Bickle takes Betsy to an adult movie, it’s a subversion of what was seen as
a pure American pastime—going to the movies—and a decision that injects
filth into a cherished part of the cultural landscape. Her discomfort is our
own. This is Bickle’s attempt to drag her into his world. If she can lower
herself to this, if he can urge her to suffer it until she accepts it as normal,
then he’ll have removed her from society at large and pulled her into his
small, insular world.
When the control he seeks eludes him and Betsy leaves the theater in
disgust, he uses her reaction to justify his disdain for society. “She is just
like the others, cold and distant,” he says via narration. It’s a pathological
way to think, but people like Bickle are perpetual victims. At one point he
says he thinks he has stomach cancer. There is no reason for him to think
this, but Bickle’s belief that the world has been unfair to him manifests
itself in every aspect of his life. He can’t control the world around him and
is overwhelmed by its presence, so he attempts to control others. Betsy is
just one of many things he is unable to control. Languishing in obscurity
—“Loneliness has followed me my whole life,” he says in narration—and
desperate to matter, he looks for another place to salve his psychological
wounds. He finds it in Iris, a thirteen-year-old prostitute working for a slimy
pimp named Charles, also known as Sport (Harvey Keitel, in his fourth role
for Scorsese). Bickle spots Iris several times throughout the film, walking
the streets in a wide sun hat, tall boots, and tiny shorts. It was a striking
image, shocking even for the 1970s, an era when icons like David Bowie
and Jimmy Page carried on affairs with fourteen-year-olds and Sugar ’n’
Spice, a magazine published by Playboy, printed images of a nude, ten-
year-old Brooke Shields.12
In this context, the choice to make the object of Bickle’s impulse to find
something important to do—someone to save, some sort of “good” to
achieve, some way to matter, some way to seize control of his life—the
choice for this to be a thirteen-year-old prostitute is an interesting and
disturbing one. A man attempts to save a child? That story is universal. A
man attempts to save a prostitute? That’s still an idea audiences can
sympathize with. But combine the two, make the character a child prostitute
(and a seemingly willing one at that), dress her like the streetwalkers of the
era, and make her the subject of attention from a man who had just taken
another woman to a porno theater? Stirred into a cocktail glass and shaken,
that concoction is enough to make one gag. The filmmakers certainly
understood the territory they were delving into was dicey. “They were very
uncomfortable about my character. Nobody knew how to direct me,” Foster
recalled.13
 The film’s uneasy handling of Foster’s character is made all the more
disturbing through a largely improvised scene between her and Sport, the
brawny pimp who manages her life. In a brief scene inserted just prior to
Bickle’s shooting spree, he and Iris dance in a dim apartment. Sport holds
her close and purrs in her ear as they dance. The monologue he delivers was
not in the script. With the idea to do Barry White–inspired lyrics as
dialogue, Keitel riffed on a romantic mantra Sport likely delivered to her
time and again, keeping her under his control. With the context of knowing
Iris is just a child, it makes one’s skin crawl:
When you’re close to me like this, I feel so good. I only wish every man could know what
it’s like to be loved by you. That every woman everywhere had a man that loves her like I
love you. God, it’s good so close. You know, at times like this, I know I’m a lucky man.
Touching a woman who wants me and needs me. Yeah, it’s only you that keeps me together.

In any other picture, this scene of an adult grooming and manipulating a

child clearly underlines Sport as the villain, yet by now we know better. He
is a villain, to be sure, but is Bickle any better? Sport is a real pimp abusing
real girls, yes, yet we sense that perhaps Bickle could be just like Sport if he
took a right instead of a left. They operate in much the same way. They
manipulate others through their vulnerabilities and, if necessary, will create
vulnerabilities in the other person in order to control them. Your coworker
doesn’t respect you, but I do; guys on the street are predators, but I’m not.
They’re all just shades of gray under the same oppressive tree. Either man
will position himself as the only sanctuary his victim has against a world
out to devour them both.
Bickle knows he and Sport are alike, though Bickle can’t consciously
see it. It’s a classic case of projection on his part.14 He recognizes himself in
the pimp. He sees himself projected not through a funhouse mirror that
distorts reality but through one that shows his true self in another life. The
money given to Bickle by Sport earlier in the film traces this journey. The
first meeting between this triad of people comes early on, when Iris jumps
into Travis’s cab to escape her pimp, and Sport offers Travis some cash to
keep things quiet before he takes the girl away. Travis begs off on taking the
money at first but in the end relents. He carries that twenty with him,
looking at it as if it’s significant. And it is. To him, it’s representative of his
own morals; of whether he believes the things he says about scum, about
purity, about women; it’s about whether those things are true. Ultimately,
they are not, but his handling of that bill convinces him they are. Travis
Bickle is not a man of ideals or morals; he is a man who believes he sees
the world for what it truly is, then uses that bleak vision of humanity to
justify his own flawed moral code. He holds onto the money because to him
it represents the dividing line between him and Sport. When finally given
the opportunity, he pays Sport with it in order to get into Iris’s apartment.
It’s a small rebellion, a feeble gesture to distance himself from his own
impulses. He thinks, by rejecting that twenty-dollar bill, he’s also rejecting
the thing that separates himself from Sport. But if all that separates the two
is a twenty-dollar bill, how pure is Bickle, really?
In his mind, at least, there is a vast gulf between them. It’s curious that
he becomes obsessed with “saving” Iris only after seeing presidential
candidate Senator Charles Palantine on television. Suddenly, Bickle
becomes consumed with a mission to do something important. He buys an
arsenal of guns for no specific reason. He works out with a religious
intensity yet maintains a horrible diet. At first, he toys with the idea of
assassinating Palantine, going so far as to show up armed at one of his
rallies, but he flees the scene after he is noticed by Secret Service agents.
He formulates another plan instead. Betsy saw Palantine as a good man, as
a man worthy of admiration, but for Bickle the greatest thing someone
could do is to “clean up this whole mess, flush it out.” He connects the two
in his mind, this idea of being the hero who can clean up the city and being
the person Betsy admired, so what better way to clean up the city than to
subconsciously cleanse it from men like himself? Travis sought to control
Betsy, Sport controls Iris, so the mission becomes to liberate Iris from
Sport. It’s a twisted form of self-flagellation.
The final orgy of violence presents a deranged kind of heroism that
repulses rather than attracts. Bickle’s first attack on Sport is cowardly, a
surprise gut shot with a pistol at point blank range. He then storms the
apartment building where Iris lives. He shoots. He is shot. One man’s
fingers are blasted off in a grotesque display. Bickle is winged in the neck.
Blood splatters and sprays. The screenplay describes the scene as the
“psychopath’s Second Coming,” and it is. Sport returns and is killed. When
Bickle reaches Iris’s room, she pleads for him to stop, but violence has a
forward momentum that is difficult to halt. More killing. And when the
killing is done, Bickle turns the gun on himself. Click. No bullets left. His
final triumph, his heroic suicide, is denied him. He points his fingers at his
own head, his eyes deranged, and motions as if he is shooting himself. It’s
one of cinema’s most lasting images and is a remarkably accurate portrayal
of how so many of today’s shooting rampages end.
Yet the world inside the film sees Bickle’s rampage differently than we
see it from outside the film. It’s painted in the media as an act of heroism.
He saved a young girl from prostitution. The papers are filled with praise
for him. When Betsy ends up in his cab, she praises him, too. The world
sees Bickle as a brave civilian who did something good. Music begins to
play as he drives, a sweet Herrmann melody, but as Bickle cruises on, there
is one last sound, a backward musical note, and as that note twists, we see a
brief glimpse of his eyes in the rearview mirror. They look wild. There is
still a monster inside Travis Bickle.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Taxi Driver’s legacy looms large. Made on a sparse budget of just $1.9
million, the picture took in $28.3 million at the box office and was one of
the top twenty highest-grossing pictures of the year. It received four
Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor; won
the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival; and was beloved by
critics. To this day, the American Film Institute ranks it among the best
films ever made, and the Writer’s Guild of America hails the script as one
of the best.
More importantly, the film brought Scorsese the widespread acclaim
that would follow him (on and off) throughout his career. It cemented him
as one of the most innovative purveyors of violence and darkness in
Hollywood, which is saying a lot, considering it was made during a period
when some of the darkest films in Hollywood history were made. And
perhaps most important of all, it formalized what would become one of the
most fruitful director-actor partnerships in film history.
The first time Scorsese and De Niro worked together, in 1973’s Mean
Streets, De Niro was still an aspiring actor trying to carve out a reputation.
In 1974, he played the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, for
which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. By the time
Taxi Driver was released, De Niro was on the radar of cinephiles as a rising
new talent. The picture cemented his reputation and earned him his first
Best Actor nomination. In the decades since, “You talkin’ to me?” has
become one of the most recognizable movie references in pop culture.
Though De Niro had already appeared in a film for Scorsese, their long-
running collaboration had yet to truly germinate until this picture. In the
early days of the director’s career, Keitel had already cemented a place in
the director’s cast of regulars, appearing in four of his first five movies, two
of them as the lead. It would be Taxi Driver that would cause a seismic shift
in the director’s attentions and create one of the greatest director-actor
relationships in cinema. Alfred Hitchcock famously returned to actors like
Cary Grant and James Stewart, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have at times
seemed inseparable, and during the ’70s Diane Keaton practically defined
Woody Allen films. But aside from the relationship between Akira
Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifine, which is arguably the most creatively
productive collaboration in film history, no one else defines director-actor
collaborations better than Scorsese and De Niro. Including 2019’s The
Irishman, they’d make ten films together, one of them a short, and several
of them are considered among the greatest films ever made. (An eleventh,
Killers of the Flower Moon, was in preproduction as this book was written.)
The three movies widely considered Scorsese’s best, Taxi Driver, Raging
Bull, and GoodFellas, all prominently feature De Niro. Of De Niro’s five
Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, three of them came via
Scorsese films (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Cape Fear). For this alone,
Taxi Driver casts a long shadow over the cinema of the decades to follow.
Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese developed a shorthand with one another on Taxi Driver
that over the decades turned into one of the most creatively fruitful collaborations in cinema
history. Columbia Pictures. Photographer: Josh Weiner

The film cast a shadow outside its own medium, too. For example, it
indirectly changed the comic-book medium. In 1986 and 1987, DC Comics
published Watchmen, a twelve-issue miniseries by Alan Moore and Dave
Gibbons that changed the face of comics forever, to the point where you can
divide comics history into pre-Watchmen and post-Watchmen eras. Later
compiled into a graphic novel and adapted into a 2009 film by Zack Snyder,
Watchmen’s Rorschach, one of its most iconic characters, is a masked
vigilante obsessed with cleaning up the streets with amoral brutality. The
story begins with an excerpt from his journal, and it’s now one of the most
famous passages in comics. A portion of it reads,
This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the
gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The
accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the
 whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!” And I’ll look down, and whisper
“no.”15

It may as well be taken right out of Travis Bickle’s personal journal. The
parallels are so pronounced that, when DC decided to cash in on
Watchmen’s legacy with a Before Watchmen series of prequel spinoffs, issue
3 of the Before Watchmen: Rorschach miniseries features Rorschach taking
a cab driven by none other than Bickle himself. Further, when Snyder
adapted the graphic novel into a feature film, he and production designer
Alex McDowell drew directly from Taxi Driver, too. McDowell noted,
Zack and I talked about the best representation of the reality level of the film and decided to
use Taxi Driver as the core reference.… We took frames from Taxi Driver, then painted them
with the Watchmen colors so the end result is both period-correct, pop-culturally referential
and graphic-novel layered. One of the bars on the street came directly from Taxi Driver.16

Though perhaps the most notable shadow cast by Taxi Driver is the one
cast onto real life. On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to
assassinate President Ronald Reagan, shooting him in the chest. Hinckley
was directly inspired by Taxi Driver and, bizarrely, by the young Jodie
Foster. He developed an obsession for the movie and for Foster herself, for
a time moving to New Haven, Connecticut, to stalk her. After writing her
dozens of letters, he finally vowed to do something spectacular to impress
her. For him, that something was to assassinate the president. He followed
around President Jimmy Carter for a time but was arrested on gun charges
before he could act and so turned his attention to the newly elected Reagan.
“Jodie, I would abandon this idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could
only win your heart and live out the rest of my life with you, whether it be
in total obscurity or whatever,” Hinckley wrote in a letter to her just prior to
his crime. “By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to
change your mind about me. This letter is being written only an hour before
I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jodie, I’m asking you to please look into your
heart and at least give me the chance, with this historical deed, to gain your
respect and love.”17 Perhaps a less crude and angry Travis Bickle would
have written the same to a young campaign worker named Betsy. Hinckley
Jr. was released on September 10, 2016, and in 2018 a judge ruled that he is
allowed to live on his own.18 In other words, a real-life Travis Bickle is still
driving his cab.
 Taxi Driver’s success emboldened Scorsese. He decided his next film
would be a grand experiment in subverting a beloved Hollywood genre. It
would be a spectacular failure but one that would set the stage for his next
masterpiece.
 6

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

(1977)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: June 21, 1977
WRITTEN BY: Mardik Martin, Earl Mac Rauch
STARRING: Liza Minnelli, Robert De Niro
RUNNING TIME: 153 minutes (original release), 136 minutes (recut
version), 164 minutes (1981 re-release)

ABOUT THE FILM

F
ollowing the critical and artistic success of Taxi Driver, a brooding
meditation on a man teetering on the edge of violence, the last thing
you’d expect of Martin Scorsese would be a modern tribute to classic
Hollywood musicals, yet that’s exactly what he set out to produce with New
York, New York, an ambitious improvisation of a film that showcased what
movies from Hollywood’s golden age would look like if presented with
1970s grit.
 New York, New York attempts to sully the purity of Hollywood musicals
with a heaping helping of docurealism—but sully is not quite the right
word. Scorsese came to the film with genuine affection for this period of
cinema. He didn’t want to besmirch it as much as he wanted to
recontextualize it, to deconstruct it and look at it from a modern vantage
point. This wasn’t the first time Scorsese delved into this territory. Part of
the aim of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was to bring an
uncompromising sense of realism to what could have been an overly sweet
story about a mother and son moving on from a family tragedy. That same
concept is at the heart of this not-quite-a-musical.
Scorsese said he was intent on “making a real Hollywood movie and
putting my stamp on it.” He wanted to bring to the screen a “love of the old
stylization, you know, a love of those films, but then showing what it really
is like as close as possible in the foreground. That’s, I guess, what they
called revisionism and that’s why the picture—besides being too damn
long, it’s sprawling—didn’t catch on.”1
On the surface, it was made to look like a classic musical. He wanted to
capture the look of postwar films, with accurate clothing and color and even
shots drawn directly from the great musicals of Bing Crosby and others.
“The homage to the genre, the love note to the genre, was the way the film
should look,” he said.2 But the heart of the movie would be something
much different, something modern and dark, with the work of John
Cassavetes of particular influence. Musicals of the golden age often
featured “heels,” protagonists with sharply negative traits, but they were
likeable heels. The audience rarely minded when they got the girl. But
Scorsese wanted to scrub away the glitz and present a heel as he’d truly be.
The story in New York, New York is a standard one. A GI home from
World War II (Jimmy Doyle, played by Robert De Niro) meets an attractive
young woman at a VJ-Day celebration (Francine Evans, played by Liza
Minelli). He tries to pick her up, she resists, but there is an obvious
attraction between them. A love/hate romance blossoms into a relationship,
then a marriage, then parenthood, but professional jealousies driven by
Jimmy’s insecurities and controlling nature eventually tear them apart. In
the end, Francine manages to rise above it and becomes a beloved star.
These are all familiar elements, tropes plucked from a dozen bright,
colorful Hollywood musicals. In Scorsese’s hands, however, the veneer of
perfection, of lightness, of coziness and familiarity, all of it is stripped
away, leaving us with a film that exists uneasily in two different worlds.

ANALYSIS
The classic Hollywood heel can often be a jerk, but they are rarely
loathsome. More importantly, they rarely get in the way of a happy ending.
But then, classic Hollywood musicals were not directed by Martin Scorsese.
The first scene between De Niro and Minelli in New York, New York sets
the stage for their entire relationship yet not in the way viewers expect. In
many ways, it’s a scene familiar to audiences. A handsome, young GI
verbally spars with a beautiful, young woman playing hard to get, the way
they make one another bristle telling us they actually fancy one another.
There is a juvenile aspect to classic Hollywood courtships, playing up the
schoolyard notion that, when a boy likes a girl, he picks on her, and when a
girl likes a boy, she treats him badly. That so much golden-age cinema
leaned on this cliché points to an American culture that had not yet matured
past childish notions of how men and women interact. Scorsese picks up on
this idea, riffing on it in a familiar way but doing so knowing full well the
rest of the film is going to subvert the classic Hollywood romance that
inevitably unfolds following these “will they or won’t they” meetings.
See, Jimmy is not a nice guy. His persistence follows well-established
silver-screen tropes—in Hollywood, the first few “no’s” don’t count—so
for a little while, it’s easy to believe we’ll see that same story again. But
rather than the snarky charmer with a heart of gold, Jimmy is controlling
and often cruel. Rather than the sweet romance popular musicals made their
stock-in-trade, this is an abusive relationship doomed to fail.
The moment when the relationship goes from a dalliance to something
real is during an audition. Jimmy can’t make any headway with the bar
owner he’s trying to impress. His energetic improvisation isn’t the kind of
crowd-pleasing dance music the owner wants. But when Francine steps in
and leads the band in a rendition of “You Brought a New Kind of Love to
Me,” a swing band standard of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, the pair learn they
work together well. Or rather, they have the potential to work together well
because in truth Jimmy resents her talent. He doesn’t want her garnering
any attention.
This is underscored later when the band gets a good review that
specifically cites Francine’s vocal talents. This doesn’t sit well with Jimmy.
She begins to unintentionally take a leading role in the band. They get a
headline gig at a fancy hotel, with Francine as the star attraction. Later,
while rehearsing with the band, she starts the countdown to a song rather
than Jimmy, who typically does it. This infuriates him. He informs her in no
uncertain terms what the pecking order of the band is. It’s rather appropriate
that the song they are about to perform is “Take a Chance on Love” because
that’s exactly what Francine is doing with Jimmy. He is not interested in
having a relationship of equals. If she won’t take second billing to him, if
she won’t be subservient to him, then he wants no part of it. He doesn’t
respect her art. It’s not even clear that he respects her.
When Jimmy proposes later in the film, it’s not the proposal of a man
consumed with love, though it initially appears that way on the surface.
Francine reads a poem she wrote about him. Upon hearing it, he
immediately calls a cab and takes her to the home of the local justice of the
peace. He bangs on the door, waking the occupants, and says he wants to
marry her right then and there. It’s a spur-of-the-moment choice, as
improvised as his music, but Francine isn’t swept off her feet by the
gesture. Rather, she’s crestfallen at how reckless it all seems. “I just thought
it was going to be different,” she says. There is no romance here, no love,
just a man trying to scoop up something he wants. In a moment that should
be an important milestone in their lives, Jimmy acts like a jerk, controlling
and demanding. Even when he expresses his love for her, it’s in terms of
ownership. “I don’t want anybody else to be with you except me,” he says.
These scenarios may sound familiar to those who have taken a deep
dive into Scorsese’s filmography, and they should. Life Lessons, his third of
the 1989 anthology film New York Stories with Francis Ford Coppola and
Woody Allen, also deals with an artist who does not respect the art of his
female companion and who boldly declares his love for her, not out of love,
but out of a desire to possess her. That they both deal with similar scenarios
is no coincidence, as they both draw from the same influence: Russian
author Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1867 novella The Gambler. The story is
ostensibly about a man’s struggles with gambling as he attempts to pay off
crushing debts, but it’s also about the dissolution of a relationship. “There
are scenes in The Gambler that are quite extraordinary about the
relationship, the humiliation and love and battles between the two. So, over
the years, I was trying to work out something with that. I found that
elements of their relationship found their way into my movies,” Scorsese
said. “In New York, New York, a lot of it! The difficulty in being with each
other, the difficulty of loving.”3
It’s hardly surprising the theme would resonate with Scorsese, who has
been married five times and had a series of turbulent relationships in the
’70s and ’80s. (In fairness to Scorsese, he married his fifth wife, Helen
Morris, in 1999; they’ve been married twenty years as of this writing.)
Prior to making the film, the director’s vision of what it would be was
more hopeful than the completed picture turned out to be. He initially
described it as a movie “about the decline of the big bands and a couple…
who try to make a go of it but they have no money and they break up and
then they get back together after they make it.”4 The finished product is far
more cynical.
To say that Jimmy has difficulty loving is an understatement. When
Francine is pregnant, he offers no support. He’s out all the time. He refuses
to help her. Worst of all, he’s emotionally manipulative. She asks him to
help, asks him to change his schedule so he can assist with the baby, but
that only makes him angry. He claims, without his music, he’s useless to
her, but that’s just an excuse to skirt his parental responsibilities. Later,
when she meets with a record company executive to entertain the possibility
of getting signed to a deal, he tries to physically wrest her away from the
meeting. When she complains that he is hurting her, Jimmy says, “Well, I’m
sorry I’m hurting you. If you came with me, I wouldn’t have to hurt you.”
This is an abusive relationship by any measure. He gets drunk. He gets
angry. He’s finally kicked out of the club, violently. Why would he act this
way? Because he doesn’t want her to succeed, certainly not in a way that
overshadows him, but in his heart, he knows it’s inevitable.
This film’s bleak take on the musical may seem cynical, but perhaps
seeing cynicism in it is itself a cynical view. Rather, the movie betrays a
sadness at the passing of a way of life, or at least a way of life Americans
once dreamed of having. Those postwar years were looked back on with
great fondness (and in many ways they still are), but reality was quite
different than our Technicolor daydreams. The 1970s were a grim decade
for cinema, not in terms of quality—it’s widely regarded as a high point for
the American auteur—but in terms of tearing away the image we once had
of the perfect American life. We saw what was beneath the white picket
fences and apple pies, and what we found was often ugly. Scorsese had
already done this with Alice and examined it further in Taxi Driver. Many
of the same themes are present here; they are merely recast as a traditional
musical.
Jimmy would be a lovable scamp in most other movies, but here he is
anything but. He’s cruel and self-centered. As a result, we get one of the
most common narrative arcs in the Scorsese library: the rise and fall. And
like so many Scorsese protagonists who fall short of happiness (or success
or wealth or freedom or whatever else they seek to attain), Jimmy’s
downfall is ultimately his own fault. The coming ruination of his
relationship with Francine lies at his own feet. He met a charming and
talented woman with whom he could share a love for music. They could
even build careers together as they built a family together. Francine is
certainly willing. But Jimmy’s rebellious nature, his refusal to conform to
what is expected of him, this is more than just rebellious ideology. It’s
insecurity manifesting itself in attacks on the people closest to him.
Jimmy’s reaction to her success and the way he handles her talent tends
toward the petty. At one point late in the film, he and his band are playing
in a club after she has been signed to a record deal. She’s in the audience.
The band begins playing one of her songs, so she approaches the stage to
join them, but Jimmy immediately launches the band into a bop number
instead. It’s unsingable. Dejected, she leaves. The pair get into a big fight in
the car. He yells at her. He yells about the baby. He says she has it easy, she
has everything, and he has nothing. His resentment leads him to an outburst
of violence—and there ends their relationship. This is not the expected
Hollywood ending.
But Scorsese subverts his own subversion by inserting a standard
Hollywood ending anyway, finishing New York, New York with a huge stage
production that could have been lifted right out of the great musicals of the
1950s and 1960s. It’s huge. It’s stylish. It’s extravagant. If there was any
doubt that casting Minelli was the right choice—and to be sure, her charm
provides a much-needed contrast to De Niro’s sulky, angry performance—
it’s washed away here, when her natural talent for owning the stage is
finally allowed to shine in its full glory. She sings the title track, “New
York, New York,” written especially for the film by composers John Kander
and Fred Ebb, who also wrote the musicals Cabaret and Chicago. It’s a
huge production set in the same nightclub where the pair first met years
prior. (It’s worth noting that this lush ending was not in the original release.
It was added in a 1981 re-release, along with close to thirty minutes of
additional footage. It’s that 164-minute re-release that is now the version
most commonly seen.)
We do get a brief epilogue. After a rousing rendition of New York, New
York, Francine and her son run into Jimmy backstage. For a fleeting
moment, he seems at peace. More importantly, he appears to be genuinely
proud of her success. They part, and all seems well—melancholy, but well.
So perhaps Scorsese did give us a classic Hollywood ending after all—but
only a taste of one.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

New York, New York was a grand experiment by a young filmmaker
determined to merge the old and new. He took great pains to emulate the
look and feel of golden-age musicals, in part in order to keep audiences off
balance. He wanted to evoke those familiar images from a technical
standpoint but then subvert them via story and character. Emboldened by
the confidence that comes with being young and coming off a critical
success, much of this was done by the seat of his pants. Scorsese has a well-
deserved reputation for letting his performers improvise, though that
reputation can be misleading. In most cases his actors aren’t just riffing on
set. It’s a controlled process. They improvise in rehearsals, then material
that Scorsese likes is worked into the script. For the most part, this has been
one of his great strengths, leading to such legendary scenes as De Niro’s
“You talkin’ to me?” in Taxi Driver and Joe Pesci’s “funny” scene in
GoodFellas.
Here, however, the improvisation was allowed to dominate the movie.
Much of the dialogue was developed in improvisation, and it shows. At
times the approach veers into self-indulgence. Many early scenes drag on
past their welcome, as De Niro and Minelli banter beyond a scene’s needs.
Their opening introduction stretches on for twenty minutes. A kiss in the
rain goes on long enough to be funny, then just keeps going and going. In a
scene showing the couple checking into a hotel, witty banter with the guy at
the front desk continues long after most directors would have yelled “cut!”
And there are many other examples. Perhaps New York, New York would
have benefited from Thelma Schoonmaker’s touch. (In fact, this would be
the last feature film Scorsese would direct that wouldn’t be edited by
Schoonmaker.) The director himself acknowledges this shortcoming of the
film, admitting in a DVD commentary that he’d have liked to have made
the improvised scenes leaner and tighter, but time constraints made it
impossible.5
In that regard, New York, New York proved to be a testing ground for
new approaches and techniques. Not all of them worked—he’d perfect how
he used improvisation in later films—but in other cases it helped him refine
techniques he had already been playing with. He shot music scenes to his
desired music, for example, rather than assemble them in editing, setting up
his shots to match bars of music. He’d later do the same in movies like
GoodFellas to powerful effect. The scene from that film in which we tour
the bodies left in Jimmy Conway’s wake, all of it set to the piano outro of
“Layla” by Derek and the Dominos, is a prime example of that approach.
Each shot was painstakingly designed with the song in mind, with Scorsese
going so far as to play the music on-set to ensure they got the timing right.
In some respects, parts of New York, New York is proof of a concept for
techniques of that nature.
But audiences don’t go to the movies for experiments, and they
certainly don’t go to see their favorite genres turned inside out. Clocking in
at over two and a half hours upon release (thanks to additional footage,
today’s home releases are closer to three) and featuring little of what
Americans love about musicals, New York, New York was a box-office
failure and a critical dud, the New York Times calling it “elaborate,
ponderous” and “nervy and smug.”6 It barely made back its hefty
production budget. Oddly, one of the things preventing it from being a total
loss for the studio, United Artists, was the success of Rocky the year prior.
The two pictures got made under an agreement to intertwine their profits—
the idea was that New York, New York’s expected success would help fund
the underdog picture Rocky—and as a result, “Rocky wound up paying for
whatever losses we had on New York, New York,” according to Mike
Medavoy, senior VP of production at United Artists.7
 The picture’s failure sent Scorsese spiraling into depression and drug
abuse, sinking him into one of the darkest periods of his life.8 He had no
other pictures to make. He thought he was done. The only thing on the
horizon was a story he felt no connection, a book De Niro had been
insisting he read since the production of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
It was ostensibly about boxing, and it would become what some consider
his greatest work.
 7

RAGING BULL (1980)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: November 14, 1980
WRITTEN BY: Paul Schrader, Mardik Martin
STARRING: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty
RUNNING TIME: 129 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

F ollowing the critical success of 1976’s Taxi Driver, which garnered

four Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture,
Scorsese found himself at a difficult crossroads. His previous film, the
musical New York, New York (1977), was a box-office failure, sending the
director into a spiral of drugs and depression.1 His concert film The Last
Waltz (1978) was an acclaimed work but did little to attract the attention of
Hollywood money. Fueled in part by substance abuse, he began to despair,
wondering if he’d ever again make a great film.
Robert De Niro had been pitching him an idea for years, however, a
biopic based on boxer Jake LaMotta’s autobiography Raging Bull: My
Story. The director was at first reluctant to tackle a movie on a subject he
knew little about and cared for even less—boxing—but De Niro was
persistent, pushing the film on him even when Scorsese was in the hospital
ailing from a bad interaction of drugs and medication. There in the hospital,
despite some misgivings, Scorsese eventually relented.2 The screenplay was
developed by Mardik Martin and was heavily revised by Paul Schrader
(with input by De Niro, who felt strongly about the material) and focused
less on LaMotta’s career as a boxer and more on his obsession with second
wife, Vickie LaMotta.
Once convinced to make it, Scorsese cast aside his disdain for sports
and meticulously crafted a series of intense boxing scenes around which
this domestic narrative was wrapped. The resulting work is a technical
marvel, thanks in no small part to editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who began
her long collaboration with Scorsese with Who’s Knocking at My Door? For
Raging Bull, she won her first of three Academy Awards, the other two also
for Scorsese pictures (The Aviator and The Departed). In fact, she would
edit every Scorsese movie from this one forward.
In Raging Bull, a young LaMotta (De Niro) balances his budding
success in the ring against a volatile marriage and the intrusion of local
gangsters on his career. He encounters Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), a fifteen-
year-old who catches his eye at a public swimming pool. His brother Joey
(Joe Pesci) introduces them, and a whirlwind courtship begins. Meanwhile,
LaMotta continues his rise through the boxing ranks, briefly winning the
world middleweight championship. A long rivalry with the legendary Sugar
Ray Robinson also ensues. But LaMotta’s obsessive and controlling
behavior toward Vickie proves to be emotionally crippling. He takes a
brutal beating at Robinson’s hands, then destroys his relationship with both
Vickie and Joey in a violent, paranoid outburst. We then flash-forward to an
older LaMotta running a seedy nightclub, trying to regain his past glory,
and grappling with criminal charges stemming from allowing minors in his
club. Rather than end on a triumphant note, the film’s ending is downbeat.
Though it barely made waves upon release, Raging Bull went on to be a
critical darling and is now widely considered not only one of the director’s
best works but also one of the greatest films of all time.
ANALYSIS
No man is a hero. At least, not in Martin Scorsese’s world. Nominated for
eight Academy Awards and hailed by many as the best film of the ’80s,
Scorsese’s meditation on how violence and personal failure are intertwined,
Raging Bull, is in many ways the perfect encapsulation of the classic
Scorsese protagonist. Ironic, considering the director initially felt little
connection to the material and largely made it at the urging of Robert De
Niro.
Raging Bull tells the story of real-life boxer Jake LaMotta (1922–2017),
a rough, Bronx-bred fighter who rose to world middleweight champion in
1949 and sustained a six-fight rivalry with fellow hall-of-fame boxer Sugar
Ray Robinson. But despite all the focus on boxing matches, despite the
directorial bravado on display, despite the remarkable technical flair in
Scorsese’s meticulously crafted fight scenes, Raging Bull is not a boxing
film. Rather, it’s a film about failure. It’s about how imperfect people ruin
the good things they have in life: their successes, their relationships, their
reputation, and their very dignity. In that respect, it’s a film very much in
keeping with Scorsese’s oeuvre.
As a general rule, films are about triumph or success or overcoming
obstacles, especially sports films. Our protagonists face difficulties and,
after some trials and tribulations, come through in the end. This is
frequently not the case with Scorsese’s work. His movies are less often
about a man’s rise and more often about his fall. Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver)
rescues a child from abuse and prostitution but suffers a complete mental
breakdown. Henry Hill (GoodFellas) thrives in the criminal underworld but
ends up in witness protection. Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street)
becomes extremely wealthy and has everything a man could desire, and he
loses it all to greed and corruption. Howard Hughes (The Aviator) becomes
one of the world’s most famous and influential men but implodes into
mental illness, and so on.
LaMotta’s story is much the same. He rises from the streets of the
Bronx, a rough and tenacious fighter; becomes champion; but is ultimately
consumed by paranoia and his own violent tendencies. Fat, lonely,
forgotten, the Bronx Bull ends up a shadow of his former self, stumbling
through clumsy monologues in an effort to evoke the power of his glory
days.
The link in all these stories is that these men are the architects of their
own downfall. They are not toppled by a corrupt system or an unlucky roll
of the dice. Outside forces do not bring them to ruin and humiliation. Their
own actions do. As we see more clearly in Raging Bull than in any of his
other work, Scorsese is concerned with personal failure. This failure is often
driven by hubris, just as often by greed, and occasionally by mental illness.
Regardless of the root causes of that failure, what’s noteworthy is that it’s
virtually always internal.
For a film so concerned with violence, both physical and emotional,
Raging Bull opens with stark beauty. A stirring string section plays the
intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana by Italian composer Pietro Mascagni,
while LaMotta shifts and moves in slow motion, framed simply through the
boxing ring’s three ropes, displaying an effortless grace we’ll never see
from him again. It is the opening of a ballet, really. Gentle. Poetic.
Beautiful.
The heart of Raging Bull is not in its fight scenes but in the relationship between LaMotta
and his loved ones. It would also be the first of four times Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, and
Martin Scorsese would work together. United Artists

Yet the beauty also tells us something important. Here, as a major bout
is about to begin, LaMotta is alone. He is in an arena full of cheering fans,
and he is utterly alone. No other human beings are visible. The crowd is
obscured in darkness. We know they are there only thanks to the occasional
pop of flashbulbs. There are no trainers with him. No ringside assistants. No
announcers or referees or even opponents. It’s just LaMotta relishing a
moment of isolated greatness.
This repeats throughout the film, though he is never as great as he is in
that opening shot. LaMotta is at his proudest, his most self-assured, his
most confident either when he is alone (usually delivering a stumbling
monologue to a mirror) or when he is violently pummeling an opponent.
The rest of the time, he’s a brutish oaf, awkward around people, lacking
social graces, sexist even by the era’s standards, insecure, and paranoid.
Raging Bull’s trajectory is one of steady rise followed by sudden fall,
again and again and again. After the title sequence, we see a quick glimpse
of an older LaMotta circa 1964, overweight, a lumbering giant waxing
poetic about his better days. We then move to those better days, seeing him
as a young up-and-comer in 1941, then undefeated, in the first of many
bouts we’ll see. In a last-minute rally, he batters his opponent. It’s not
enough. The judges hand LaMotta his first defeat. He refuses to leave the
ring, though. A riot breaks out, the arena descending into an orgy of
violence around him.
After the fight, he laments to his brother and manager Joey LaMotta that
his hands are too small. Because of his small hands, he can never be a
heavyweight. He’ll never have a chance to fight the best. He presses Joey
into punching him, repeatedly, to show that he can take the punishment.
Joey does but doesn’t understand why his brother wants him to do this.
“What are you trying to prove? What’s it prove?” he asks.
Jake LaMotta doesn’t respond, but the answer becomes apparent. This is
a man who refuses to give up. The only thing he knows is how to take (and
deliver) a beating. This is underscored most heavily during his final bout
against Robinson. Here, LaMotta is in a bad position. He’s against the ropes
and reeling. The action pauses. LaMotta smiles, the crowd fading into the
background, and taunts his opponent. The Bronx Bull knows the fight is
lost, but he has something to prove. The camera lingers on Robinson. The
sound drops out except for the soft breathing of an animal. Shadows
envelop the screen. Then the sound roars back in, Robinson attacks, and
LaMotta is given as brutal a beating as is seen in the film. Blood splatters. It
runs down his legs. LaMotta’s second wife, Vickie, turns her head down in
dismay. Robinson wins, and LaMotta’s face is left a puffy, swollen mess of
blood and flesh.
Yet he never goes down. After the bell, he wobbles to his opponent’s
corner: “You never got me down, Ray. Never got me down.” It’s difficult to
know if we are supposed to be impressed or disgusted. When we see this,
we better understand the bloated, fat LaMotta we see later in the film,
lurching around like a drunken king in his club, holding court from the
stage. From a distance, we’re embarrassed for him. We cringe at him. The
whole act is sad and pathetic, the flailing of a man who fails to see that he is
washed up, still trying at fame despite the one thing he has to offer the
world—his skill in the ring—being well behind him. But look again, and
we see who he really is: a man who doesn’t even realize when he’s beaten.
In an effort to showcase this aspect of LaMotta’s personality, Scorsese
was forced to be inventive. “I just don’t know how to shoot two guys in a
boxing ring. I just don’t,” he once remarked.3 He was not a sports fan.
When De Niro first pitched him the idea of the film, he had no idea how
he’d present boxing and had little interest in doing so. Even after he had
been convinced, the director made little effort to depict the actual ebb and
flow of a real boxing match. Instead, Raging Bull is as impressionistic as
any film by Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) or Fritz Lang
(Metropolis):
Making (the documentaries) Italianamerican and American Boy showed me how to do
Raging Bull. I just kept one word in mind: “Clarity,” to get to the issue. It seemed to free me.
What I liked to do in documentaries when people were telling stories was, rather than
dissolving from one image to another so as to soften the cuts, to jump around until I was free
of the form. A lot of that impulse wound up in Raging Bull.4

The bouts don’t present action as much as they present the impression
of action. Most are distinctive and boast their own identity. In the one
Robinson fight LaMotta won, they battle, the camera spins 360 degrees,
then takes an abrupt push forward as Robinson is felled between the ropes.
Things lurch into slow motion, then eases back to normal speed before an
instant cut to black, then a microphone descending from the top of the
frame. It’s a victory depicted by a dizzying whirlwind.
Though uninterested in sports or boxing, Martin Scorsese’s dizzying choreography in
Raging Bull’s fight sequences resulted in the most visceral boxing scenes ever put to film.
United Artists/Photofest

LaMotta’s third fight against Robinson is perhaps the best known of the
film. As punches are thrown, animal calls are blended into the sound mix
courtesy of sound designer Frank Warner (who, it should be noted, made
these creative decisions on his own).5 The whole bout is filmed as if the
arena is on fire, the frame smothered in smoke and heat, and indeed,
Scorsese had real flames burning just beneath the frame in order to give the
proceedings a shimmering, smoldering effect.
The technical bravado continues through both ferocious and familial
scenes. In a memorable montage sequence, Scorsese intercuts LaMotta
home movies (shot in color and emulating actual LaMotta home movies)
with quick glimpses of LaMotta fights. We see LaMotta versus Zivic in just
a few still frames, then cut to home movies with Jake and Vickie. Another
fight, then the faded color of Jake and Vickie getting married in court.
Fight, then fleeting glimpses of a happy home life. A fight in two quick
stills. Joey gets married in bleached-out film. A fight, one swing in stills,
black-and-white. Jack and Vickie at a new house, with kids. Four years in
time gone in moments, set to music, flashing between potent single frames
and shaky home-movie footage. Montage is nothing new. It’s a staple of
cinema. Many movies have montages fraught with suggestion, and while
this one does, as well, Scorsese is content to let the images speak for
themselves, these fleeting pictures telling the story of an increasingly
violent man and an increasingly unhappy family dynamic.
When we revisit the LaMottas after this sequence, they are doting on
their children, with Joey and his wife present, a seemingly normal family.
But they’re not. Jake’s desire to control Vickie is growing stronger. The
brothers discuss an upcoming fight. Joey outlines why it’s win-win for Jake.
Vickie agrees, casually suggesting the other fighter is good-looking while
doing so (though only echoing her brother-in-law as she does). Here is
where we see a Jake LaMotta who is not merely insecure but also insecure
to the point of paranoia.
And paranoia is, more so than violence, Jake LaMotta’s defining
characteristic. Or perhaps it’s insecurity or a blend of both. Vickie’s
comment is an offhanded one, but it triggers something in her husband. Jake
presses her, asking if she has an interest in this other boxer. She denies it.
He then demands that Joey keep an eye on her, ensuring she stay loyal.
“You start trouble for nothing,” Joey says, but it doesn’t matter. Jake won’t
listen. When he fights the boxer in question, Jake brutalizes him, destroying
his once-handsome face. And when he wins, he gloats.
Paranoia and insecurity runs rampant throughout the film, and
Scorsese’s work underscores that whenever possible. It drives the Bronx
Bull. This is never more evident than in his relationship with Vickie, his
second wife and the one opponent Jake cannot master. Vickie is young, just
fifteen when they meet (an uncomfortable fact the director does not dwell
on), but she has an air of confidence about her that suggests she is in
command of her life. They meet at a public swimming pool after Jake asks
Joey to introduce them. Their initial conversation is gentle and awkward,
largely improvised by De Niro and Moriarty, Vickie shot through a wire
fence between them that serves as a metaphor for their relationship. They
can touch, they connect, but there will always be something between them,
a steel veil of sorts, the wire mesh of the fence not unlike the ropes of the
boxing ring, except here Jake is outside the ring, and Vickie is on the inside.
On their first date together, LaMotta is softly controlling, gentle, but
offering a hint at what is to come. He demands she sit closer to him in the
car so he can put his arm around her. She’s compliant (though one senses
that it’s not due to weakness on her part). At his apartment, they sit across
the tiny kitchen table from one another, but he insists she sit closer. He
draws her to his lap. Again, she gives in. As he takes her through the
apartment and leads her to his bed, we see the walls and shelves are filled
with religious iconography: paintings, statues, rosary beads. Scorsese’s
Catholic upbringing is evident throughout his work, including here.
(Scorsese’s icons generally fall from grace, and what could be more
Catholic than that?) As LaMotta attempts to seduce this teenager in the very
apartment where he sleeps with his wife, holy icons surround them. His first
kisses are awkward. There is no sensuality to them. They are the kisses of a
child. Intimacy is not something LaMotta knows or understands. But
somehow, he makes an impression on her, and they become a couple.
It’s interesting to note that, from here forward, Jake’s first wife is
dropped from the film entirely and is no longer acknowledged. That
decision is telling. Scorsese frequently breaks the rules of traditional
filmmaking, but he is rarely clumsy. Raging Bull is told from LaMotta’s
perspective; it’s a film about his perceptions, so from this simple man’s
point of view, his previous wife effectively just disappears.
Though Jake is controlling, in many ways it’s Vickie who controls him,
though not intentionally. He is consumed by her. When outside the ring, she
is all he is focused on. In demonstrating this, Scorsese employs his most
impressive directorial techniques. His technical work in the ring is
rightfully praised, but as a result, the equally remarkable material outside
the ring is often overlooked. Any Scorsese film will have some degree of
directorial showmanship, of course, and Raging Bull is no exception. In
fact, aside perhaps from GoodFellas, no Scorsese picture serves as a better
example of his rule-bending, normshattering, expectation-defying approach
to filmmaking than this one. That it’s a black-and-white film made in 1980,
in the post–Star Wars era, seems notable, yet that’s only a surface-level
indication of the degree to which this film bucks the norm. Under
Scorsese’s direction, camera speeds shift at a whim. Audio syncing
sometimes seems optional. Slow motion is intercut with normal speed with
no regard for visual continuity. These aren’t merely attention-grabbing
tricks, either. It all serves to emphasize LaMotta’s mental state.
In one moment, Vickie drives away with some mobsters. The scene
suddenly drops into slow motion, music briefly rising to the top of the mix.
In another, time crawls as she makes light conversation with these same
men, Jake looking on from a distance. Sometimes sound slows down as the
camera slows; sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the two fall out of sync.
The effect can be sinister, suggestive, ominous. In Raging Bull, slow motion
(usually) doesn’t punctuate violence or other such movie clichés. Here, it
reeks of paranoia. Scorsese uses this technique again and again to place us
inside Jake LaMotta’s head, to make clear the depth of his focus and
obsession. It’s an obsession that will ruin him.
Things come to a head in one of the film’s most memorable scenes. Jake
and Joey are in Jake’s home. Vickie arrives, says hello, and gives them each
a kiss. Jake notes that she kissed his brother on the lips. He confronts Joey
about it, first gently, but the conversation escalates until Jake flat-out asks
Joey if he slept with Vickie. Joey thinks Jake has gone insane and tells him
so in a monologue improvised by Pesci:
I’m not gonna answer that. It’s stupid. It’s a sick question, and you’re a sick fuck, and I’m
not that sick that I’m gonna answer it. I’m leaving. If Nora calls, tell her I went home. I’m
not staying in this nuthouse with you. You’re a sick bastard. I feel sorry for you, I really do.
You know what you should do? Try a little more fucking and a little less eating, so you won’t
have problems upstairs in the bedroom, and you pick on me and everybody else. You
understand me, you fucking wacko? You’re cracking up! Fucking screwball!

Joey leaves. Jake goes upstairs and confronts Vickie, smashing down
the bathroom door and smacking her. She screams at him, telling him yes,
she slept with Joey. She slept with everyone. He believes her. We have no
idea if this is true. It’s probably not. She’s probably just winding him up.
But maybe there’s a kernel of truth in there somewhere; maybe she cheated,
or maybe she merely wanted to cheat. Or maybe she’s just trying to make
clear to him that his accusations are outlandish. The truth of it doesn’t
matter. Jake storms out and heads to Joey’s house, where he pummels his
brother in front of his family and knocks Vickie out cold when she tries to
intervene. It’s perhaps Jake’s darkest moment, the culmination of all the
brooding and violence we’ve already seen.
We then see his final fight against Robinson, the one in which he’s
beaten to a swollen pulp, and that is the end for the youthful, dominating
Jake LaMotta of Raging Bull. When next we see him, he’s an
embarrassment, slobbering over a politician’s wife, kissing young girls, and
entertaining fellow drunks with cheap party tricks, the scene made all the
more sobering by De Niro’s now-legendary decision to gain sixty pounds to
play the older LaMotta. It’s a commitment to acting Pesci said has been
misinterpreted:
Robert did it because he really wanted to feel what Jake LaMotta felt because Jake LaMotta
had always had a hard time making the weight. That’s all he talked about was the weight.
Making the weight, making the weight. And he made such a big issue out of it talking to
Robert all the time that Robert wanted to feel that sensation of blowing up like that. And he
didn’t do it to grandstand or to get an Oscar. I felt so bad for him because every asshole in
the world, in Hollywood, says that kind of thing, and it’s not true.6

De Niro’s commitment to the role ensures that we feel the revulsion and
pity we are intended to. The older LaMotta is a shell of his former self. He
does a brief stint in prison for allowing underage girls in his club. He tries
and fails to make amends with Joey. But if LaMotta was alone yet
triumphant in the opening shot of the film, then here it’s the opposite. He is
alone, pathetic, and unaware that he was the architect of his own defeat:
If his brother, and if Tommy Como, and if Salvie and if Vicky did everything he thought they
did—he can do one of two things: kill them all or let it go. If you let it go, I mean, it’s not the
end of the world. But no, no, he’s got to battle it out in the ring. He’s got to battle it out at
home. He’s got to battle it everywhere until finally he’s got to deal with that point where
everyone else has disappeared from him and he’s dealing with himself.7

His final monologue is the famous “I could have been a contender”

speech from On the Waterfront (indirectly the second time De Niro played a
character also portrayed by Marlon Brando). This decision is instructive. It
tells us that, even now, Jake blames others for his own failings.
Jake LaMotta was a champion for a short period of time, a man of great
skill whose downfall is his own doing. He is the definitive Scorsese
protagonist in this respect, a deeply flawed person who becomes the engine
of his own destruction. It’s a theme we’ll see many more times throughout
the director’s career but never so starkly as in Raging Bull.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Upon release, Raging Bull barely crawled to profitability, garnering mixed
reviews and a lukewarm box office. Despite this, the film earned eight
Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Actor,
Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress. It won two, one for Best Film
Editing, thanks to Schoonmaker’s invaluable contributions, and De Niro for
Best Actor. Though met with only modest praise upon release, years later it
would be hailed as the best film of the 1980s and is widely considered one
of Martin Scorsese’s masterworks.
Coming on the heels of the failure that was New York, New York and a
tremendous personal health crisis—drug abuse and exhaustion had taken its
toll on him—the director initially balked at making the picture. He couldn’t
wrap his head around it: “I resisted for a while—for a few years, actually—
because I didn’t understand boxing.”8 De Niro pushed and pushed some
more. Scorsese still resisted. Then, one day the director collapsed in an
exhausted stupor. He was rushed to the hospital, bleeding from multiple
orifices. Future wife Isabella Rossellini believed he would die. There, in the
hospital room, De Niro made yet another pitch. This time, Scorsese decided
he needed to do the project in order to save his own life.9 The director saw
Raging Bull as a last gasp, as a chance to show the world he could still
make great cinema. “I threw everything I knew into it, and if it meant the
end of my career, then it would have to be the end of my career,” he said.10
It’s all but certain the film would not have been made were it not for De
Niro. He had read LaMotta’s memoir Raging Bull: My Story and was
intrigued by it. “It’s not so well written, but it’s got heart to it. There’s
something interesting about the story,” he said.11 He brought the book to
Scorsese, who read it in 1974 and later said he “never really understood
sports.” The director took considerable risks when making the film, casting
the then-no-name actor Joe Pesci to act alongside De Niro, amateur actor
Cathy Moriarty to play the female lead (for which she was nominated for
Best Supporting Actress), and other amateurs like Frank Vincent, who
would go on to have roles in GoodFellas, Casino, and The Sopranos,
among others. He shot it in black-and-white. And he made no effort to
make LaMotta a sympathetic character. It was a bold display at how
bucking the norm could be made to work.
These days, many consider it the director’s best work. It’s a film that
almost didn’t get made but one that went on to launch what is arguably
Scorsese’s most adventurous decade of filmmaking, a decade that included
populist fare; black comedies; meditations on religion; and, in the case of
his next picture, strange forays into obsession.
 8

THE KING OF COMEDY

(1982)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: December 18, 1982
WRITTEN BY: Paul D. Zimmerman
STARRING: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard
RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

M
artin Scorsese’s creative career is many things, but predictable is
not one of them. After a string of artistic successes marred only by
the uneven New York, New York, all of them rooted in a tangible,
uncompromising grittiness, the last thing one would expect is a black
comedy costarring Jerry Lewis. Yet that’s exactly what he delivered with
The King of Comedy, a movie overlooked in its time but appreciated today
as one of his great underappreciated works.
 Though Raging Bull was a tremendous critical success, its lukewarm
performance at the box office—it cost $18 million to make and earned $23
million, effectively a break-even movie—made Scorsese worry about his
future.1 Making films requires financing, and to secure financing, you have
to demonstrate you can make money. It’s a dilemma he’d grapple with
throughout his career; despite being an acclaimed director, he’s never been
a guaranteed money maker.
The King of Comedy would offer him little help in that regard. Again
praised by critics and ignored by audiences, the film bombed big, making
under $3 million on a $19 million budget and for a time languishing in
obscurity. The King of Comedy’s initial failure at the box office and later
success as an underappreciated Scorsese gem is appropriate because this is
a picture about failure, about not being appreciated, about being
overlooked, and about the lengths someone will take to be seen.
De Niro had purchased the script from Newsweek writer Paul D.
Zimmerman and repeatedly pushed Scorsese to direct, but the director kept
declining. Then, one day, he didn’t. Even then, he didn’t initially find the
personal connection he looks for in his pictures. “I didn’t really understand
where I stood in relationship to the film, the story, Rupert Pupkin, and Jerry
Langford, too, until I was in the process of making the film,” he said.2 Then
it clicked: the ideas of struggle, of rejection, of failure. He was exploring
aspects of himself without realizing it. “The amount of rejection in this film
is horrifying. There are scenes I almost can’t look at,” Scorsese said.3
Here we have Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), a socially awkward
loner on the fringes of society who dreams of becoming a big comedy star.
He believes he can fulfill those dreams with the help of talk show host Jerry
Langford (Jerry Lewis), but when Langford rebuffs Pupkin’s aggressive
salesmanship, Pupkin and his friend Masha (Sandra Bernhard) hatch a plan
to launch Pupkin into stardom by force. The entire premise is just to the left
of believable, but it’s sold by a De Niro performance that is quietly among
his most convincing and further cemented by an almost dreamlike approach
by Scorsese, who would use a similar tone to even greater effect in his next
film, After Hours. That dreamlike approach was appropriate, given that
much of the film deals with being detached from reality.
ANALYSIS
Put a smile on Travis Bickle’s face and give him a bad stand-up comedy
routine, and there will still be something off-putting about him. That’s
essentially who Rupert Pupkin is: a man so isolated from society and
detached from reality that his obsessions become dangerous.
The King of Comedy gives us a hazy form of reality that helps
underscore just how disconnected from the world Pupkin is. In the opening
scenes, we see a pushy, invasive Pupkin trying desperately to win an
audience with his idol, talk show host Jerry Langford. He pretends to be
part of Langford’s security detail and helps push away a crowd of fans, then
forces his way into a car with the host. Pupkin won’t stop talking and won’t
stop insisting that he would make a great guest on the show. Langford
agrees to talk with him again to discuss Pupkin’s comedy act, but it’s clear
he’s just brushing him off. We then cut to Pupkin having lunch with the
host. Langford is asking him to take over the show for six weeks during
Langford’s absence. Then we’re back to seeing Pupkin at home, practicing
a conversation with Langford. There is no cue, visual or otherwise, that
portions of this sequence are all in the character’s head. This blending of
reality and imagination is something the film often engages in. The result
borders on the hallucinogenic.
Like a less-menacing Bickle, Pupkin cannot pick up on social cues. He
doesn’t understand when he is crossing lines or making others
uncomfortable. He has little regard for or understanding of social norms.
Also like Bickle, it appears that to some extent this has been worsened by
isolation. Bickle’s was a self-imposed isolation—his narrated
correspondence with his parents indicates he once led a normal life but
chose to flee it—whereas Pupkin’s may not be. He still lives with his
mother. She berates him from elsewhere in their home, screeching like
Estelle Costanza (Estelle Harris), the perpetually complaining mother of
George Costanza (Jason Alexander) from TV’s Seinfeld. He sits alone in his
room, recording demo tapes, practicing for a career he’ll never have, and
from the other room, she repeatedly tells him to quiet down. The only friend
he appears to have is Masha, and she’s just as screwed up as he is.
This idea of Pupkin’s that he belongs onstage as an object of delight is
echoed throughout the film via the movie’s background characters, and it’s
disturbingly subtle. Typically, background actors are only meant to be set
dressing. They exist to lend a scene life and believability. Here, they
sometimes have a presence that looms large for the careful viewer and that
can subconsciously get under the skin of casual viewers. In the most
prominent example, Pupkin is out for dinner with Rita Keene (Diahnne
Abbott), a bartender acquaintance, and attempts to impress her with his
autograph book. Another patron quickly walks by and glances at their table.
Pupkin looks over his shoulder, aware someone was there, but immediately
goes back to what he was doing. For the rest of the scene, this patron is
framed behind Pupkin’s left shoulder, no focus on him, the same way any
other restaurant scene would be shot. He’s just another human-shaped blur
in the background. Unlike your typical background actor, however, this one
is staring. Though not in focus, his lack of movement and the fact that he’s
clearly looking at Pupkin’s table gives him an odd presence in the scene.
His stillness is off-putting. As Rupert tries to impress Rita by showing her
his own autograph placed among autographs by legends like Marilyn
Monroe, Ernie Kovacs, and Woody Allen (“He’s a personal friend of mine,”
Pupkin lies), the background actor begins mimicking Pupkin’s gestures, just
a few times, before walking off-screen. It’s a fleeting moment, yet it’s
distracting because it’s so far from the norm in movies. Later still, during an
argument with Masha, the pair walk through the streets, bickering. Again,
despite not being in focus, despite not being conspicuously framed, the
background actors stare at Pupkin, watching him as if he is on a stage. (The
restaurant scene also has a brief but telling insight into Pupkin’s character.
When he hands Rita his autograph and insists it will be worth a lot in a few
weeks, she says, “Rupert, you have not changed,” suggesting he’s lived in
this state of delusion for some time.)
If Pupkin is initially a less-threatening version of Travis Bickle, he
doesn’t remain benign. His persistence in trying to secure a meeting with
Langford begins as overly forward, becomes annoying, but before long
evolves into outright dangerous.
Pupkin deceives his way into Langford’s home. The talk show host is
understandably angry. He doesn’t know yet to fear Pupkin because on the
surface this stalker appears harmless. Obsessed, yes, but harmless. But
Pupkin is a stalker, and stalkers are not harmless. Dr. Doris M. Hall, a
criminology expert from California State University, said when dealing
with stalkers, “Don’t try to be nice; it can only work against you.”4 That’s
the approach Langford takes after Pupkin deceives his way into the host’s
home. He tears into him, giving him a brutal dose of reality, telling Pupkin
he suggested he follow up about his act only to get rid of him, saying he
wants nothing to do with him, and demanding he leave.

Overlooked in its day, The King of Comedy’s bleak look at celebrity obsession and the
desire for public affirmation rings even more true in the social media age than it did in 1983.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Photofest

If these tense scenes between De Niro and Lewis have a taste of

realness to them, it’s probably because they did. Lewis found De Niro’s
intense dedication to his roles off-putting, with De Niro going so far as to
refuse dinner invitations from Lewis because the characters were rivals and
he didn’t want to befriend Lewis while making the movie. “De Niro has
obviously never heard Noel Coward’s advice to actors about remembering
the lines and trying not to bump into the furniture,” Lewis said. “He just
could not forget this part at the end of the day’s work.”5 Lewis had similar
troubles with Bernhard, who was allowed to improvise most of her lines.
 But the slap of reality by Langford doesn’t bring Rupert Pupkin to his
senses. Quite the opposite. It prompts him to dig in, double down, and
become even more determined to get a guest shot on Langford’s show—
even if he has to break the law to do it.
Again harkening back to Bickle, Pupkin takes matters into his own
hands. “That’s the way they treated me,” Pupkin says, “and now look where
we are.” He plans out a kidnapping in order to present himself as the
comedy hero he longs to be. But where Bickle’s approach is wild and
unplanned, Pupkin’s is fairly intricate and well-considered. Langford is
kidnapped and held hostage. His safety is contingent upon Pupkin’s
demands to the studio being met. He doesn’t wade in, guns blazing; he sets
things up so that he’ll end up on television, delivering the monologue he
dreamed of delivering. That’s it. That’s his one goal: to tell his jokes on
television. And he succeeds.
A common narrative in Scorsese films is the story of a man’s rise and
fall. We’ve already seen elements of it in Who’s That Knocking at My
Door? and Mean Streets and New York, New York and Raging Bull, and
we’ll see it again in GoodFellas, Casino, The Aviator, and others. The King
of Comedy almost breaks that mold. Pupkin actually achieves his goal. He
gets his moment of adoration, or perceived adoration. He’s also jailed
afterward. That’s his fall. In his head, though, he won. He succeeded. He
finished what he had started. If he suffers a collapse, then he does so with
great satisfaction. He basks in the glow of that moment for the rest of his
days, obsessing over it, turning it over in his head. Is it a victory for him
despite having gone to prison? In some respects, it may be.
There is some debate among viewers as to whether The King of
Comedy’s ending represents reality. Scorsese himself seems to suggest it is
real, telling Vanity Fair, “He becomes successful without being good.”6
Still, it’s a curious way to perceive the sequence.
The picture ends with a montage showing Pupkin being released from
prison and his autobiography going on sale; the montage continues with
Pupkin calling Langford a friend and claiming he is entertaining numerous
offers to perform his comedy. Finally, he takes the stage at the start of a TV
special, and he is the star of the show. We experience a seemingly endless
introduction, music that never stops, and an announcer introducing Pupkin
over and over and over and over again. It’s a sad and dark ending with
almost sinister undertones. Though the film leaves it up to the viewer to
decide whether what we see is reality, the presentation appears to answer
the question for us. The obsessive repetition of his name, said like a mantra;
the fixation on being in front of a crowd who goes wild at the mere mention
of his name; and the almost hallucinogenic quality of the scene is a clear
indication that we’re inside Pupkin’s head. We’re experiencing what he
experiences. We’re in the same delusional state. It’s presented like a dream
sequence, unreal and beyond reality. Like Bickle glancing into his rearview
mirror at the end of Taxi Driver, here we see that Pupkin is as deranged as
he ever was.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Pupkin had his success, but Scorsese did not. The King of Comedy was a
box-office bomb. Critics loved it and still do, but audiences did not go see
it. Perhaps the subject matter made them uncomfortable. After all,
presenting a picture about the dark side of celebrity worship in a venue
designed for celebrity worship (i.e., the movie theater) is a risky endeavor.
But time has been kind to The King of Comedy. Today, it enjoys a
second life as an underappreciated and forward-looking Scorsese gem that
is arguably more relevant today than ever. With its focus on media,
celebrity obsession, and the protagonist’s pathological need for attention,
much of the picture rings with modern truth. Today, Rupert Pupkin would
stalk a YouTube star or Instagram influencer rather than a talk show host,
but the overall gist would remain unchanged. “We knew we were
commenting on the culture of the time,” Scorsese said much later, “but we
were not thinking that it would blow up where it is now.”7 Significant
elements were even borrowed from The King of Comedy for Warner Bros.’
2019 comic-book movie Joker, which features De Niro in a role
suspiciously reminiscent of Jerry Langford. As of this writing, Joker is the
highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time, and virtually every critical
review notes the debt it owes to this and Taxi Driver.
That’s today, however. At the time Comedy was released, it did little to
boost Scorsese’s career. The next several years would be a struggle for the
director. He’d wanted to make an adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1955
novel The Last Temptation of Christ, but the road to making that picture
was a rocky one. Dejected and needing to find his feel for filmmaking
again, he ended up taking on a strange little picture set in an even stranger
version of New York. It wouldn’t lead to renewed box office success, either,
but it would be delightfully weird.
 9

AFTER HOURS (1985)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: September 13, 1985
WRITTEN BY: Joseph Minion
STARRING: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Thomas Chong, Linda
Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Cheech Marin, Catherine
O’Hara
RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

P redictability is not one of Martin Scorsese’s strong suits. Though his

touchstone works share common traits and themes that the public
tends to associate with his name, he’s long had a way of throwing
curveballs at the audience. Following Raging Bull with something like The
King of Comedy was an example of that, as was following Casino with the
meditative Kundun. After Hours fits in the same category of movies that run
against the prevailing perception of his work.
It was also a film made of necessity, in some ways, a stopgap picture the
director gravitated toward when his plans for The Last Temptation of Christ
(temporarily) fell apart, a pause for breath before launching into that
difficult, controversial project. He was set to begin production on Last
Temptation in Israel in 1983, but executives at Paramount got cold feet and
canceled the picture that December. That left Scorsese without an
immediate project on the horizon. Without a big money maker on his
resume since 1976’s Taxi Driver, studios weren’t exactly beating down his
door to hand him bags of cash. “I went back to New York and really started
to take stock of what my life was like and who I was and what movies I
wanted to make,” he said.1
Rather than pursue another sprawling, epic work, the director thought
small, intimate, independent. A script by Joseph Minion caught the
attention of actors and producers Griffin Dunne and Amy Robinson, who
sent the screenplay to Scorsese. (Robinson previously had a small role in
Mean Streets as Charlie’s girlfriend, and Dunne read for the part of Tommy
in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore but was too old for the role.) The script
was a little strange—strange enough so that a young Tim Burton was almost
tapped to direct—and a lot paranoid, and it featured a main character
wracked with guilt for things he had never done. It was perfect for Scorsese
and came at a pivotal moment in his career. “I really felt that if I don’t pull
this one off, it’s completely over. I’ll never make another film,” Scorsese
said.2
He pulled it off. After Hours, a paranoid black comedy littered with
unusual characters and impossible coincidences, was a minor success at the
box office, enough of a critical success to win him a Best Director award at
Cannes, and an artistic success enough so that After Hours is now
considered a cult classic and one of the great hidden gems of his career.

ANALYSIS
Martin Scorsese’s best work is often deeply personal to him—and After
Hours is probably more personal to him than viewers realize. Maybe even
more than Scorsese realizes. The manic haze of the picture works in no
small part because, as much as it seems like an outlier for the director—it’s
a wild, strange movie that feels more like a hallucination than something
sliced from reality—it actually exists in a very familiar space.
 After Hours continues Scorsese’s love affair with the streets of New
York City, once again exploring its seedy bars, dark alleyways, and unusual
characters but this time doing it through a fever dream of a story. We’d
previously seen a personal view of the city in Mean Streets and a view of
the city through the eyes of an isolated loner in Taxi Driver, among other
glimpses of life in the Big Apple. After Hours returns to the idea of the
protagonist being an outsider but flips the notion on its head. Taxi Driver’s
Travis Bickle was an outsider in the city around him, a man who was alone
in a crowd, but the people around him were sane and stable. In After Hours,
Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is the opposite; he’s the only seemingly
normal person in a sea of misfits, kooks, and strange individuals. Here, the
protagonist is sane and well-adjusted; everyone else is a Bickle cousin. The
whole movie is a waking nightmare. “We just sweated blood over that
thing,” editor Thelma Schoonmaker said. “But he did want it to be a
nightmare, because it was. Marty himself had even experienced that wild
taxi ride, where the money flew out the window, you know? He had had
that experience himself.”3
That Hackett is going to have an unusual night is evident from the start.
He meets a young woman in a diner, Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette),
who suggests he call her if he’s interested in buying one of her roommate’s
sculptures of a bagel with cream cheese. Ignoring the weirdness, he takes
that to be an invitation. He calls; she asks him to come by right away; and
after an insane taxi ride through the streets of New York—perhaps the most
realistic aspect of the film—he arrives at her apartment. Marcy’s roommate,
Kiki Bridges (Linda Fiorentino), hangs out the apartment window to toss
him the keys. It’s just a split second of rapid cuts, but it’s the pivotal
moment of the film and arguably the movie’s best-known sequence. This
fleeting image of the keys falling from above is the moment upon which the
entire narrative hinges, the point in which Hackett leaps into a wormhole
and jumps from our world to a much stranger place. Not literally, of course,
but it certainly feels that way. As the keys fall, there is the faint sound of
thunder. There is something sinister about them, like they are a harbinger of
doom, so at the last moment, he steps aside and lets them fall to the ground
rather than catch them.
But it’s too late. By showing up at Marcy’s door, he has already taken
his first step into an alternate world. Marcy appears to be hiding some great
secret. Kiki is hiding nothing. All ’80s punk style and attitude, she creates
papier-mâché sculptures, including one that reminds Paul of Edvard
Munch’s 1893 painting The Scream. We don’t know it yet, but that
sculpture is setting up several future plot points. In fact, virtually everything
in this film quietly sets up future events because, as we come to discover,
Paul’s night will unfold in a series of horrible, awkward coincidences that
plunge him deeper and deeper into circumstances that spiral well out of his
control.
This early scene foreshadows what is to come in other ways, too, when
Kiki makes a comment that ends up being a commentary on everyone else
in the movie. As Paul massages her while waiting for Marcy to get home,
he compliments her body. Kiki agrees with his positive assessment. “Not a
lot of scars,” she says. “Some women I know are covered with them head to
toe. Not me.” It’s meant to be just one more item to add to the list of
weirdness Paul has already experienced, yet it’s more than that. All the
people he encounters over the course of this long night are damaged in
some way, some physically, most mentally, but every one of them is scarred
in one way or another. The contrast here is noteworthy, too. On the surface,
Kiki is the strange one, the one on the fringes of society, the one outside the
mainstream. She chain-smokes and indulges in strange art and lounges
around topless despite having just met Paul, and she’s got that punk-infused
style that is shorthand for “rebellious outsider.” Despite this, Kiki is in
many ways more grounded than anyone else but Paul. Most of the other
people he encounters seem normal on the surface, but underneath they are
just askew from the rest of us. They live with a hidden madness. Kiki, on
the other hand, openly shows us exactly who she is. Kiki talks about literal
damage, but most of the damage we see from After Hours’ characters is
internal, and much of this damage is revealed by the movie’s most
prominent device: improbable coincidence.
Paul tells Kiki a story about his childhood. As a child, he had to get his
tonsils taken out. After the surgery, there was no room in the pediatric ward,
so he was put in the burn ward with a blindfold on so he wouldn’t see the
people there. He was instructed not to remove it, or they’d have to operate
again. That night he took off the blindfold anyway—and the story ends
there. Kiki falls asleep. Marcy returns, and Paul goes with her to her room,
where he spots medication for burns and later a book on reconstructive
surgery for burn victims. He spots scars on her legs but doesn’t mention
them. “Tonight, I feel like I’m going to let loose or something. I feel like
something is really going to happen here,” she says, a tempting statement
from an attractive woman, until she begins telling him about the time she
was held at knifepoint in that very room and raped for six hours. Then she
says it was her boyfriend who did it, and she slept through it all. What is
truth here? Marcy’s stories shift and change, always strange, always bleak.
There is a sense that none of this is real, that the moment when the keys fell
toward Paul was the flip of a switch that thrust him into a foggy dream
world, and try as he might, he cannot escape it.
Paul deceives Marcy and leaves the apartment. He ends up in a small
dive bar, where he meets a frustrated bartender, Tom (John Heard), and a
weary waitress, Julie (Teri Garr). Paul doesn’t have train fare to get home—
it blew out of the cab he took to Marcy’s—but he arranges to get the money
from Tom. A series of improbable events leads him back to Marcy’s
apartment, where he finds her dead of an overdose. That’s when he notices
that Tom’s keychain bears a skull identical to one of Marcy’s tattoos.
More back-and-forths. He is in and out of Julie’s apartment, where he
sees that she is a sketch artist. She’ll eventually sketch him for a wanted
poster. Tom finds out his girlfriend killed herself, and of course, we find out
his girlfriend was none other than Marcy. At Julie’s apartment again, Paul
sees that she has one of Kiki’s bagel sculptures. Back and forth, back and
forth. It’s just one weird connection atop another, tying a knot so intricate it
would take Alexander the Great to cut through it.
Paul thinks he finds some normality in another woman he meets, an ice
cream truck driver, but this only digs him in deeper when she spots a
wanted poster of him sketched by Julie. People in the neighborhood believe
he not only killed Marcy but also that he is responsible for a series of break-
ins plaguing the community. He has to run for his life.
Paul finally finds safety in the basement of a punk club, where he
spends time with June (Verna Bloom), an older woman who is a blur of
motherly caring and mature sexuality. He cuddles her, childlike, fearful of
the mob chasing him, while she strokes his hair. Then they share a sensual
dance to “Is That All There Is?” a 1960s hit sung by Peggy Lee. When the
mob finally arrives, June hides Paul beneath layers of papier-mâché until he
looks remarkably like Kiki’s sculpture from earlier in the film. A pair of
serial criminals played by comedians Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong
steal him, thinking he is a statue they’ve been trying to get the whole
movie. They drive away with him. He falls out of their truck right in front
of his office, where the papier-mâché shatters. He cleans himself off, and he
once again returns to the utterly mundane grind of office work.
There is something almost Hitchcockian in Paul’s wrong-man-on-the-
run flight from these people, except, unlike Hitchcock heroes who take
flight in order to clear their names, Paul doesn’t aim to clear his name. He
has no hope to. He just wants to get back to his normal life. More
Scorsesian is that Paul continually feels a sense of responsibility for things
he is not responsible for. Overdoses, thefts, mistrust, betrayals: Everyone
hangs their issues on him. This wasn’t written as a film about Catholic guilt,
but it’s a minor thread the director was able to connect to.
After Hours may be a bizarre journey through the weirder side of an
already weird city, but is it saying anything beyond that? When seen
through the lens of Martin Scorsese’s career, especially during a period
when the project at the forefront of his mind was one concerning the life
and times of Jesus Christ, it’s certainly possible to see After Hours as a
gentle probing of Catholic ideas. Paul’s circular journey out of reality and
ultimately back to it is a statement on our sense of place and belonging and
on trusting what we know. The unknown can be alluring. Beautiful women
can be seductive. But such temptations can lead to sin, and once wrapped in
sin, it’s difficult to unwrap one’s self. Paul reached this place by following
temptation, after all. He stuck around Marcy’s apartment even after things
got weird because he hoped for sexual gratification. Lust ruled him.
Throughout his wild evening, he never truly turns his back on what initially
brought him there, either; he simply tries to flee the situation. It’s only after
he encounters June, an attractive older woman in whom he instead seeks
motherly comfort instead of sexual gratification, that he is finally offered a
window out of the earthly hell he finds himself in.
That vague sense of guilt has been a hallmark of the director’s work,
though it’s one usually treated with seriousness. Charlie’s gloomy
conscience in Mean Streets, for example, is a cloud that hangs over him and
guides his (often poor) decision making. By contrast, here it’s handled with
humor. Paul is made to feel bad about things that aren’t his fault or that he
was no party to. His reactions, the things he does, the way he tries to retreat
from the unforeseen consequences of his actions—this is an absurd but
funny means of showing us how guilt can drive us to strange places.
In an early draft of the picture, Paul would not have escaped from his
papiermâché prison. Cheech and Chong were to have driven off with him,
leaving his fate a mystery. This was deemed too dark by the studio. Another
draft included a bizarre idea in which Paul effectively crawls inside June’s
womb and is birthed again on the West Side Highway, returning to the
normal world that way.4 Mercifully, both ideas were dropped. Paul’s simple
return to the working world provides needed contrast to his dreamlike
experience of the night before. After all, one ceases to be able to recognize
normalcy when one is always immersed in the abnormal.
The picture is also quite bleak. The absurdist humor of After Hours
rings as strange and unsettling because it’s not treated as comedy. The film
doesn’t offer you a wink and a nudge. When Marcy tells Paul how her
estranged husband (if he even exists) has such on obsession with The
Wizard of Oz that he screams, “Surrender, Dorothy,” whenever he reaches
orgasm, the oddness of the story is given no punchline or pause for laughter.
It just hangs in the air, a story neither we nor Paul are equipped to process,
before Paul is again launched into his next encounter with madness. It’s
perhaps the perfect kind of humor for a director known for his almost-
manic tendencies.
In other hands, After Hours may have been a straight comedy, all
playful misadventure and misunderstanding, but in Scorsese’s hands, it
becomes as much about people and their neurotic behavior as it does about
the barrage of extraordinary connections Paul finds himself caught up in.
The director is usually concerned about characters more than plot, about
people more than narrative, so it’s little surprise that in his hands this tightly
plotted comedic thriller is as much a study of quirky city dwellers as it is a
playful, Hitchcock-inspired suspense comedy. Paul Hackett’s journey
transforms him into an outsider in a neighborhood of outsiders, a place
where seemingly normal people hide bizarre secrets. He’s isolated, can’t
escape, and is repeatedly made to feel as if he’s done something wrong
despite doing his best to be a good person throughout.
“Marty really delighted in the awful things that happened to Paul
Hackett,” Dunne said.5 The actor said at times he felt as if he was playing
Scorsese himself at that point in his life. Scorsese was a man looking for
purpose, looking for some way to continue making his art. Hackett’s
misadventures spoke to him in that regard. The character was “guilt ridden
for nothing, which I adored,” the director said, and the movie was made
during a time when (in his mind, at least) his future as a director was in
doubt, with a huge passion project having been swept out from under him
after sets had already been built.6 Indeed, Roger Ebert observed, “Each new
person that Paul meets promises that they will take care of him, make him
happy, lend him money, give him a place to stay, let him use the phone,
trust him with their keys, drive him home—and every offer of mercy turns
into an unanticipated danger. The film could be read as an emotional
autobiography of that period in Scorsese’s life.”7
Movies like Mean Streets, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Silence
are rightfully recognized as works that reflect important aspects of Martin
Scorsese’s inner self. Perhaps it’s time that After Hours is added to the list.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Today, After Hours enjoys a second life as an underappreciated Scorsese
gem, a picture critics and fans alike cite as one worth revisiting. A lost
masterpiece? That would be overstating the case. But it is an often-
overlooked slice of bizarre brilliance from the most unpredictable director
of the last fifty years.
More importantly, it lifted Scorsese during a period of self-doubt and
temporarily got him away from the troubled Last Temptation project. He’d
eventually get back to that project and the significant amount of controversy
it stirred up, but first he’d take one other detour, and this detour would be to
an even more unexpected place than After Hours: a follow-up to a twenty-
five-year-old classic featuring one of the biggest movie stars in cinema
history.
 10

THE COLOR OF MONEY

(1986)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: October 17, 1986
WRITTEN BY: Richard Price
STARRING: Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

B
y the mid-1980s, Martin Scorsese was on a four-picture streak of
box-office failures. After Hours stumbled to profitability despite
lukewarm audience reception, but New York, New York; Raging Bull; and
The King of Comedy were all duds. No director, not even one as talented as
Scorsese, can keep making movies when they consistently fail to turn a
profit. With his passion project, The Last Temptation of Christ, seemingly
dead in the water, his career was at a crossroads.
 Salvation came from an unusual place: in a (sort of) sequel to a twenty-
five-year-old movie about billiard players. Starring Paul Newman and
Jackie Gleason, along with Piper Laurie and George C. Scott, 1961’s The
Hustler was widely considered a modern classic when Scorsese was tapped
for a follow-up. The original had garnered nine Academy Award
nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best
Supporting Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing—lofty shoes to fill by any
measure. It told the story of “Fast” Eddie Felson (Newman), a pool hustler
with his sights set on the best of the best, Minnesota Fats (Gleason), and
helped cement Newman, who had previously been nominated for Best
Actor for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, into legend. And now, a quarter-century
later, they were talking about revisiting Fast Eddie’s life as an older man.
The thing is, Scorsese wasn’t looking to make this picture. He didn’t
have a pool-hall flick in mind. He wasn’t seeking an excuse to do one,
either. He wanted to make The Last Temptation of Christ. The Color of
Money hinged on the wishes of the aforementioned silver-screen legend:
“Paul Newman liked Raging Bull and wrote me a letter. So it was basically
worked around Newman, that’s how we got it made.”1
At this juncture in the director’s career, it may have seemed like a no-
brainer. Your recent movies have not done well, and you get a call from one
of the most beloved actors of all time to do a sequel to one of his most
beloved films? You jump at the chance.
It wasn’t that simple for Scorsese, though. He wanted to ensure he could
find something of himself in the movie. “If it’s not personal, I can’t be there
in the morning,” he said.2 This was no small task, either, because the
director had never worked with someone as big as Newman. Scorsese had
worked closely with Robert De Niro, yes, but theirs was and remains a
special kind of collaboration, a meeting of like minds that blossomed into
artistic kinship and friendship. Scorsese was used to working with De Niro.
They had worked closely together. They were collaborators. Their stars
shined brighter together. And as acclaimed an actor as he already was, De
Niro was not yet the enduring legend he is today.
Paul Newman was another matter altogether. He may not have won an
Academy Award for Best Actor until The Color of Money, but it was his
seventh nomination (out of nine overall), and the win was widely
considered a nod to the previous six. He was also astonishingly popular.
“How many teenage girls had that famous poster of Newman—his face in
monochrome, his eyes a startling sky blue—tacked to their bedroom
walls?” Time magazine wondered shortly after his death in 2008. “Then
Newman did something really remarkable: he sustained that early promise
for five decades.”3
Scorsese had never worked with a star this big. But after a string of box-
office failures, the director had to make a picture that could make money,
especially with a star of this caliber in the lead: “Even when I try to make a
Hollywood film, there’s something in me that says, ‘Go the other way.’
With The Color of Money, working with two big stars, we tried to make a
Hollywood movie. Or rather, I tried to make one of my pictures, but with a
Hollywood star: Paul Newman. That was mainly making a film about an
American icon. That’s what I zeroed in on.”4
The Color of Money tells the story of an older Fast Eddie who has
turned from pool hustling to running liquor. After spotting a uniquely
talented young player in a local pool hall, he decides to take the player,
Vincent (Tom Cruise), under his wing. Vincent already has a manager-
slash-girlfriend in Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), but Eddie
believes with the pair guiding him, the trio can make a lot of money.
Vincent is too wild and intent on flashy wins instead of subtle scams,
however, and after Eddie himself is roped in by a hustler, the two part ways.
They meet again in a big tournament in Atlantic City, where Eddie defeats
Vincent, only to learn that Vincent learned his lessons after all: He threw
the game in order to make money betting on the match. Humiliated that
Vincent let him win and determined to beat him for real, Eddie decides he’s
back in the billiards racket.
In many respects, the movie would live or die on Newman’s stardom.

ANALYSIS
The Color of Money is about a talented man trying to reclaim a career that
had slipped through his fingers. What better person to direct it than Martin
Scorsese at this point in his life? Scorsese knew this was an opportunity to
reinvigorate his status as a filmmaker, but he needed to do it right. In this
case, “right” meant building the movie around Newman. “We shaped the
story around him, to emphasize those qualities that he had in him, at that
point in his life,” Scorsese said. “He was a man who was getting older, he
understood the nature of it.… But (Fast Eddie) had also to deal with his
limitations as an older person. I wanted it to be a story of an older person
who corrupts a young person, like a serpent in the garden of innocence.”5
To say that the film was a love letter to Newman would be exaggerating,
but it’s hardly unfair to say that he gets a soft treatment throughout. At this
point in his career, Scorsese’s male protagonists were anything but
sympathetic. Almost every single prior one is to some extent an
unsympathetic person. Paul Hackett in After Hours is the sole exception.
His protagonists tend to be selfish, self-centered, sometimes greedy, and
always troubled. Fast Eddie is all of these things, too, but he’s not only
charismatic—with Paul Newman in the role, how could he be anything but?
—but he also garners more audience sympathy than any other Scorsese lead
until this point. Cruise’s Vincent is brash and cocky to the point where it’s
sometimes vulgar, so we want Eddie to put him in his place. Dishonest
hustler though he is, it’s easy to root for Newman’s character.
One thing the film wasn’t was a deeply personal work of self-expression
for Martin Scorsese. He was a gun for hire, a movie mercenary. It’s pure
entertainment without a great deal of Scorsese in it, outside of some
fabulously creative directing of pool matches that hearken back to his
dynamic work on Raging Bull.
The Color of Money was a commercial film and was never going to be
anything but, yet Scorsese only accepted the job after pushing for a rewrite
of the script. He wanted at least something he could latch onto. That
something ended up being Eddie’s journey toward rediscovering his love
for his art. The way Scorsese saw it, “He takes this young kid under his
wing and corrupts him. And then somewhere along the road, in the
education process, he reeducated himself and decides to play again. It’s
about a man who changes his mind at the age of fifty-two.”6 And there’s his
hook. There’s what lets him bite in the story because there are elements in
Eddie the director could see reflected in himself. After all, Scorsese had to
again find not just his ability to make money with film but also his touch for
winning over audiences. At a point in his career when he was considering
other paths, it was either succeed or move on. The same choice was in front
of Eddie. So though not personal, though not initially something that would
express something inside himself, there is a little something here the
director was able to work with.
And, of course, there is the delight the director took in choreographing
the billiards matches. By his own admission, Scorsese is not much for
sports competition. This did not prevent him from creating some of the
most dynamic boxing scenes ever put to film. The same holds true here,
though he did have a comfort level with the setting, given that he grew up
around the kind of bars and pool halls where the action takes place. One of
the most memorable scenes in Mean Streets, for example, is a fight that
takes place in a dingy pool hall. So no, Scorsese is not a sports director. He
doesn’t gravitate to competitive events. But when it comes to focusing on
the high-energy and adrenaline-rush moments of competition, few do it
better. Much like Raging Bull’s carefully constructed fight sequences, each
shot in Vincent’s various matches were meticulously planned and staged for
maximum effect. All were mapped out ahead of time, and Tom Cruise
devoted himself to practicing under the tutelage of Michael Sigel, widely
considered one of the best billiards players in history. (He won more than
one hundred professional tournaments and at thirty-five became the
youngest male player ever to be inducted into the Billiards Hall of Fame.)
With one exception—a shot in which the cue ball leaps over two other balls
—Cruise made all his own shots, and Scorsese captures them with dizzying
camera work, shots from above, moving cameras, and deft editing, as
always supported by editor Thelma Schoonmaker, his most important
collaborator.
The story itself is fairly straightforward, though those elements that do
fit in the Scorsese body of work are not explored with the depth of his
previous films. Fast Eddie, twenty-five years wiser than the one we met in
1961’s The Hustler, has been running whiskey, making money, and living
comfortably doing it. He has cash. He flies under the radar. He spends time
with beautiful women. But when he sees Vincent easily beat a local pool
shark, Julian (John Turturro), with a touch that few players have, it sparks
something in him. The allure of greatness calls to him once again but
through someone else.
Eddie tries to teach Vincent the art of reading people, of the “human
moves” that make hustling more than just winning pool games. Vincent
doesn’t understand, at least not at first. He’s young and arrogant and
addicted to the high of dominating other players. Eddie knows better. He
knows scamming is a people game, not a pool game. With some basic
social engineering, Eddie tricks Vincent at dinner, predicting he can pick up
a woman Vincent doesn’t realize Eddie already knows. It’s the first of
several lessons he’ll learn.
The focus is on Eddie, on Newman, but the real character arc is with
Vincent, who learns to hone his powers and use them to hustle. Eddie is a
teacher. This is old hat to him. But he’s also someone looking to recapture
some of his former glory. Eddie wants to feel the rush of getting one over
on people again, but this time he’ll be doing it vicariously through Vincent.
He never did stop hustling—as the film opens, he’s selling bootleg whiskey
—but pool hustling never left his blood, and there isn’t anything quite like
hustling someone face to face and them not even realizing you’re doing it.
“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned,” he says, and for Fast
Eddie, a big part of the fun is when you pull in someone who doesn’t realize
how badly they are about to get beat.
It’s Vincent who fills him with that fire again. “I’m hungry again and
you bled that back into me,” he says. It’s not that Vincent reminds him of
his younger self. This isn’t a father-son mentorship. It’s that he sees Vincent
as a tool, as something he can harness to continue hustling people without
having to get his own hands dirty. First, however, he has to tame Vincent’s
youthful wildness. “You have to have two things to win,” he tells the young
player. “You got to have brains and you got to have balls. You’ve got too
much of one and not enough of the other.”
Eddie knows that the game isn’t the game, it’s all the stuff that happens
around the game that matters. Vincent is too high on winning to see this.
The trio set up a scam to lure in unsuspecting players, but when Eddie and
Carmen act like a couple as part of the act, Vincent can’t handle it. Carmen
understands all short-term actions are in service to a long-term goal, but
Vincent can’t see beyond the shot in front of him. Eddie convinces them to
go on a road trip so he can show them both the art of the scam. The end
goal is Atlantic City for a big tournament, during which the best players in
the country will be on hand. A lot of money could be made. In order to get
there, however, they’ll have to scam their way through town after town,
learning how to take in unsuspecting rubes and pros alike.
It doesn’t go well. Vincent is good, but he can’t deal with losing, and
losing on purpose is part of the scam. He shows off at one point, disgusting
Eddie, who drives away in a fury. (Scorsese straps his camera to the side of
Eddie’s car in this shot, a dizzying way to get across his anger.) Vincent
goes back into the parlor, easily beats anyone foolish enough to play him,
and in his victory ruins any chance he had to hustle there ever again. “The
town is dead to you,” Eddie explains. You have to suck people in first. Only
then can you exploit them.
Eddie tries to keep Vincent’s ego in check, but his own pride is easily
wounded, as well. Feeling a need to prove he can still hustle, he gets taken
in by a pool shark, Amos (Forest Whitaker). He knows Amos is a hustler.
He asks. Amos’s evasive answers make clear what’s happening here. But
pride begins to drive him. Eddie goes back again and again, thinking he can
win his money back but falling deeper into the hole each time. He gets
taken. This destroys his ego. He bails out on guiding Vincent and Carmen,
crushed with guilt and self-doubt, thinking himself unworthy.
When we finally get to Atlantic City for the tournament both Eddie and
Vincent had been aiming for, the moment is initially treated almost with an
air of reverence. The hall in which the tournament takes place is presented
like a cathedral, the camera high above it all, drifting downward, the
lighting soft, organ music introducing us to this place of wonder. Here, the
tournament takes a predictable turn—Eddie faces off against Vincent, and
the charming silver-screen icon wins, a story decision that borders on cliché
—and subverts that predictable turn by revealing that Vincent threw the
match. Eddie didn’t win—not truly. It turns out that Vincent had learned his
lessons well and by purposely losing had actually made himself a lot of
money. When he gives Eddie his cut and reveals the truth, Eddie is deflated.
This is a worse blow to his ego than losing to Amos. He forfeits the next
match and gives the money back. This is not how he wanted to win.
The film flirts with the rise-and-fall theme that is so prevalent in
Scorsese’s work but doesn’t see it through. What little fall Fast Eddie
experiences here is short-lived. He briefly believes he failed to impart his
hustler’s wisdom to Vincent but realizes that Vincent actually had learned
his lessons all too well. Eddie’s ego is crushed at his illegitimate win, but
ultimately, it only serves to give him drive enough to prove himself. The
pair arrange one last match: a private game, a legitimate competition.
The final shot of the picture is a freeze-frame of “Fast” Eddie Felson
smiling right after a break, his final words: “Hey, I’m back.” A fitting end
to what might be the director’s most populist, box-office-centric picture.
This is a hopeful ending. An ending that suggests “Fast” Eddie still has
some hustle left in him. It’s not Henry Hill in a bathrobe in the ’burbs or
Travis Bickle glaring into a rearview mirror or Jake LaMotta monologuing
to himself. It’s a man with a fresh start.
And so was Scorsese.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

In some ways the ending of The Color of Money was reflective of Scorsese
himself, though he couldn’t have known it when he was shooting the movie.
Without a financial success since Taxi Driver a decade prior, there was the
very real possibility that this could have been the director’s last chance to
make a major Hollywood picture. It would be stretching it to say that The
Color of Money saved his career, but it certainly renewed confidence in his
ability to deliver a profitable picture and corrected the downward financial
(but not artistic) trajectory he was on. “The Color of Money was a good
commercial exercise for me,” he later said. “I learned a great deal about
structure and style. Learned what may not have worked.”7
The picture was a huge success, sitting at number 2 for five weeks
straight—the popular comedy Crocodile Dundee prevented it from claiming
the number 1 spot—and remaining in the top ten for nine straight weeks. It
garnered strong critical reaction, too, with largely positive reviews and four
Academy Award nominations, including another Best Actor nod for
Newman, who this time won.
Much like Fast Eddie Felson, Martin Scorsese was back. So naturally,
his next picture would be a hugely controversial reimagining of the life of
Jesus Christ that many theaters refused to play.
 11

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF

CHRIST (1988)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: August 12, 1988
WRITTEN BY: Paul Schrader
STARRING: Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, Harry
Dean Stanton, David Bowie
RUNNING TIME: 163 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

I
n a career filled with controversial films, there is perhaps none made by
Martin Scorsese more controversial than The Last Temptation of Christ.
The same holds true for film as a personal statement. In a career in which
his best works are usually his most personal, few are more personal to him,
arguably not even the semiautobiographical Mean Streets. But whether the
film has merits as a singular piece of work representative of a period in the
director’s life will probably always be overshadowed by the hornet’s nest of
criticism stirred up upon its release and the difficult gauntlet the director
had to run just to get it made.
The Last Temptation of Christ is based on the 1955 novel of the same
name. Written by nine-time Nobel Prize in Literature nominee Nikos
Kazantzakis, the Greek work was first translated into English in 1960, just
one in an entire career filled with works that grapple with spirituality, faith,
and the juncture between man and myth and religion.
Both the book and the film take the same approach: They explore the
ramifications behind the idea that Jesus Christ was simultaneously man and
God, mortal and divine, a flawed human and the son of God. “I believe that
Jesus is fully divine,” Scorsese said, “but the teaching at Catholic schools
placed such an emphasis on the divine side that if Jesus walked into a room,
you’d know He was God because He glowed in the dark, instead of being
just another person. But if He was like that, we always thought, then when
the temptations came to Him, surely it was easy to resist them because He
was God.”1
Yet if Christ’s sacrifice was easy, then would it have been a sacrifice at
all? Last Temptation answers and says “no.” For there to be meaning in the
crucifixion, for Christ’s death and resurrection to truly have significance, he
must have struggled to rise above his earthly state and embrace his divine
nature. This is the crux of the story and a central factor in why Scorsese had
so much difficulty getting it made.
Growing up a devout Catholic, the idea of telling Jesus’s life story had
always intrigued the director, but it wasn’t until 1972 when Last Temptation
landed on his radar. While filming Boxcar Bertha, Barbara Hershey gave
him a copy of the book. After reading it, Scorsese optioned the novel and
enlisted Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, to adapt it into a screenplay.
He landed a deal with Paramount, and in 1983 filming was set to begin. He
had a budget of $14 million, locations scouted in Israel, sets built, costumes
in the works, casting completed (including musicians Sting and Ray Davies
from the Police and the Kinks, respectively). But even before filming got
under way, the budget was swelling, and protest letters were starting to
come in from religious groups that didn’t want the movie to get made. In
December 1983, with production almost under way, Paramount decided to
pull the plug.
Disheartened, the director went on to make After Hours, in part just to
keep himself involved in film, then The Color of Money to show he could
still sell tickets. He still didn’t give up on the idea of making Last
Temptation, however, and when Universal expressed interest, Scorsese said
he could make the movie for just $7 million and complete filming in under
two months. Universal agreed. The director and crew got to work, and an
uproar resulted.
This was to be expected, especially in a 1980s United States that had
taken a sharp turn toward the right. Censorship of supposedly morally
questionable material was on the rise following a rather permissive 1970s.
The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) formed in 1985 to push for
warning labels on music with explicit content. Judith Krug, director of the
American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom in the
1980s, said incidents of libraries and schools banning books increased more
than threefold starting around 1982.2 Organizations like the American
Family Association and Morality in Media became powerful lobbies that
pushed the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on
supposedly indecent television and radio broadcasts and more. This was the
atmosphere in which Martin Scorsese released a film depicting Jesus Christ,
doubting whether he was the Messiah or not.
The Last Temptation of Christ is clear about its origins and intentions. A
title card at the start states, “This film is not based on the Gospels, but upon
the fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict.” Unlike the biblical
epics Scorsese grew up with and that audiences adored—The Greatest Story
Ever Told (1965), The Robe (1960), The Ten Commandments (1956), and
others—this picture is less a celebration of biblical stories and values as it is
an exploration of what those stories actually mean, or at least from a certain
point of view. That’s in part what generated so much criticism.

ANALYSIS
“It is accomplished.” Those three simple words mark the end of The Last
Temptation of Christ’s potent and controversial exploration of what it means
to be divine, though they apply as much to Scorsese’s arduous journey in
making this picture as they do to Christ’s journey toward becoming the
Messiah.
 As the film opens, we see Jesus of Nazareth (Willem Dafoe) making
crosses for the Romans. “I’m struggling,” he tells Judas (Harvey Keitel),
pain written on his face. From the first, this is a Jesus audiences were
unfamiliar with: a Jesus who was just a man, as weak and vulnerable as any
of us. This is a Jesus not yet convinced of his own divinity. Even in
narration, he speaks of God as an entity separate from him, not recognizing
the oneness of the two.
His very tangible humanity is emphasized again in his closeness to
Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey). He sits in waiting as she services a
line of men. He can see what is happening between the thin beaded curtains.
Her sexuality is unhidden. Evening falls. The last of her clients leaves.
Jesus approaches. He asks her for forgiveness, though for what we are not
told. She tells him it’s not that easy. “Just because you need forgiveness,
don’t ask me to do it,” she says. This Jesus is emotionally fragile,
vulnerable, human. “You’re pitiful. I hate you. Here’s my body. Save it,”
she says to him, pulling his hand to her belly. He pulls away. It is his first
instance of resisting the most human aspects of himself while also
emphasizing that he is, in fact, a mortal man. The director notes, “The point
of that scene was to show the proximity of sexuality to Jesus, the occasion
of sin. Jesus must have seen a naked woman—must have. So why couldn’t
we show that?”3
This scene and the doubt it conveys is echoed again and again in the
film and always in small, human ways like this. There is little bombast in
Last Temptation and certainly no scenes that could be described as epic. For
the most part, The Last Temptation of Christ is shot with great simplicity.
It’s a sparse film, almost ugly in its barrenness. This was in part an aesthetic
choice and in part a necessity forced upon the director by its relatively
modest budget, just half of what he initially envisioned. But the grounded
nature of the picture as far as themes and character are concerned was not a
result of a tight budget. It was a creative decision meant to put the Jesus of
the Gospels in a world the audience could understand and to differentiate
this silver-screen version of Christ from other on-screen depictions. The
Hollywood biblical epic was a proud American tradition, after all,
especially during Scorsese’s formative years in the 1950s and 1960s. As he
tried to do with the musical genre in New York, New York, his goal was to
strip away traditional Hollywood trappings in an effort to find truth.
 “In those films, the characters were speaking with British accents. The
dialogue was beautiful, in some cases, and the films look beautiful. They
were pageants. But they had nothing really to do with our lives,” Scorsese
said. “Jesus lived in the world. He wasn’t in a temple. He wasn’t in church.
He was in the world. He was on the street. The picture I wanted to make
was about Jesus on Eighth Avenue.”4 Which is not to say there aren’t
directorial flourishes of note. In one memorable shot, for instance, Jesus
stands on a cliffside, talking with a follower. He says God wants to “push
me over.” As he utters the phrase, he gestures with his hand, and the camera
moves as if flung away, twisting and tumbling over the edge of the cliff, a
fleeting instant of dizziness. It’s a visual way of telling us that Jesus does
not feel in full control of himself; he cannot grasp who he is. He struggles
with his own divinity. His disciples may be convinced of it, but he isn’t. Not
yet. The weight of his very real humanity is still heavy on his shoulders. He
wonders, how can he also be God when he is so—ordinary?

Willem Dafoe’s depiction of a conflicted, very human Jesus Christ helped stir up one of the
biggest controversies of Martin Scorsese’s career. Universal Pictures
 “I don’t steal, I don’t fight, I don’t kill, not because I don’t want to, but
because I’m afraid. I want to rebel against you, against everything, against
God, but I’m afraid,” Jesus says. “You want to know who my God is? Fear.
You look inside me and that’s all you’ll find.” A startling thing to think of
these words coming from the Messiah, until you consider how relatable
those words are. Who among us would not fear the idea that they are God in
human form? Were the notion to come into your head that you were God
manifested as a mortal man, would you not think yourself going mad?
Would you not be concerned with your own mental health?
This struggle is the heart of the picture. For all its interpretations and
reinterpretations of stories from the Bible—turning water to wine, the
storming of the temple, meeting John the Baptist (Andre Gregory), raising
Lazarus (Tomas Arana) from the dead, and of course the crucifixion—the
narrative pulse is not in miracles and sermons; it’s in Jesus coming to grips
with his divine nature.
He intervenes when Mary is about to be stoned, asking the crowd who
is without sin. This scene is especially potent because it lays bare Jesus as a
man engaging in what must have been a terrifying and brave act. In a
contemporary analysis of the film for Crisis Magazine, a Catholic
publication, Richard Alleva observed, “To this mob, he’s just a meddling
fool who’s asking for it.” Depicting Jesus in this way, as vulnerable, as
lacking superhuman powers but standing up for true righteousness anyway,
means “we are allowed to eavesdrop on history and discover exactly what
dangerous improvisation Jesus might have had to resort to in order to quell
a mob.”5 Challenged to cast a stone only if without sin, an old man in the
mob insists he has nothing to hide, but Jesus sees through him, says the man
cheats his workers, says he knows about the time the old man spends with
the widow, Judith. If the man casts a stone at Mary, Jesus asks, doesn’t he
fear God will wither his arm in payment for the deed?
Here, Jesus begins to realize his words have power. He is not yet
convinced of his own divinity. He fears saying the wrong thing (and also
the right thing), but he begins to understand the potency of his words. And
so he begins to preach a gospel of love. Soon he has a flock following him.
We even get an awkward 1980s minimontage, synth music and thundering
drums by Peter Gabriel providing the score as Jesus walks toward the
camera, the crowd growing behind him with each crossfade.
 Sound is put to better use when he meets John the Baptist. When they
first speak, the bustle of the crowd around them is suddenly muted, as if the
two are alone despite being surrounded by scores of others. This isn’t
merely sound designed so the audience can better hear the conversation,
either. It’s meant to isolate them and emphasize the importance of their
meeting. John the Baptist seems to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, yet they
debate love versus anger. John argues that anger is God’s way, citing the
Bible. Jesus says anger is not the answer. So what is the answer, John asks?
Jesus answers, “I don’t know.” The uncertainty is striking.
Until this point, the picture is fairly grounded in a reality viewers can
understand. Jesus is a man. His followers are people inspired by his words.
That there is a debate over his divinity, even in his own mind, is
understandable. His disciples debate whether he is the Messiah, too. Then
he experiences strange visions in the desert: a snake with a woman’s voice,
a lion with the voice of Judas, he bites from an apple that is filled with
blood. And then when he hears his followers wondering aloud if he truly is
divine, if he is God made flesh, he reaches inside his own chest and tears
out his heart—literally. This truly is a miracle.
Initially, Scorsese resisted such overt displays of the supernatural, but
eventually he relented, leaving the truth of some of the miracles a question
for the audience to ponder. “Paul (Schrader) wrote the first version of the
script coming out of the psychological trauma of his mother’s death, and it
was a very heartfelt piece of work. He felt that the supernatural should exist
alongside the natural, so he added Jesus taking His heart out, as well as a
literal version of the Last Supper in terms of swallowing the flesh and blood
of Jesus,” Scorsese said. The duo ended up paring down some of those
elements, but many remain in the finished work. “This approach still
applies to the way the miracles are done in the film. It’s as if to say: What
was hypnosis, what was a real miracle and what was a kind of curing?”6
(By “curing,” Scorsese is referring to actual remedies practiced during the
day, such as using saliva and herbs to treat ailments.)
It would be easy to mistake The Last Temptation of Christ as a film
about faith, but in truth it’s a film about doubt—and though the two seem a
pair, there is a distinction. Faith is about finding your path toward
something you cannot see but believing it is there all the same, about
thinking, knowing, there is salvation at the end of an arduous road. Doubt is
having such truths presented to you and turning away from them all the
same, about being on a path and never being certain that it’s the correct one.
This is a Jesus who questions his role almost to the last.
It is only when upon the cross, beaten and bloodied and tempted by
Satan in the guise of an angel, that he realizes what he truly is. Satan comes
as a little girl, sweet, pure. “Your father is the god of mercy, not
punishment,” she tells him. Here, the most controversial sequence of the
film begins, a lengthy vision of what Christ’s life could be if he lived out
his life as an ordinary man rather than be crucified. Is it a dream? A vision?
A longing fantasy? The latter is how it was spun in much of the
contemporary criticism of the picture. A report in the Los Angeles Times
noted, “Evangelical Protestant protests, starting last month and recently
joined by Southern Baptist and Eastern Orthodox condemnations, have
particularly focused on a scene showing Jesus making love to Mary
Magdalene in a dream episode.”7
But it’s not a dream sequence. This is Satan making one last-ditch effort
to tempt Jesus. In the vision, he sees the girl taking him away from the
cross. She tells him he is not the Messiah, and he feels a sense of relief that
this terrible burden has been lifted from him. He sees himself as married.
He makes love. His wife is pregnant with his child. He has a family. It is a
pure life, a good life, the life men are meant to live under God. For the
director, there is no shame or blame in this. “You know, the one sexual
thing the priest told Catholic boys they could not be held responsible for
was nocturnal emission. It was like an involuntary fantasy. And with Jesus,
it’s the same thing. How can you hold him responsible for this fantasy?”8
The vision continues. Jesus sees a preacher speaking of the life of Jesus
and his accomplishments and crucifixion. It is the apostle Paul. Jesus tells
him these stories are lies; he was not crucified; God saved him, and he was
allowed to live out a normal life. Jesus threatens to tell people the truth, but
Paul says none will listen. People need God; they need faith in Jesus Christ,
the Messiah, their salvation. The idea, Paul tells Jesus, is more powerful
than the reality.
And for the first time in the film, Jesus of Nazareth fully embraces his
Godhood. He begs God to take him back. “I want to bring salvation!” He
wants to be crucified. “I want to be the Messiah,” he says. And with that he
is on the cross again, the vision ended. He’s dying. Through his pain, he
smiles. “It is accomplished!” he declares. “It is accomplished.”
 And then shrieking voices and colors like overexposed film flapping on
the reel. Jesus Christ cast aside temptation, overcame his humanity, and
gave himself for mankind. Surely a potent, moving sacrifice? Much of the
religious community did not see it that way. But for Scorsese, at least, he
had fulfilled his mission.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Rather than being welcome as a heartfelt examination of faith, The Last
Temptation of Christ was met with scathing criticism by religious groups
across the country, threats of boycotts, and a general atmosphere of outrage.
It was called “sacrilegious,” a “deliberate act of blasphemy,” “morally
offensive,” and “exploitation… for greed.”9 Organization after organization
called for boycotts of the film despite never having seen it.
Scorsese knew the picture would stir up some controversy, but not only
was that not his intent, but he also believed any controversy would lead to
productive conversation. “I thought there would be some people who would
be set against it completely. But I also thought it would open up a healthy
discussion,” the director said. “I expected some controversy. But I expected
it to be intelligent. I expected discussion and dialogue.”10
That is not what he got. A group of southern California Protestant
ministers called it a movie about a “mentally deranged and lust-driven man
who convinces Judas Iscariot to betray Him.”11 Mother Angelica of the
Eternal Word Television Network declared, “Every Christian ought to be
incensed about this blasphemous film.”12 And on and on.
It’s true that, for much of the picture’s run time, we have a flawed
Messiah. He is a man, and he is also God. That seeming contradiction, the
miracle of both being true, that is the area Scorsese explores (through ideas
initially written by Kazantzakis, it’s important to note). The director wanted
“to make him more like a person who would be in this room, someone you
could talk to.”13
In many respects, this picture was the director’s attempt to get to know
Jesus better, to meet him and “talk” with him through the medium he knew
best. Roger Ebert observed that Keitel had previously played two
autobiographical characters for Scorsese, J. R. and Charlie, from Who’s
That Knocking at My Door? and Mean Streets, respectively, and here he
plays Judas. “Perhaps Judas is Scorsese’s autobiographical character in The
Last Temptation of Christ. Certainly not the Messiah, but the mortal man
walking beside him, worrying about him, lecturing him, wanting him to be
better, threatening him, confiding in him, prepared to betray him if he must.
Christ is the film, Judas is the director.”14 And indeed, in this version of the
Messiah story, it is Jesus who essentially convinces Judas to betray him.
Judas must commit a terrible deed in order for Jesus Christ to fulfill his
destiny.
To what extent The Last Temptation of Christ succeeds as a film, both as
art and as entertainment, is debatable. It lacks much of the dynamism one
associates with Scorsese’s work. It’s visually barren, and its nearly three-
hour run time is perhaps longer than it needs to be. But as an exploratory
piece, as a thought experiment, it is a potent piece of work.
Potent, but another failure as far as breaking through to a wider
audience was concerned. Scorsese would take a quick detour to Soho for a
short piece as part of an anthology with Francis Ford Coppola and Woody
Allen, but the next major movie percolating in his head would bring him
back to familiar territory: criminals, the city streets, and a hazy view of
morality. It would become his signature picture.
 12

NEW YORK STORIES: LIFE

LESSONS (1989)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: March 10, 1989
WRITTEN BY: Richard Price
STARRING: Nick Nolte, Rosanna Arquette, Steve Buscemi
RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes (full film), 40 minutes (Scorsese’s
contribution)
NOTES: This is an anthology film, with two other segments, Life
without Zoë and Oedipus Wrecks, directed by Francis Ford
Coppola and Woody Allen, respectively.

ABOUT THE FILM

F
ollowing The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese began
working with author Nicholas Pileggi to adapt his bestselling book
Wiseguy into a film. Before launching into that project, however, he got
pulled into a collaborative project with two other directors who also rose to
prominence in the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen.
Together, the trio would create an anthology film called New York Stories,
each of the three pieces related to the city in some way.
Scorsese used the opportunity to take another crack at exploring the
themes in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Gambler. Starring Nick Nolte and
Rosanna Arquette, Life Lessons explores the psyche of a man who
subconsciously sabotages his own relationships in order to fuel inspiration
for his art. Often overlooked when discussing Scorsese’s body of work, the
short film proves to be one of the director’s most personally revealing
pictures.

ANALYSIS
Life Lessons is a story about obsession: about obsession so crippling it
paralyzes a man but also sets him free. And it’s about manipulation: about a
man who manipulates young women like he manipulates paint, casting it
here and there in a frenzy, searching for something he can’t grasp or
identify but that he knows he’ll find if he just keeps probing. Emotional
wrecks are left in his wake. He was divorced at least four times, he says.
Each woman is a canvas. Blank when he first meets them, a whiter shade of
pale, a series of parts and images to capture and control, and then he’s done.
Nolte plays Lionel Dobie, a Soho painter with a dark style and an avid
following. As the piece opens, Lionel is freaking out prior to an upcoming
show, unable to paint, unable to express himself. He needs his muse. She
arrives in the form of Paulette (Arquette), his live-in assistant who is more
than an assistant. An aspiring artist herself, she sleeps with Lionel in
exchange for a place to stay and mentorship on her art (which he never
provides). The arrangement isn’t merely one of convenience and sexual
gratification, though. We see this when she is introduced. He’s at the
airport, waiting for her. Shown from his subjective point of view, most of
the frame is blacked out, as if he has tunnel vision. He can’t see the world
until she appears. Only then does the lens open up. It’s an effect the director
uses repeatedly over the course of this short, an expression of Lionel’s
single-minded focus.
 We see it again as she unpacks, this highly subjective camera work.
Lionel’s eyes linger on her panties. They focus on her foot, a delicate chain
of gold on her ankle. Always on tiny details. He’s apparently promised
Paulette he won’t ask to sleep with her anymore, but once the promise is
made, she is all he can think about. When she expresses interest in other
men, he interferes. When she expresses interest in other artists, he
interferes. When she does nothing more than lay in bed, talking on the
phone, he hovers over her like an expectant dog, at once needful and
dangerous, as capable of attacking as he is of smothering her in unwanted
love.
Lionel does offer Paulette a thought on art that resonates, but it’s
difficult to credit him with doing so out of any sense of benevolence or
desire to share wisdom. When asking for feedback on her work, he tells
Paulette, “What the hell difference does it matter what I think? It’s yours.
You make art because you have to. ’Cause you got no choice. It’s not about
talent. It’s about no choice but to do it.” This is perhaps the most honest
thing he says. His cries of “I love you” are selfish and needy; his warnings
about other men, defensive and jealous. But this? This is a slice of truth. Art
isn’t merely a vocation or pastime. For many, it’s a need. It’s an outlet. It’s
their only real means of expression. Certainly, this is the case for Scorsese,
who from an early age found that expressing himself visually wasn’t just a
natural talent; it was the only real way he had to pour out what was boiling
inside him.
Lionel, however, doesn’t merely express his inner self through art. His
muse, his trigger, his fuel is emotional abuse. He needs it. What ends up on
the canvas stems from it. Late in the picture, after Paulette has left him and
he’s displaying a fabulous new body of work, a fan approaches Lionel
during an exhibition and gives him a strange yet telling compliment: “I look
at your stuff, and I just want to divorce my wife.” Appropriate, given the
extent to which Lionel’s art is propelled by toxic relationships.
In this respect, Lionel has a lot more in common with the standard
Scorsese protagonist than he appears to on his artsy Soho surface. Most are
streetwise and grounded in some way. The Howard Hugheses of his
filmography are rare. More common are the Henry Hills and Rupert
Pupkins, men who are not lofty and thoughtful and expressive but who walk
in the same muck as the rest of us. But look closer, and you see a trait that
surfaces in Hill and Pupkin and Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta and so
many others, including in the otherwise aloof Lionel: a propensity for self-
destruction, a subconscious need to sabotage his own life, a self-destructive
streak he doesn’t even know is there. In this case, it drives him.
But where Lionel differs from so many other Scorsese protagonists is
that he has all the rise and none of the fall. Put another way, his knack for
self-sabotage actually works for him. Controlling women to the point where
their entire relationship is a cesspool provides grist for his artistic mill, and
his career as an artist thrives as a result. No tragic collapses. No falls from
grace. Just artistic success and a string of emotionally scarred women left in
his wake.
How much of this is Martin Scorsese himself reimagined as a painter?
It’s no secret that his work is often deeply personal and that he often seeks
out characters that reflect some aspect of his own inner workings. When
making Life Lessons, Scorsese was on his fourth marriage, and it was
falling apart. Though married to producer Barbara De Fina, who worked on
GoodFellas, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun,
and Casino, he was dating actress Illeana Douglas, who had small roles in
Last Temptation, GoodFellas, Cape Fear, and this short film. And previous
relationships had been turbulent, especially his second marriage, to writer
Julia Cameron. Certainly, he was no stranger to the cycle of collapse and
rebuilding that relationships can go through.
And in Life Lessons, it is indeed a cycle. The piece ends when Lionel, at
another showing of his paintings, encounters a beautiful, young, aspiring
artist fascinated with his work. The camera again moves to a subjective
point of view, leaping from close-up to close-up of various parts of her
body, his obsessive eye kicking in once again. He offers her a job as a live-
in “assistant.” The cycle begins anew.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

New York Stories was a modest success, with Scorsese’s and Allen’s
segments winning praise, but it would quickly be overshadowed by the
director’s next project, a crime film that is his definitive work.
 13

GOODFELLAS (1990)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: September 9, 1990
WRITTEN BY: Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese
STARRING: Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci,
Paul Sorvino
RUNNING TIME: 145 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

“A
s far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”
With those simple words, the third of Martin Scorsese’s three
greatest masterpieces begins. And they’re magic words. Alluring and
aggressive. Tempting. Off-putting. Unsympathetic. Enticing. Martini-
sipping cool. A simple line that sets the stage for a narrative that pushes and
pulls the viewer over the course of two hours and twenty minutes.
Based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, GoodFellas is less a
story and more an experience, a series of vignettes following the rise and
fall of midlevel mobster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and his two closest friends,
Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). Henry
gets involved with low-level mobsters as a teen; by his early twenties is
flush with ill-gotten cash; meets and marries his wife, Karen (Lorraine
Bracco); starts slinging drugs during a brief prison stint; continues to sell
after he is released; gets busted; rats out his friends; and enters the witness
protection program with more frustration than remorse. That’s the whole
story.
Free of the constraints of telling a tight, focused story and instead intent
on immersing us in the criminal underworld in a way that had never been
seen before, GoodFellas is a picture that ignores Hollywood’s unwritten
rules and forges new ground, not just for the director, but also for every
edgy, too-cool-for-school director to follow.
The book upon which the movie was based was a best-seller, a book in
which real-life criminal Henry Hill “prefers to describe the details and
recall the prevailing mood rather than convince the reader of his own stand-
up behavior.”1 Scorsese encountered Pileggi’s work while making The
Color of Money and was immediately intrigued by the honesty of it. The
pair collaborated on the screenplay, going through draft after draft, with
Scorsese taking a rapid-fire, music-video-like approach to the narrative. The
director described his vision as being like a two-hour trailer, something to
capture the breathless energy and constant tension of being a career
criminal. The results changed modern cinema.

ANALYSIS
GoodFellas is the Martin Scorsese picture. Throughout this book, I
repeatedly emphasize the eclectic nature of the director’s filmography, one
that is among the most varied and unpredictable of any auteur of the last
fifty or sixty years. While a number of common themes tie his work
together, that Scorsese has been pigeonholed by casual audiences as
someone who only does gangster movies has long been unfair, given the
variety of tone, genre, and approach in his work.
Despite all that, GoodFellas is the Martin Scorsese picture of all Martin
Scorsese pictures. Not the best, which is far too subjective a judgment, nor
the most important but rather the one that best defines him as a filmmaker
because it best represents his disregard for the “right” way to make a movie.
Though The Color of Money proved he could appeal to a mainstream
audience, it did not reestablish him as an artist of note to a general public
that had forgotten how good he could be. GoodFellas was in many ways a
total reinvention, an example of an artist taking everything he had learned
and applying it to something new. This movie feels like Scorsese, yet he had
done nothing like it before. Embryonic elements showed up in works like
Mean Streets, Raging Bull, and even the unusual After Hours, but this
picture was a new invention and one that would set the tone for the rest of
his career.
What makes GoodFellas work is its total disregard for the unwritten
rules of Hollywood productions. Element after element should not work,
yet it does. Wall-to-wall narration. A second narrator appearing out of
nowhere. Copious freeze-frames. A sudden fourth-wall break two hours
into the movie. Or even the fact that GoodFellas doesn’t really have a plot.
It’s a series of vignettes, with few movie-length narrative threads tying all
the vignettes together aside from the characters themselves. It’s entirely
possible to watch a random twenty-minute chunk of the movie and have a
satisfying, nearly complete experience. What narrative arc there is follows
the Scorsese template—like so many others, it’s a rise-and-fall story, with
the protagonist responsible for his own downfall—but it’s not a standard
story by any means. There is no goal, no real obstacle to overcome. For
Henry Hill, no central character conflict aside from the basic desire to make
money and stay alive. He has ups and downs with his wife, but they are not
the story. The story is just a series of glimpses into the crazy lifestyle he
leads.
In a sense, the film opens at what turns out to be the beginning of the
end for Henry, Tommy, and Jimmy, with made man Billy Batts (Frank
Vincent) in the trunk of a car, beaten and bloodied. It’s the incident where
everything went wrong for the trio, though they didn’t know it at the time.
It’s an immediate dose of savage violence, all thrusting knives and
sickening sound effects, a shock to the system that tells viewers right from
the start that these are not good people and this won’t be a romanticized or
“classy” mob story. That makes the contrast of the sudden cut to soaring
swing music all the more potent. It’s glamour set next to gore.
It’s easy to walk away with the impression that GoodFellas glorifies the
criminal lifestyle, at least at first. “As far back as I can remember, I always
wanted to be a gangster,” Liotta intones in his first bit of narration, and
from there we launch into song, the first lyrics we hear saying, “I know I go
from rags to riches.” Our first shot of young Henry Hill (Christopher
Serrone) is a deep close-up, the glow of Tuddy’s (Frank DiLeo) cab stand
reflected in his eyes. It’s a classic image of youth, as if he’s gazing out at a
carnival or amusement park, but it’s tainted by what lies behind those
glowing lights. In that way, that first shot of Henry’s eyes is a reflection of
the film as a whole: rich promise followed by harsh reality. For now,
jumping into gangster life almost seems kind of fun and appealing. There
are some ugly moments in his early life—a freeze-frame of his father
beating him shows us how his entry into the lifestyle alienates him from the
normal life the rest of us live, for example—but there is a vicarious delight
in seeing his mailman almost thrown headfirst into a pizza oven. Anyone
who had difficulties with authority in their youth will smile inwardly. There
is something attractive here, something alluring. We almost root for Henry
to get one over on authority figures. There are brief moments when the
shine is not so strong, such as Henry being scolded for helping out a guy
who had just been shot, but the overall image is an appealing one. Scorsese
is going to smother that shine later in the film, but in the early going, it’s a
wild ride.
The director’s work is never as immersive as it is here. He puts you in
the world with these criminals and lowlifes, deep enough into it so that you
almost feel sympathy for them, as if they are part of your extended family.
A dysfunctional family, to be sure, but family all the same. This kind of
immersion comes not through a trick or two but through a full-frontal
assault on your senses: voice-over narration presented as if Henry is telling
his story directly to you, startling use of period music throughout, bold cuts
from scene to scene that play more like flashes of memory than scenes from
a movie, and of course Scorsese’s brilliantly considered camerawork. The
Copacabana entrance is perhaps the picture’s most heralded scene, but two
others make this point just as well.
The first is early on, shortly after we’re introduced to the adult Henry
Hill. We enter a smoky bar filled with mobsters, seeing it through Henry’s
eyes. One by one we’re introduced to a series of crooks with colorful-
sounding nicknames, quick introductions that don’t really matter as far as
story is concerned but that are essential in establishing the environment and
atmosphere he exists in. It’s one long shot, everyone greeting the camera
directly, tossing off small hellos or referencing events we never see and
never hear about again. The camera continues around some tables, through
the back of the bar; then we follow a rack of fur coats into a back hallway,
where we see Henry doing some business; then the camera follows the
coats into the kitchen. It’s a shot that doesn’t get the same accolades as the
Copacabana sequence but that is just as daring, immersive, instructive, and
effective.

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro’s career-spanning artistic collaboration is arguably

matched only by the work Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune did together. Warner
Bros./Photofest

The other is a different type of scene entirely, one shot in a far more
traditional manner. This is perhaps the most famous scene of the movie,
though it’s famous for being so quotable, not for its directorial bravado. Yet
consider the choices Scorsese made here, and it becomes apparent that
every choice was weighed and considered with careful thought. We’re
talking about the “funny” dialogue between Henry and Tommy. Tommy’s
tirade here and the growing tension it displays is potent because of its lack
of directorial bravado. The sequence is carefully staged with nothing more
than two simple medium shots, Tommy in one flanked by onlookers, Henry
in the other with more of the same—pure simplicity.
It’s that simplicity that brings us into the scene in such a powerful way.
The strength of the “funny” scene isn’t in Pesci’s performance or the
dialogue; it’s in the scene’s honesty. By now the story has become a minor
part of Hollywood legend: An incident similar to this actually happened to
Pesci; he suggested playing with the idea to Scorsese; it was worked out in
rehearsals through improvisation; and once they had it, they rolled cameras.
One of the most memorable scenes in movies was born. It works because it
doesn’t feel like clever dialogue. It doesn’t sound like something a
screenwriter would come up with. It rings with authenticity because it is a
true story, and anyone who has been around someone like Tommy—a
firecracker looking for an excuse to explode, someone who baits others and
wields social power like a gunslinger—knows how situations like this can
appear unexpectedly and fly out of control before you’ve even had time to
process them. Scorsese’s choice to stage the whole scene in static medium
shots underlines this because it keeps the people surrounding Henry and
Tommy in the shot at all times. We can see their slow realization that things
may take a dark turn at any moment. Scorsese and editor Thelma
Schoonmaker hold the moment just long enough so that tension fills the
room. If Henry makes a misstep, he’ll either have a violent confrontation
with a hyperviolent man or back down in front of everyone and look
spineless. In either case, he loses a significant amount of credibility with
this crowd, so Henry does the best he can do and takes a risk: He calls
Tommy’s bluff. Laughter. A violent incident with the owner of the
establishment. More laughter. And the moment has passed.
Scorsese’s willingness to allow his actors to improvise and contribute their own ideas
resulted in one of GoodFellas’ most iconic scenes, during which Henry Hill must answer a
simple question: “How am I funny?” Warner Bros. Pictures/Photofest

And we were in the moment because we knew that, in the midst of a

film with a restless camera, bringing the camera to a stop during that
confrontation was the best possible choice. It’s these seemingly small
moments that sink you into the world and allow you to live vicariously
through the characters, feeling the highs and the frightening lows of
mobster life. No other gangster movie had ever done it this effectively. (The
“funny” scene is also an effective bit of character work, setting up the
monster lurking inside Tommy and providing valuable context for his
sudden murders of both Spider and Billy Batts.)
A major factor in allowing us to live in this world is the fact that Henry
grabs us by the hand and takes us there with him. We are Karen being led
by Henry through the bowels of the Copacabana to the best seats in the
house. This is accomplished through a device generally frowned upon in
filmmaking: voice-over narration.
 Voice-over narration is often cited as a weakness in film, used primarily
to fill in aspects of the plot or characterization that for one reason or another
could not be presented on-screen, as a means of dumping exposition onto
the audience, or a lazy way to fix script problems. To be clear, I do not
endorse that view, but it’s a widely held one, or at least it was before
Scorsese proved (repeatedly) that voice-over can be a strength. “Show,
don’t tell” is perhaps the most oft-repeated rule of writing, after all.
GoodFellas’ narration isn’t about correcting flaws in the script or dumping
exposition onto the audience, however. It’s a character unto itself. In fact,
it’s the character of the movie. It’s Henry Hill himself, looking back on his
life and telling you stories about how he used to live, in the same way
mobsters spin stories for one another. They’re brags. They’re tall tales. It’s
entertainment built on half-truths. The entire flavor of the picture changes
without that narration. The narration is what puts us inside Henry’s head. It
justifies the highly subjective camerawork Scorsese employs throughout,
the dizzying Steadicam shots, the freeze-frames, and so on. The allure of
GoodFellas isn’t in its plot. It doesn’t draw you in with intrigue or
surprises. The interest is in Henry’s state of mind as he recalls the crazy life
he used to lead. These aren’t “real” events, after all; they’re Henry’s
memories of them. The narration lends connective tissue to the vignettes
that come together to make the film. The narration is the tie that binds.
It also enhances the feeling of collapse one gets from Henry’s rise and
fall—and that collapse is the heart of the movie. The early portions of the
picture, during Henry’s golden age of sorts, look remarkably appealing.
Henry has everything he could want: money, booze, women, access to the
hottest spots in town, free rein at fancy restaurants, people bending over
backward to please him. The life looks alluring. You can hear the
excitement in his voice.
It doesn’t take long for this to be turned on its head, however. The
pivotal moment is the killing of Billy Batts, though signals that the mob life
isn’t as glamorous as Henry believes dot the picture well before this scene.
Karen at a gathering of worn-down, unhappy housewives. Henry insists to
Karen that “Nobody goes to jail unless they want to, unless they make
themselves get caught,” which is transparent nonsense. Karen’s mother is
upset that Henry is out all night. The young assistant Spider (Michael
Imperioli) is shot and killed by Tommy. Henry does a stint in prison. Time
and again, the attractive parts of the lifestyle are contrasted with things that
would make a normal person say, “This is not for me.”
Contrast is a major part of the picture’s power, and this is often seen in
the sharp, frantic editing. Witness the cut after Henry brutally beats Karen’s
neighbor for sexually assaulting her (itself a fantastic single-shot take that
follows him across the street, to the beating, and back). Henry, sweaty and
bristling with anger, hands her a bloodied handgun. Slight slow motion as it
dawns on her that Henry is a dangerous man. Cut to their wedding, a joyous
affair. The contrast between brutality and joy makes the viewer feel as
overwhelmed as Karen is. And then that bright day filled with smiles and
love cuts directly to Karen’s mother (Suzanne Shepard), furious that Henry
has been out all night, happiness contrasted with turmoil and domestic
tension.
Scorsese often does the same with music. Scenes of horrific violence
are often contrasted with beautiful or uplifting music (“Atlantis” by
Donovan during the beating of Billy Batts, the outro of “Layla” when all
the victims of Jimmy’s hits are being discovered). The result is that we feel
continually off-balance. The contradictions, the conflict between the high of
owning the town and the low of what that really means, the stark reality of
how quickly things can end in this world makes GoodFellas fantastic
voyeurism but terrible wish fulfillment. We might daydream about what
we’d do in Michael Corleone’s shoes, but GoodFellas does not provide the
same sort of operatic thrill as The Godfather. Once we get a real taste of
Henry’s life, we want no part of it.
The killing of Spider, for example: Spider is a young man, just like
Henry was at the start of the film, hanging around, helping out, but not yet a
criminal. He’s just slinging drinks at private card games. He could have
been another Henry, or he could have straightened out and lived a normal
life. We never find out because, in a fit of bruised ego, Tommy kills him for
talking back—this shortly after having shot him in the foot while making
him dance at gunpoint. That’s how fast it can end when you’re around these
people.
As if to signal that life is falling apart for Henry, the movie cuts right
from Spider’s death to Karen mashing the buttons at an apartment building,
shouting for Henry’s mistress (or goomah). So while Henry’s friends
slaughter young men with little provocation, his marriage begins to
disintegrate. Scorsese called the picture a “nostalgia of a world of gods,”
but really, it’s about the collapse of the gods.2 It is their twilight years, the
end of the ill-gotten heaven they created, shattered when the mob got
involved in dealing drugs.
The “pure” pre-drug-running days of the mafia are something of a myth,
of course, injected into pop culture by Vito Corleone’s opposition to drug
dealing in The Godfather. The truth is that any illicit trade that could bring
in money was open game, though some mob bosses forbid it within their
ranks: “FBI documents do indicate that bosses such as Paul Castellano and
Vincent ‘the Chin’ Gigante in New York and Angelo Bruno in Philadelphia
banned members of their organizations from getting involved in narcotics.”3
Much like GoodFellas’ Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino), however, this wasn’t
a moral objection on their part; it was a pragmatic decision based on the
realization that running drugs exposed them to greater legal risk, especially
as the so-called war on drugs began in the 1970s. Things did change during
that era, though. There was just too much money to be made for these
mobsters to ignore it; “The ‘Pizza Connection,’ for instance, was a Sicilian
Mafia heroin ring that dominated the trade in New York and other East
Coast cities between 1975 and 1984, bringing an estimated $1.6 billion
worth of heroin into the United States.”4 The drug trade is what Henry got
roped into, and it’s what ended up bringing down Paulie and his underlings.
It was the end of an era, the decay and death of the old image of what
gangsters were—well-dressed gentlemen running the neighborhood through
the veiled threat of violence—and replacing that image with coked-up,
frantic criminals.
And frantic is what Henry Hill was on May 11, 1980, the day during
which the movie’s most dizzying, dynamic sequence takes place. This is
when Henry gets busted for running drugs, the bust that ultimately brings
everyone down, and it’s a whirlwind of editing that is disorienting and
exhausting and a fitting end to Henry’s climb through the criminal world:
cocaine, fast cuts, rambling narration, blaring music, no focus on any one
thing as the most important object of Henry’s attentions. As a helicopter
appears to follow him around as he sets up deals and preps to run drugs,
we’re not sure if he’s just being paranoid or if he’s really being tailed, but
we’re pretty sure it’s the latter. Meanwhile, he’s obsessing about his pasta
sauce and bickering with his babysitter over her lucky hat, even though he
knows he’s probably being watched. His head just isn’t screwed on right.
Through maddening editing and Liotta’s breathless narration, the viewer’s
head feels out of sorts, too.
Henry Hill gets busted. Once out on bail, he reaches out to Paulie for
help. He gets a small wad of cash, and that’s it. “Now I gotta turn my back
on you,” Paulie tells him. “Thirty-two hundred bucks,” Henry says in the
narration. “That’s what he gave me. Thirty-two hundred bucks for a
lifetime. It wasn’t even enough to pay for the coffin.”
Nearly two hours prior, after we saw Henry get pinched for the first
time, Jimmy congratulated him on handling it well. “You learned the two
greatest things in life: Never rat on your friends, and always keep your
mouth shut.” But this time, in an effort to save his family, Henry rats
everyone out: Jimmy, Paulie, everyone. He goes into witness protection.
Everyone else goes to jail.
Henry’s turn at the end does not fill him with remorse for his past deeds,
however. Though GoodFellas represents Scorsese at the height of his
filmmaking prowess and showcases many of the hallmarks of his best work,
it does lack one of his most prominent themes: guilt. Guilt runs through his
entire filmography, informing the narratives of many of his pictures and
serving as an integral part of his most personal characters. It’s an
inescapable aspect of his work and an essential part of understanding what
makes his art so singular. Yet guilt is nowhere to be found here. Henry Hill
gets caught in the end and rats out his friends, and the only real concern he
has is that he can’t get a good dish of pasta anymore. He’s just another
working schmuck like the rest of us. There are no lessons learned, no moral
transformations, no remorse whatsoever. Hill is frustrated with where his
life ends up but only because it inconveniences him. “It’ll be phony if he
felt badly about what he did. The irony of it at the end I kind of think is
very funny,” Scorsese said. “I think the audience should get angry with him.
I would hope they would be. And maybe angry with the system that allows
it.”5
The first thirty minutes of GoodFellas seems to glorify mob life, and
Henry’s utter lack of remorse seems to solidify the idea, but in the end we
see that the life wasn’t so magnificent after all. That didn’t stop people from
being outraged at the picture. “People got so angry that they stormed out of
the theater. They thought it was an outrage that I had made these people so
attractive,” Scorsese said. But he “liked the everyday banality of it,” the
idea that these gangsters, privileged in so many ways, also argued about
sauce, had problems with relationships, and were generally human rather
than caricatures.6 Henry tells us that, when it comes to the sauce a fellow
inmate made while in prison, “I felt he used too many onions, but it was
still a very good sauce.” It’s a seemingly unimportant detail, but these
small, mundane details are the flavor of the movie, just as the pork is the
flavor of the sauce Vinnie makes. The entire prison sequence is a good
example of this because it has little to do with looking at actual life in
prison. It could even be excised from the film, except that it reinforces the
idea that these men live in a kind of privilege most of us could never
understand. Being in prison doesn’t matter to them. They chat, they cook,
they scam, they make money. It’s just another place for them to be. From a
narrative standpoint, one might ask why it’s necessary to include the prison
sequence at all, but again, GoodFellas isn’t a film about narrative. It’s a
series of glimpses into a lifestyle that fascinated Scorsese. No, GoodFellas
is not a condemnation of the lifestyle. It makes no efforts to rebuke it, but it
doesn’t celebrate it, either. It simply puts us in that world, and it’s a world in
which everything appealing is matched by something horrible. Henry’s
friends end up dead or in jail. Violence touches everything they do. Just
getting into Jimmy Conway’s orbit results in countless dead bodies. Karen
can’t even accept a gift of clothes from him without wondering if she is
going to be killed. (It was a brilliant decision to leave it unclear whether her
fear is justified. We never find out if she really is going to be whacked in
that scene.)
Even the final music sends mixed messages. It’s a snarling, nasty
version of “My Way,” best known for Frank Sinatra’s rendition but here
performed by Sid Vicious, bassist for the punk band the Sex Pistols. On the
surface it seems a middle finger to the world, a loud announcement saying,
“Screw the plebes. Screw you if you don’t like it. I lived my life my way,
and I don’t regret it.” And it does say that, to an extent, yet there’s more
beneath the surface.
On February 1, 1979, just released on bail after having been arrested for
assault, Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose on his first night of freedom.
His reputation was so bad, his survivors couldn’t even find a funeral home
willing to hold a service for him.7 Fitting, then, that it should be his version
of “My Way” that closes the door on Henry Hill’s on-screen life. It’s a
snarling bit of rebellion spit out by someone who self-destructed, not unlike
Henry Hill himself. The music also serves as a commentary on the end of
an era. The picture opens in the midst of the heyday of swing, a time when
Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin ruled the stage, but ends with a sneering
Brit spitting out one of Sinatra’s best-known works, a perfect musical
summation of the close of the supposed golden age of Italian mobsters.
Through music, through fast cuts and long takes, through copious use of
the word fuck and shockingly real violence, Martin Scorsese painted a
picture of gangster life unlike any we had ever seen before, then pulled the
rug out from under it, with Henry Hill ending up just an anonymous
homeowner in an anonymous suburb, scooping the paper up from his front
porch. It was the end of the glory days of the mob, but the start of a new era
for Martin Scorsese himself.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

GoodFellas’ legacy looms large. It’s widely considered both a classic of the
genre as well as one of the great films in cinema history. Few crime movies
that came after could help but owe it some debt. Quentin Tarantino cribbed
much of his style from GoodFellas (along with a generous helping of
spaghetti westerns and kung fu movies, of course). HBO’s game-changing
television show The Sopranos changed the medium forever and ushered in a
golden age of quality dramatic TV, and that show wouldn’t exist were it not
for GoodFellas—and not just because six regular cast members on The
Sopranos and twenty-seven of its actors previously appeared in
GoodFellas.8 The dynamics and energy in many modern crime and antihero
movies can be traced directly back to GoodFellas. Pictures like 2013’s
American Hustle by David O. Russell, which garnered ten Academy Award
nominations; Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997); and Ted
Demme’s 2001 movie Blow are just a few that clearly took inspiration from
Scorsese’s work, borrowing much of the tone, style, and approach. The
picture did what few pictures do: It changed cinema; “Throughout the
1990s, the sense of cinematic liberation engendered by Scorsese’s
masterpiece would yield experiments of a type unthinkable in a pre-
Goodfellas Hollywood—Molotov cocktails like Oliver Stone’s Natural
Born Killers and David Fincher’s Fight Club, and the Hughes Brothers’
heavily Scorsese-influenced Dead Presidents.”9
 The picture would change Scorsese as a filmmaker, too. Works like
Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street are so thoroughly built on the
foundation he created here. GoodFellas is now widely seen as Scorsese’s
primary style by mainstream audiences. It’s not an entirely fair assessment
of his work—the variety of tone and style in his career is laudable—but it’s
not entirely unfair, either, seeing as GoodFellas is arguably the definitive
Scorsese picture. Even works that on the surface have little resemblance to
GoodFellas, such as his druggy Nicolas Cage vehicle Bringing Out the
Dead, are extensions of the style he pioneered here.
To some extent, the picture has become an anchor on the director, with
audiences expecting another rehash and disappointed when they don’t get
one. Pictures like Kundun and The Age of Innocence and Silence and Hugo
are seen as departures rather than as a reflection of the director’s wide range
of interests and talents. When the director returned to mob movies in 2019
with The Irishman, Schoonmaker was quick to temper expectations,
knowing people would expect a movie similar to this one. “It is not
Goodfellas,” she said. “It’s completely different. It’s wonderful. They’re
going to love it. But please don’t think it’s gonna be Goodfellas, because it
isn’t.”10 Even I am guilty of perpetuating the idea, above framing this as the
Martin Scorsese picture.
Yet when a picture leaves such an indelible mark on the face of popular
cinema, it’s easy to understand why. Even Martin Scorsese himself
understood that, revisiting remarkably similar material just five years later
with Casino. But in the interim, he’d show us the stuffy world of 1870s
upper-crust New York City, and with his next picture, let us observe a
family being torn apart from within. That picture would be Cape Fear, and
it would end up being one of his biggest box-office successes.
 14

CAPE FEAR (1991)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: November 13, 1991
WRITTEN BY: Wesley Strick
STARRING: Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, Juliette Lewis
RUNNING TIME: 128 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

O ne thing Martin Scorsese has never been is a populist film director.

He’s had his popular successes, to be sure, but much of his catalog is
made up of work that only just made back its money (if at all); personal,
often-experimental films that tend to be at odds with Hollywood trends. For
every The Wolf of Wall Street, which made $392 million worldwide on a
$100 million budget, there is a Bringing Out the Dead, which couldn’t even
earn $17 million to match its $55 million budget. The struggle to secure
funding for his pictures and the precarious balance between commerce and
art—art with a lowercase A, as Mr. Scorsese is averse to labeling his work
as “Art”—has been a hallmark of his career.
 That makes Cape Fear something of an anomaly, though an intentional
one. Much like The Color of Money, this was an attempt by the director to
show that he could make pictures that could also succeed at the box office.
Originally attached to Steven Spielberg, the populist director of the era, as
well as partially produced by him (albeit without credit), Cape Fear is a
mainstream thriller and a remake of the 1962 film of the same name.1
Scorsese’s version leans heavily on talent—Nick Nolte during one of the
most fruitful periods of his career, Jessica Lange coming off her fifth
Academy Award nomination, and Robert De Niro in his third Oscar-
nominated role for Scorsese, not to mention Juliette Lewis with a
remarkable, career-making performance—and also aims to infuse the
thriller genre with the topic Scorsese knows best: human turmoil.
In Cape Fear, Max Cady (De Niro) is released from prison after serving
fourteen years for raping a sixteen-year-old girl. His fixation through all
those long years has been his defense attorney, Sam Bowden (Nolte), who,
horrified at his client’s crime, buried evidence that may have lightened
Cady’s sentence. Once released, Cady begins a campaign of harassment
against Bowden; his wife, Leigh (Lange); and his daughter, Danielle
(Lewis), and it’s a clever one that makes Sam look like the bad guy. “The
law considers me more of a loose cannon than Max Cady,” he complains.
As things escalate, Cady begins to manipulate Danielle and drive wedges
between her and her parents. After he kills two people in their home, the
Bowdens flee to a beloved vacation spot, Cape Fear. Cady follows, and they
barely escape a final confrontation with him with their lives. Standard
thriller stuff, at least on the surface.
The original script was far more traditional than it became. It was
written with Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment in mind, after all, ending up
with Scorsese only after Spielberg decided it wasn’t right for him. The pair
traded film rights, Schindler’s List for Cape Fear, and Scorsese got the
picture. (The idea of what a Scorsese-directed Schindler’s List would have
looked like is tantalizing, though Spielberg was clearly the right man for the
job.)
But screenwriter Wesley Strick said the director was quick to take a
figurative knife to the screenplay’s most conventional traits. “Marty had
quite a radar for every bit of slickness and hyperbole,” Strick said.
“Anything that smacked of television, all the dialogue he perceived as being
‘clever,’ everything that was too well-reasoned, too neat, too clean, with
ideas that were somewhat predigested—he wanted it gone.”2 This wasn’t
going to be a standard thriller. It was going to be a Martin Scorsese picture.

ANALYSIS
Cape Fear is a film about the erosion of family, disguised as a traditional
thriller. On the surface, the central conflict appears to be the Bowden family
versus Cady, a fairly straightforward tale of people being tormented by a
madman. Beneath the surface, however, the film is more concerned with
turmoil within the family and the unseen wounds that threaten to tear it
apart from the inside. “I had read Cape Fear three times. And three times I
hated it,” Scorsese said. “I thought the family was too clichéd, too happy.…
They were like Martians to me. I was rooting for Cady to get them.”3 Once
injected with marital turmoil, professional malfeasance, and an uneasy
exploration of a teen’s awakening sexuality, however, the picture becomes
much more than a conventional thriller.
Opening with Danielle and bookending the film with close-ups on her
face suggests that, though most of the focus is on Sam Bowden and Max
Cady, the real journey here is hers. It is she who is transformed. The key
murder of this thriller is not of a person; it’s of her innocence. In the
opening narration, she reminisces about family times at the coastal region
of North Carolina called Cape Fear, “when the only thing to fear on those
enchanting summer nights was that the magic would end and real life would
come crashing in.” And in fact, that is what happens. Real life destroys that
special place, her father’s past sins made flesh in the form of a tattooed,
sexually charged madman.
The next cut is to Cady’s jail cell, the walls covered in dictators and
comic-book characters. He is the real life she fears—real life twisted into a
horrid form but real life all the same. His body is covered in tattoos: Bible
quotes and slogans about justice, about righteousness, about vengeance
smiting the false. A storm boils in the sky behind him as he struts away
from prison, now released to the world. He is a horror.
Back at the Bowdens’, Leigh Bowden is designing a logo for a client
when we first see her. She explains what she is looking to get across:
“Stability. A company you can trust.” An appropriate theme, given the lack
of stability in her own family. It appears normal and stable at first, but Cady
will exploit the cracks in that stability and upend their trust in one another.
It’s a brilliant, subtle bit of foreshadowing. This is what Scorsese is most
concerned with. De Niro’s Max Cady is a suitably frightening monster, and
his escalating war with Sam is tightly plotted and gripping throughout, but
it’s the drama of flawed people making a mess of their own lives that makes
this a Scorsese picture.
In this case, the protagonist is at least trying not to screw up his own
life. Sam is far from perfect—no Scorsese protagonist is—but he appears to
be trying to move on from his past transgressions. He had a past of
infidelity, and that infidelity remains a bruise on his marriage. It almost
broke Leigh’s spirit. They picked up the pieces and moved on, but the hurt
and mistrust lingers. Sam plays racquetball with a clerk at his law office,
Lori Davis (Illeana Douglas), and though they’re both attractive and seem
to enjoy one another’s company, he gently turns aside her suggestion that
there is something between them. Still, he doesn’t even tell his wife that
Lori exists. Lori is surprised by this. Sam explains that he’s married and
that’s why he can’t tell his wife, but this is no answer. “Is marriage
synonymous with deception?” she asks, and though she intends the question
to be a light one, just a joke, it rings deeper for Sam. He’s been down this
road before. He has cheated before. He’s trying to avoid temptation, trying
to stay faithful, but Lori’s question digs at a more difficult truth for him
because it’s his own deception that is going to put his family in danger: not
the deception of having an affair—there is no suggestion that he plans to
pursue Lori (though he is quick to invite her to play another game)—but
deceptions from years prior. This idea of past sins returning, of past
misdeeds lying in wait before their consequences finally arrive is a central
one to the picture, and it’s one Cady exploits.
Robert De Niro’s transformation for Cape Fear, a mainstream thriller by the mainstream-
averse Scorsese, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Universal
Pictures/Photofest

It’s fitting that Cady is covered in biblical passages. The ideas of sin and
redemption and guilt and holy justice are familiar in the director’s work,
and it’s a prevalent theme here, too. Cady is anything but a good man, yet
Sam Bowden’s actions fourteen years prior are also questionable. He was
tasked by law to defend his client to the best of his ability, but he knowingly
suppressed information that could have aided him. Whether he was justified
in that gets into murky moral territory. The truth is, it’s likely that Bowden’s
deception saved any number of young women from torment at Cady’s
hands. At the same time, Bowden is neither judge nor jury. In a world
governed by laws, it was not his place to decide Cady’s fate. Just as
Bowden must atone for his past marital sins, he must atone for his
professional sins, as well. The difference is that there is no clear path to
redemption for him. How could he possibly redeem himself? And more
difficult still, does he truly need to?
In Max Cady’s eyes, he does. Cady seeks to corrupt the family, to
immerse them in the same sin he himself was immersed in. He does this by
baiting Sam into acting against his own interests, but far more insidious is
the way in which he twists the family from within. He does not succeed in
killing the family (though he does kill two other victims). He does not rape
members of the family, as he plans (though Lori is brutally raped and
disfigured at his hands). He doesn’t even seriously injure any of the
Bowdens (though he does kill their dog). But what he does succeed in doing
to the family is to twist the Bowdens’ daughter away from them and
perhaps turn her onto a darker path. He does so by exploiting her newly
blossoming sexuality, and in Cape Fear, sexuality is the opposite of purity
and goodness. There is no healthy sexuality here, no true intimacy. Sex is
infidelity; it’s the loss of innocence; it’s violent rape. There is an echo all
the way back to Who’s That Knocking at My Door? here, a film in which
the lead (J. R.) was put off by the discovery that his girlfriend had been
raped—not because she had been violated in such an intimate way but
because it meant she wasn’t a virgin. Here the director’s Catholicism finds
its way into the work, subtly suggesting that sex is sin and corruption.
“Punishment for everything you ever felt sexually,” he said. “It is the basic
moral battleground of Christian ethics.”4
We see early on that Danielle is ripe for this sort of corruption, too.
After Cady starts stalking the family, Leigh tells Danielle to watch out for
him; he might be a stalker or flasher. (She does not yet know the depths of
his crimes when she says this.) “You think I’ve never been flashed before?”
Danielle asks. It’s evident she hasn’t. She’s sexually naïve, saying this
simply to wind her mother up, but she’s curious. This curiosity is what
Cady will exploit. Later, when attempting to emotionally manipulate Leigh
at the end of the Bowden driveway, Cady spots Danielle in the yard. At the
sight of her, he races away, as if understanding that he couldn’t be in her
presence, not yet. There is too much temptation there for him. But it shows
him the way he can cause the family the deepest possible hurt.
Cady tricks Danielle into meeting him in her school theater. The result
is the film’s most memorable scene and the performance that won Lewis an
Oscar nomination. It’s a difficult scene to watch. De Niro was around forty-
seven when it was filmed, Lewis was seventeen, and this chasm-wide age
gap is only a small part of what makes it so disturbing. Danielle’s girlish
awkwardness veers back and forth between naïve innocence and adolescent
curiosity. Max Cady, on the other hand, is all greasy sexuality and
exploitative manipulation. He knows how to push her buttons. She’s a
teenager in a tension-filled home, rebelling against her parents and
desperate to feel like a grown woman. He exploits that. “Your parents don’t
want you to achieve adulthood. That’s natural. They know the pitfalls of
adulthood, all that freedom. They know it only too well,” he tells her. They
discuss Tropic of Cancer, the sexually explicit book by Henry Miller that
was once banned in the United States. It’s a provocative work, made all the
more provocative by being something she’s “not supposed” to be reading.
If the scene were merely this weathered-looking, obsessive older man
pushing a young girl to discuss her sexuality with him, it would be
disturbing enough, but then he caresses her face and inserts his thumb in her
mouth. She sucks the thumb, an off-putting blend of childlike innocence
and burgeoning sexual discovery, highly suggestive, and then he kisses her,
long and deeply. When he walks off, she’s overcome with a swirl of
conflicting emotions, expressed without words: fear, confusion, arousal.
There is a sense of danger and a sense of discovery here that both delights
and frightens her. She runs from the theater in tears, unable to fully grasp
what she is feeling.
This scene is especially remarkable because it was partially improvised
by De Niro and the much-younger Lewis. The director set up two cameras
so the pair could just work out the scene, and he rolled. They did just three
takes. The first take is what you see on-screen. When De Niro puts his
thumb in Lewis’s mouth, she did not know it was coming. She stayed in
character, reacting as she thought Danielle would. The mix of emotions
Danielle feels, the desire to please coupled with the feeling of having been
violated, is a complex cocktail. And despite her questioning eyes looking up
at Cady as if seeking approval, it was indeed a violation. “He put his thumb
in my mouth all the way, and then he pulled it all the way out,” Lewis
recalled. “I’ll tell you exactly what it felt like, emotionally—like someone
walked up, penetrated you and then walked away.”5
Cady’s advances may have terrified most young women, but he chose
his target well in Danielle. Her tumultuous home life leaves her vulnerable.
Later, at home, Sam tries to impress upon her the danger Cady poses to the
family. While doing so, he scolds her: “Put some clothes on. You’re not a
little kid anymore.” Again, sexuality as sin. Urging her away from Cady
does not have the intended result. You tell a rebellious young adult what
they can’t do, and it only strengthens their resolve to do it. She grows
defensive. “He didn’t force himself on me. I know you think that he did, but
I think he was just trying to make a connection with me,” she tells her
father.
Sam asks if Cady touched her. She smiles but doesn’t answer. He asks
again. No answer. Sam grows angry, grabs her face, fiercely scolds her. His
fatherly concern is understandable—Cady went to prison for raping a girl
Danielle’s age—but his reaction hurts far more than it helps, exacerbated by
the wedge Cady had already driven between them. There is already poison
in the well. All of this makes Danielle’s sexuality the real battleground, the
arena in which Cady knows he can hurt Sam the most. Sex is sin, and by
awakening Danielle’s latent curiosity, he’s led her down the path.
Her parents fight over Sam’s sexual transgressions, too. When Leigh
overhears him on the phone with Lori, she believes he’s cheating again.
Leigh calls them “stupid, sophomoric infidelities.” Danielle hears the
fighting and calls a friend to escape. “I’m just losing my mind here,” she
says. As the couple argues, each dredges up the past and uses it as a weapon
against the other. They bludgeon one another with it. Past pains, past hurts,
the past pulled back into the here and now in order to hurt again. It’s what
drives Cady. The past he believes he lost drives him, and so the idea of past
hurts is something he weaponizes and injects into the Bowden marriage.
When the family finally retreats from Cady’s escalating war with them,
they retreat to the past, too, to Cape Fear, where they vacationed in better
times. It’s here, in a geographical embodiment of years gone by, where the
situation finally reaches a head. Scorsese is known for his dynamic, visceral
approach to violence, but violence is not the same as action, and to this
point he hadn’t done much that looked like mainstream action. The action
of Raging Bull was poetry; of Taxi Driver, dark fantasy; of GoodFellas,
street-corner storytelling. But here in Cape Fear, it’s a straightforward
thriller ending. We have a raging river, a family trapped in a small place,
and a madman after them. Cady continues to push Danielle’s buttons, but in
the end, she chooses family over temptation. Cady is killed. The end.
But the last shot of Danielle is an unspoken message to the audience.
Cady awakened something in her, shook her from her childish daydreams,
broke her away from her family. In the end, Max Cady won.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Cape Fear was a huge box-office hit, among the most successful of the
director’s career, raking in $182 million worldwide on a $35 million budget.
It was also a success with critics, earning two Academy Award nominations
(for De Niro and Lewis) and positive acclaim among reviewers.
The movie was quite a different beast from the Hitchcockian original,
which stars Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, both of whom have small
roles in the remake, though it does pay homage to the original by using a
version of the original score by Bernard Hermann, reworked here by Elmer
Bernstein. In the 1962 version, Max holds a grudge against Sam because
Sam testified against him, and his confrontation with the Bowden daughter
is a fairly standard suspense-and-chase sequence, among other more subtle
alterations in tone and approach. The changes made this Cape Fear less
traditional and more modern, lending it an intellectual and emotional depth
not present in the original. Perhaps more importantly, it made the movie far
more Scorsese than would be expected of a mainstream thriller.
But Martin Scorsese’s career is filled with the unexpected. His next
picture, for instance: a lush, colorful, talk-heavy, costume drama about
unrequited love set in 1870s New York City.
 15

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

(1993)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: September 17, 1993
WRITTEN BY: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
STARRING: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder
RUNNING TIME: 139 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

A
costume drama is perhaps the last thing you’d expect from Martin
Scorsese, a man who made his reputation on profanity-soaked
meditations on greed, guilt, and violence, yet in many ways Scorsese’s
secret weapon as a filmmaker is the kind of unpredictability that allows him
to make movies like this. Pictures like this may not resemble the work
people best know him for, but they allow him to indulge in ideas and
techniques he can then use to great effect in his more Scorsesian works.
 The Age of Innocence is a lush adaptation of Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer
Prize–winning 1920 novel of the same name, a story about New York’s so-
called gilded age of the 1870s. On the surface, it is an anomaly in the
director’s career, a quiet, deeply literary look at unrequited love. Yet
elaborate costumes and social rituals or not, this is another exploration of
New York by the most New York director there ever was. The period is
changed from his norm. So is the strata of society he explores. But the heart
and soul of it remains. It’s Scorsese picking at the fabric of the locale he
knows best, the city that made him who he is. Rage is traded for repression,
guns for gossip, and crime for superficial cordiality, but the hallmarks of the
director’s love for the darker side of human drama are etched all over this
living painting.
The Age of Innocence follows Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) and
his passion for Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), a woman he
cannot be with due to his pending nuptials to Ellen’s cousin, May Welland
(Winona Ryder). The pair’s longing for one another sets off whispers in the
upper-crust society that already sees Ellen as an outsider, compounded by
May’s subtle machinations to keep them apart. Despite some false starts,
Newland never gets to be with the woman he truly loves, instead living out
his life as a loyal but quietly unfulfilled husband.
Following the frenetic energy of GoodFellas and the brooding tension
of Cape Fear with a visually lush formal drama is the kind of left turn that
makes a study of the director’s career both surprising and challenging. This
is a picture that has more in common with Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 visual
masterpiece Barry Lyndon than it does with anything in Scorsese’s own
catalog, yet dig under the surface, and the heartbeat is still Scorsese’s.

ANALYSIS
Martin Scorsese did not grow up in a life of wealth and privilege, but the
social sparring he witnessed on Little Italy’s street corners was not all that
far removed from the wordless wars of New York’s Victorian-era elite. Less
bloodshed, perhaps, but an equal amount of posturing and positioning.
The picture opens in a theater, New York’s wealthiest closely observing
one another as much as they are observing the show onstage. This opening
scene does double duty, providing some simple exposition to give us a
sense of the key relationships—Newland is engaged to May, but it has not
yet been announced, and Countess Ellen has returned to New York after
living in Europe for some years with her husband—but it serves a more
important purpose in quickly and efficiently showing viewers that
appearance, image, and the power of gossip are major forces in this corner
of society. “This was a world balanced so precariously that its harmony
could be shattered by a whisper,” the unnamed narrator tells us. The next
scene is an aloof, playfully pretentious variation on the introduction
sequence in GoodFellas, in which the camera winds its way through an
array of colorful mobsters as Henry Hill tells us who each are. Here, the
mobsters are replaced with stuffy, overdressed New York elite, but the
effect is the same. It’s our introduction to a world that will seem alien to
most viewers, one in which words uttered with a smile are as deadly as
daggers.
The Age of Innocence is a quiet film, one that seems all the quieter when
set next to Scorsese’s other work. The rigid formality, that every dramatic
turn is prompted by words rather than actions, that the literary pomp is
cloaked in manufactured smiles and cordiality—it all seems quite out of
place in his work, but it’s not. Though this is a world that seems a stark
contrast to the one depicted in, say, Raging Bull, for the director they were
merely different sides of the same coin. “The gracefulness of the prose has a
kind of scathing, ironic violence to it,” Scorsese observed.1
Both Newland and Ellen are prisoners of a society with a strict set of
unspoken rules. Just as the gangsters Scorsese often depicts have a code
regarding what can and can’t be said, so do these people. That’s a great
frustration to the pair, especially to Ellen, who, having lived in Europe for a
number of years, feels out of place with the delicate walk one must walk to
remain relevant in Gotham high society. Here, image is everything: putting
on the perfect face, putting on the perfect air, putting on the perfect
performance. All see through one another, but none acknowledge it. It’s a
ceaseless chess game. People enjoy talking, she says, “as long as they don’t
hear anything unpleasant. Does no one here want to hear the truth, Mr.
Archer?”
The lush costumes and restrained formality of The Age of Innocence do not seem to fit with
Martin Scorsese’s other work, but the director saw familiar cruelty in the novel’s social
interactions. Columbia Pictures/Photofest

Newland’s own truth is his love for Ellen, one he at first tries not to
acknowledge, just as New York society has trained him, but one that slowly
grows in his heart. Though the countess is beautiful—this was when
Michelle Pfeiffer was one of the era’s most prominent silver-screen icons—
it’s not her beauty that draws Newland to her. Rather, it’s her attitudes about
the New York culture he has such difficulty navigating. She is honest,
whereas high society is not. She embraces her emotions, whereas others
suppress them. She believes in breaking norms, whereas others see them as
sacrosanct. “It seems stupid to discover America only to make it a copy of
another country,” she says, mocking the way in which the city’s upper crust
tries to model itself after the elite of London and Paris. When Newland
notes that something is not fashionable, she asks, “Fashionable? Is fashion
such a serious consideration?” He replies, “Among people who have
nothing more serious to consider.”
She even has the cheek to be late to her own gathering, one to which she
invited all the city’s social elite. It’s all a bit much for most—one man even
comments later in the film, albeit indirectly, “Society has a history of
tolerating vulgar women”—but Newland sees a kindred spirit in her.
Through this struggle against societal constraints, The Age of Innocence
explores sexual repression, social pressures, temptation, desire, and the way
in which social circles control our lives. Tear away the audacious costumes
and extravagant meals and ostentatious displays of wealth, and these people
are little different than those huddled around Henry Hill and Tommy
DeVito, looking on as the pair navigate the verbal minefield Tommy threw
them into when he asked Henry what made him so funny. The minefields
Newland and Ellen must navigate may not be matters of life and death, but
when the result of a misstep could be ostracism from their professional and
social circles, it may as well be. Alienation is its own kind of death in a
world such as this.
Throughout all this verbal fencing, Scorsese delights in painting this
world with meticulous attention to detail and startling creative flourishes.
On several occasions, the screen fades to vivid washes of color, each
shimmering yellow and fiery red chosen for what it says about the scene.
Characters sometimes turn to the camera and address the viewer directly, as
if telling us a story. Meals are sumptuous visual feasts of foods few viewers
will ever be served, plated on dinnerware few could afford. A shot of
dozens of men in near-identical garb, all holding their formal hats atop their
heads in the face of a windstorm, speaks to the anonymity of city life and
the conformity to which all eventually succumb. Sometimes the camera
peers and probes like a voyeur peering into the window at an unreachable
strata of society. Other times it is still, the image like a painting come to
life, calling to mind Kubrick’s similar approach on the equally lush Barry
Lyndon. Scorsese knew the rapid-fire, high-energy approach he so excels at
would not work for this time and place, instead taking a directorial
approach that is as literary as the narration that spans the film, as elegant
and understated as it is formal and extravagant. Far from being mere
window dressing or indulgence, all these directorial flourishes and splendid
visual designs are an essential part of helping us understand the rarified air
Newland, Ellen, and May breathe, and the precarious position Newland’s
longing puts them all in.
But the lure of the relationship is too strong for him. He makes excuses
to see Ellen. They largely remain chaste, the extent of their physical
intimacy limited to a pair of kisses, but their passion is palpable. This is
most evident in a carriage ride they take late in the film. It is the most erotic
sequence Scorsese ever shot, and there is nary a bit of sex in it, a bared
wrist the only skin we see. Newland slips off Ellen’s glove, the removal of
each clasp filled with aching. Slipping the glove off becomes a deeply
sensual moment when seen in the context of the repressed emotion at the
heart of the film. Kissing her wrist is like kissing her most intimate parts.
They do not consummate their love. Newland’s infidelity is (almost) purely
one of the heart. Regardless, it’s as passionate a scene as the director has
ever filmed, burning with longing and terribly erotic, yet also laced with
sadness because the pair know they can never be together.
The scene may be dressed in the elaborate garb of the Victorian-era
New York elite, but it represents a kind of sexual repression Scorsese knows
all too well, one seen in J. R.’s unwillingness to sleep with the Girl in Who’s
That Knocking at My Door? and Jake LaMotta’s awkward intimacy in
Raging Bull or even in the way in which sexual liberation is tied to
unhappiness and punishment in Cape Fear. Newland is not experiencing
the kind of Catholic sexual repression Scorsese is familiar with, but the
effect is much the same. Neither Newland nor Ellen can fully embrace their
feelings for one another, not merely because both are married—either could
seek a divorce, but both dismiss the idea as infeasible—but because they
live in a society that frowns upon overt expression of one’s genuine
feelings. Appearances are more important than truth, and most are all too
eager to pointedly look away from truth, provided the object of their
observations is willing to play the game, too.
What Newland and Ellen don’t initially realize is that, despite her
seeming wide-eyed innocence, May sees what is going on and takes subtle
but precise measures to undermine it at every turn. Newland believes he is
being discreet about his desire for Ellen, but May is more insightful than he
realizes, her ability to suss out truth from fiction hidden behind a seemingly
innocent veneer. When he returns from his ride with Ellen, May says to
him, “You haven’t kissed me today.” They hug, and over his shoulder we
can see uncertainty in her eyes. She knows something is amiss. And she has
far more guile than we are initially led to believe. That evening, she wears
her bridal gown to an opera. In this corner of society, women often wore
their bridal gowns out during their first two years of marriage, but this is the
first time she’s done it. That evening at home, May reveals to Newland that
Ellen wrote a note saying she is returning to Europe. The news crushes him,
but he must suppress it in front of his wife. What is left unspoken is that
May helped manipulate Ellen’s decision. When May thought she was
pregnant, the first person she told was Ellen—secretly, knowing full well
the effect it would have on her. It worked, too. The countess leaves New
York shortly thereafter. Two weeks later, when May finally tells her
husband, only then does he realize that May had perceived his true feelings
all along.
This is a devastating blow on multiple levels. Newland cannot pursue
Ellen, not without losing everything. Yet, as the nameless narrator points
out, he is now trapped in a world in which he holds no sway and has none
of the skill of manipulation his wife possesses. “The separation between
himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved,” the narrator says,
“and he knew that now the whole tribe had rallied around his wife. He was
a prisoner in the center of an armed camp.” As we hear this, we see
Newland at an elegant dinner with friends and family, people chatting
around a table laid with finery, he and his wife at the heads of the table,
Ellen next to him but a thousand miles away. Newland is left alone in a
crowd, ostracized and scrutinized. There is a ritual to their social
interactions, one May has mastered and he has not. Everyone pretends
things are perfect; everyone knows they are not. People believe Newland
and Ellen truly had a consummated affair, but none will say it. May believes
the same, but she won’t say it, either. It’s all false faces and perfect words, a
dance of sorts, pointed and cutting without being direct.
Most of this is masked in the first two-thirds of the picture. It is only in
the end that we realize just how cunning May had been all along and how
effective yet subtle her machinations had been. Look all the way back to the
yellow roses Newland buys Ellen, flowers that become a symbol of their
desire for one another. When Newland sends them, May expresses her
approval, then casually mentions all the flowers the countess receives from
others, too. Her observation appears innocent; her seeming obliviousness,
naïve. In truth, she is making Newland believe his gesture is nothing
special. Even when she later asks if Newland’s request to move the date of
their wedding means he believes he’s marrying the wrong woman, his
assurances seem to placate her. Yet May is perceptive and adroit at nudging
situations to her favor. She does move the date of their wedding forward,
just as Newland is beginning to build courage enough to pursue Ellen. And,
as already noted, when Ellen returns after another long absence, once again
stirring Newland’s longing, May frightens Ellen into returning to Europe by
telling her she and Newland are having a child, two weeks before she even
tells her husband. It’s only once she has driven the countess away that May
tells Newland the news. It’s terrifically manipulative, played with quiet
confidence by Ryder.
Finally, seeing the writing on the wall, Newland abandons the idea of
ever being with Ellen and falls into domestic life with May. This is depicted
in one of Scorsese’s most clever sequences, a passing-of-the-years montage
that isn’t a montage at all. May reveals to Newland that she is pregnant. The
narrator begins to tell us about all the important milestones Newland would
experience in that same room (the christening of his child, etc.), the camera
slowly panning around, around, and around, the years falling away behind
us, until we land on Newland again, still in the same room, visibly older and
on the phone talking with his adult son.
The narrative ends here, but there remains an epilogue of sorts. At the
age of fifty-seven, Newland has three grown children. May has passed, a
victim of pneumonia. His grief at her passing was genuine. He takes a trip
to France with his son, Ted (Robert Sean Leonard), and Ted arranges a
meeting with Ellen. Newland has not seen her for twenty-five years. Ted
confesses to his father that, just before she passed, May shared a family
secret: that Newland, Ted’s father, was once in love with the Countess Ellen
Olenska. She did not worry, however, because “once when she asked you
to,” Ted says, “you gave up the thing you wanted most.” But that is not how
Newland remembers it. “She never asked,” he says, pained. “She never
asked me.”
Outside the building where Ellen lives, Newland declines to go see her.
The sun glares off a window swung closed by a servant. The sun calls back
a memory of seeing her standing by the sea, a sailboat passing before a
lighthouse. At the time, he told himself he would go to her if she turned
before the boat reached the lighthouse. She never turned. But now, in his
vision, he sees her turning, the sun bright as if called down from heaven,
and she is radiant. His vision ends. He stands, and Newland Archer walks
away.
Throughout his life, Newland Archer faced neither bullets nor knives
nor criminal madmen. He merely faced words and glances. But words and
glances were all it took to deny him everything he ever wanted.
CONCLUSION AND IMPACT
The Age of Innocence did not light the box office on fire, but it was a
critical darling, garnering five Academy Award nominations (winning for
Costume Design) and winning praise by most contemporary critics. It
largely remains an anomaly in the director’s body of work, matched perhaps
only by Kundun and Silence in its quiet, meditative nature.
Fans wanting more of the crime-and-music whirlwind Scorsese is
known for would not have to wait long, however, as his next picture would
take everything that made GoodFellas great and drop it into an appropriate
place for vice and indulgence: the city of sin, Las Vegas.
 16

CASINO (1995)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: November 22, 1995
WRITTEN BY: Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese
STARRING: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci
RUNNING TIME: 178 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

I t would be inaccurate to call Casino a clone of GoodFellas, yet the

description wouldn’t be entirely without basis, either. Presented with a
similar tone and approach and dealing with similar subject matter, the
picture is a spiritual successor to GoodFellas, a continuation and expansion
of the aesthetic developed there and proof that the artistic success of that
movie was no anomaly.
It all began with an article in the Las Vegas Sun. Nicholas Pileggi,
Scorsese’s writing collaborator on GoodFellas, read a piece about Frank
“Lefty” Rosenthal having a dispute with his wife, Vegas showgirl and
socialite Geri McGee. Intrigued, Pileggi began further research. Before
long, he fell down a rabbit hole investigating organized crime in Las Vegas.
It looked to be a story worth telling. His initial aim was to write another
book similar to Wiseguy, the book upon which GoodFellas was based, then
pursue a film adaptation with Scorsese, but the director persuaded him to
instead begin working on a script right away.
The pair again collaborated on the screenplay, piecing together a
narrative from the growing pile of unfinished notes Pileggi was
accumulating. Names and details were changed, but the essential truths
remained in place: In the 1960s and ’70s, the mob was making big money
in the growing city out in the desert: “The skim at the Stardust was $7
million per year; at the Flamingo, it was $36 million from 1960 to 1967; at
the Tropicana it was $150,000 per month.”1 Here, a trio of characters would
find themselves walking a dangerous tightrope between interpersonal
conflict and keeping this massive criminal operation running, to inevitably
deadly results. It’s pure Scorsese: a rise to wealth followed by a greed-
driven fall from grace. “Gaining Paradise and losing it, through pride and
through greed—it’s the old-fashioned Old Testament story,” Scorsese said.
“Ace is given Paradise on Earth. In fact, he’s there to keep everybody happy
and keep everything in order, and to make as much money as possible so
they can take more on the skim. But the problem is he has to give way at
times to certain people and certain pressures, which he won’t do because of
who he is.”2
In Casino, sports-betting savant Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro)
is tasked with running the Tangiers casino by his mafia bosses so their
skimming operation can proceed uninterrupted. He runs the casino as a
legitimate operation, though he does so without a gaming license by taking
advantage of loopholes in gaming laws. His old friend Nicky Santoro (Joe
Pesci) flies out to Vegas to join him. Nicky is an erratic, brutal mob
enforcer who is there to milk the town of every dollar he can, no matter the
attention it draws. When Sam sees socialite grifter Ginger McKenna
(Sharon Stone), he’s immediately smitten. He asks her to marry him. She
reluctantly agrees, drawn by promises of wealth despite carrying a torch for
her con man pimp, Lester Diamond (James Woods). Things begin to
disintegrate after Sam fires the brother-in-law of a local county
commissioner, which leads to him having his gaming license application
rejected. At the same time, Ginger spirals into drug and alcohol addiction,
while Nicky’s crime rampages become an increasing problem for their
distant mob bosses. Sam’s marriage falls apart, Ginger steals a load of
money from him, and the FBI descends on the casinos. Nicky ends up being
whacked in the desert for the problems he caused, Sam survives an
assassination attempt, and the old status quo of the Vegas casino collapses,
ending the golden age of mob rule over Sin City. There’s a lot packed into
these three hours.

ANALYSIS
With all its elaborate costumes—the picture allegedly had a $1 million
budget for costumes alone—flashing lights, and clattering jewelry, it’s easy
to say Casino is about greed and the things we bring upon ourselves in the
pursuit of money.3 After all, it’s set in the greed capital of the world and
basks in audacious displays of wealth. Yet look closer, and you see that
much of the struggle is not between greed and selflessness; it’s between
legitimacy and crime, between playing by the rules (but toeing the line) and
making your own rules, between doing things the old mob way and doing
things in a way suited for the money mecca that is Vegas. And most of all,
it’s about trust.
Sam Rothstein’s two foils are the two people he is closest to, Nicky and
Ginger. Both relationships contain elements of the previously mentioned
conflicts. Ginger can’t break herself away from her attachment to her con
man flame and fully embrace the life of a married woman; she’s still stuck
in the world of pimps and petty scamming, even as she lives an increasingly
opulent lifestyle with Sam. It’s Sam’s relationship with Nicky, however,
where these themes truly come to the fore. The pair are constantly at odds
over the reason they are in Vegas in the first place. Nicky believes they are
there to rob the place blind, to rake in the bucks while the city is flush with
cash, and then move on to greener pastures. Sam recognizes that the goal is
to operate a successful, legitimate business in such a way that profits can be
illegally skimmed without anyone noticing. If done right, it’s an operation
that could last in perpetuity.
But Nicky is a short-term, impulsive thinker, effectively a less-
boisterous Tommy DeVito. (A scene early in the picture in which he
repeatedly stabs someone in the neck with a pen for insulting Sam makes
clear this character is dangerously close to being a retread of Pesci’s
character in GoodFellas. He’s distinguished from Tommy largely by Pesci’s
acting talents rather than through the writing.) This divide between Nicky
and Sam is one of two major fulcrums upon which the picture pivots, the
other being Sam’s relationship with Ginger and the inordinate amount of
trust he places in her. These two things are the backbone of the film. All its
themes spring from them.
Beyond those very human-focused themes, the picture broadly ends up
being about the rise and fall of mob rule in Las Vegas, the city’s supposed
transformation from playground of the mafia to legitimate greed-centric
capital of the world. “Supposed,” of course, because when it comes to
whether the mafia still has a hand in Vegas operations, the “answer depends
on who you ask. A couple of businesses are reportedly mobbed up. But the
jury is still out.”4 For the purposes of Casino, however, that era has come to
a close.
This idea of exploring the heyday of a group of criminals and their
eventual downfall, fueled in no small part by the inevitable internal strife
that arises when a lot of illegal money is at play, is one of many
commonalities that make Casino a spiritual sequel to GoodFellas. The
picture even starts with the same technique, opening up with a pivotal later
scene, then jumping back in time and working back toward that scene.
Here, we see Sam (dressed in an audacious peach-and-white outfit) get into
his car, turn the key, and trigger a car bomb, presumably killing him. (It
doesn’t.) We then jump back in time to see the events that led up to this
moment.
The structure is familiar, and so are the varied, often-daring techniques
Scorsese employs to immerse us in this world. Narration guides us through
the entire three hours, led by De Niro and Pesci. Music is central. Fast cuts,
swirling camerawork, scenes abbreviated to their barest essentials, breaking
the fourth wall, shocking violence and copious use of profanity—it’s all
here.
Though Casino reuses a slew of tricks from GoodFellas, it also employs
enough new and fresh tricks to distinguish itself from its older cousin.
Characters talking in code to one another are supplemented by subtitles that
say what they really mean. Title cards indicating time and place are
sometimes playfully vague and mirror the narration (“Back Home” or
“Back Home Years Ago”). Frank Vincent suddenly provides some narration
two hours and fifteen minutes into the film. And in one fourth-wall-
breaking example, Pesci’s narration is interrupted when, in the scene he’s
narrating, his character is hit with a shovel, causing both the on-screen
character and the narrator to cry out in pain. This in particular casts the
narration in a whole new light. In GoodFellas, we were being told a story
by Henry Hill (and, to a lesser extent, Karen). Here, we can’t be told a story
by Nicky because Nicky is dead. Not only is he dead, but also we heard
Nicky the narrator get slammed in the head in the narration itself. It makes
little sense, and it doesn’t need to. The effect is more important than
adherence to realism.
Even the tricks Casino does reuse are used in a different way. This is
most prominent in the picture’s use of music. Here, music doesn’t just
punctuate key scenes. It permeates everything from the first frame to the
end. There are only a few moments that don’t have a soundtrack playing,
and those brief instances of silence are meant to emphasize something
important, such as the first moment Sam sees Ginger. Otherwise, the music
never stops. This isn’t merely Scorsese at his most self-indulgent in terms
of using popular songs in his movies. The relentless assault of sound is not
unlike the sensory battering you’ll get in any casino, where the lights and
sound never cease. There is an almost-claustrophobic effect to it, a way in
which it skews your sense of the passage of time because there is never a
pause for breath. Your senses are overwhelmed. Casinos use this to great
effect to keep people at the tables and spending money.
The music often comments on the movie, too, a subtle touch that
rewards close viewings. For example, when Sam first walks Ginger into
their new home following their marriage, the first lyric we hear is, “What a
difference a day makes,” from the song of the same name by Dinah
Washington. In another shot of Sam casting his steely gaze over the betting
floor, watching for cheats, we hear Muddy Waters croon, “Everybody
knows I’m here.” It’s not just background music; it’s a carefully chosen
symphony of music and message and audience manipulation.
Every aspect of Casino’s audacious displays of wealth was as tightly controlled by Scorsese
as the Tangiers was by Sam “Ace” Rothstein, portrayed by Robert De Niro. It would be De
Niro’s last role for Scorsese for twenty-four years, until 2019’s The Irishman. Universal

As was the case for every Scorsese film from Raging Bull forward,
three-time Academy Award–winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker worked
with the director to piece together a whirlwind picture that feels half the
length of its three-hour run time. It’s a tour de force of editorial talent, with
noteworthy choices and techniques coming so quickly it can be dizzying
trying to keep up with them all. The needle-drop music cues that gave
GoodFellas so much life are in place, but they are only the beginning.
Witness the first moment Nicky meets Ginger in Sam’s apartment. There is
a rapid-fire triple-fade cut when she walks into the room that borders on the
unnecessary, yet it effectively gets across the idea that Nicky is stunned to
see her there and momentarily has his breath taken away. Or the quick cuts
from person to person as we take a tour of the casino floor. Or the
documentary-like approach to much of the first hour, when we take a deep
dive into how Vegas and crime intertwine to form a massive money-making
machine. And many more.
 If there is a Copacabana shot in Casino, it’s our introduction to the
moneycounting room, the heart of every casino and the room where the
mob’s most important work takes place. In this shot we follow someone
through the floor of the casino, past the gaming tables, and into the room
where millions of dollars are counted daily. The camera probes the room,
still in one continuous shot, showing how the counting is done and, more
importantly, how cash is skimmed. From there the shot continues, following
a courier holding a huge bag of cash out of the count room, onto the casino
floor, out the front door, and into a taxi. It’s a dynamic sequence that is
more than just showing off. That count room is the most integral part of the
mob’s operations in Vegas, the place from which all their cash comes, and
entering it in this way provides a more vivid picture of how there is a
hidden world behind the lights and sounds and chips and characters that
populate an active casino.
If the approach rings familiar, it’s meant to. Both these cinematic
cousins are concerned with introducing us to a world and lifestyle most will
never come in contact with, much less be intimately familiar with. Even
setting aside new directorial indulgences, however, Casino distinguishes
itself in ways better suited to its sleazy-glitz setting. This is clear by the
picture’s look alone. Smoke-filled clubs and dingy backrooms are traded for
brightly lit casino floors and lavish homes and apartments. Timeless men’s
suits are replaced with ostentatiously loud sports jackets and jewel-studded
sequin dresses. A tremendous amount of money was poured into the
wardrobe in order to capture the look and feel of a Las Vegas busting at the
seams with cash, and that wardrobe was essential to telling us who these
people are. “Pay attention to the characters,” said Rita Ryack, lead costume
designer for the film. “Look at their clothes—every little detail means
something, even on the extras. Sharon (Stone) looks one way when she was
a girl in that flappy mod sequin dress throwing chips in the air. When she’s
a junky at the end, she’s lost all of that weight, and she dies in her pajamas
—you follow her rise in that gold sequin dress, and then you witness her
decline.”5
The way Casino most effectively distinguishes itself is not merely
through being glitzier and more creative, however. It does so through the
characters, Sam in particular. He’s a corrupt man who believes he runs a
legitimate business. He’s also a man who can spot any attempt to rip off his
casino but who also marries an untrustworthy con artist still pining for her
pimp. Early in the film, Sam narrates, “That’s the truth about Las Vegas.
We’re the only winners. The players don’t stand a chance,” yet his inner life
is at odds with the image of power and command he displays. Sam’s
attention to detail is extraordinary, as it must be in his line of work, though
sometimes he misses the forest for the trees. When he complains that the
blueberries in the casino’s blueberry muffins are not evenly distributed, he
says he’s trying to ensure the casino functions well. Yet his attention to this
kind of unimportant detail is in stark contrast to the lack of attention he
gives to Ginger, or rather to Ginger’s true nature. He’s seen her operate. He
knows what she is all about or thinks he does. Yet he thinks he can rein her
in in the same way he reins in thousands of gamblers and millions of
dollars. He sees her but doesn’t see her. From the moment he agrees to give
her access to his safety deposit box, we know she will eventually rip him
off. It’s inevitable. Sam sees so much yet cannot see this. Perhaps this man,
so used to always getting what he wants, simply saw her as another trophy
rather than a fully realized human being with the same complicated nature
as anyone else.
He does question her when she asks for large sums of money without
explanation, so it’s not as if he’s completely blind. He appears to have at
least some understanding of the position he’s put himself in. He’s not Jake
LaMotta, though; he seeks to control Ginger’s behavior only when it
appears he’s being taken advantage of. He confronts her and Lester at a
diner when he realizes she’s shoveling money Lester’s way, arranging to
have him beaten as a lesson. But he continues the relationship (and
maintains Ginger’s access to his emergency money) anyway. Ginger turns
to alcohol to wash away her misery, and he watches her spiral downward
until finally filing for divorce. Here, too, he does not cut off her access to
his emergency stash. She remains a blind spot for him even as he directly
confronts signal after signal that his relationship is a ticking time bomb. It’s
only after she flees the state with their daughter and Lester that he finally
pulls the plug and cuts off her access to the money, which unleashes a series
of events that tears apart not only their marriage but also Sam’s already
rocky relationship with Nicky. Like so many Scorsese protagonists, Sam
Rothstein is the architect of his own downfall. Driven in part by hubris, by a
feeling of being untouchable, by a feeling that he can control Ginger and
Nicky—two people no one can control—he puts himself in a position to
collapse.
 Though Sam was taken by Ginger, she’s not a purely malicious scam
artist. This is a woman stuck in a cycle of abuse. The film doesn’t fully
explore her background, but there are enough hints to piece it together.
Lester took her under his wing when she was still in school. He strung her
along from an early age, pimping her out and using her to scam money from
others. Whatever successes she has, whatever status she enjoys, she always
ends up running back to him. Even on her wedding day, she calls him and
cries, wondering if she did the right thing. Lester, meanwhile, is at home
snorting cocaine with some other woman, urging Ginger to stick with the
marriage. He uses her to get access to Sam’s wealth, but he says the right
thing, playing to her insecurities and acting as if he is the only stability in
her life.
None of the characters can avoid their status quo being shaken, though.
Ginger cannot exist both as Sam’s wife and Lester’s plaything. The two are
incompatible, and in the end both must fall apart. Nicky cannot continue to
run amok without fear of reprisal, either. There is too much money at stake.
He ends up in a ditch as payback for the trouble he causes. And Sam cannot
keep one foot in the world of crime and one (very public) foot in legitimate
business. In the end, this arrangement must collapse, too. “Ultimately, it’s a
tragedy,” the director said. “It’s the frailty of being human. I want to push
audiences’ emotional empathy with certain types of characters who are
normally considered villains.”6
The FBI sweeps in and busts the mob bosses who pulled strings from
afar. Ginger dies of a drug overdose, and Sam returns to being a sports
handicapper for organized crime. The picture ends with images of real-life
casinos being demolished, fleeting, temporary landmarks of vice torn down
to pave the way for newer, larger, more extravagant landmarks of vice. So
Casino does not depict the rise of today’s Las Vegas. It depicts the end of
yesterday’s. And more importantly, it depicts the end of a triangle of
relationships, people torn apart by drugs, violence, and of course greed.
And it’s that human toll that hits hardest.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Today, Sin City doesn’t just embrace its historic ties to mafia rule; it also
proudly profits from its questionable past with shows, museums, and dinner
events that center around the mob theme: “Las Vegas is exploiting the
public’s love for goodfellas as a curious hyper-local form of cultural
tourism, like the Mission architecture of California or a Civil War
battlefield in Virginia. Since its 2012 opening, Mob Museum has ranked in
the top 20 of national museums.”7 As with so much else the city is built on,
it’s a crass, tacky bastardization of something real, turned into money-
making artifice for millions of tourists each year.
As for the film, it was fairly well received but criticized for being a
retread of GoodFellas, which was released just five years prior, and did
only modestly at the box office ($42 million in the United States, $116
million worldwide). It’s only in retrospect that some critics have reassessed
the picture and declared it the more mature, refined work. “Casino is a more
substantial, artful, and engrossing movie than GoodFellas,” GQ argued.
“It’s partly because Ace Rothstein, Casino’s main character, is a far more
fascinating creature than Henry Hill. It’s also because Casino is a dazzling
period piece, a penetrating historical work that captures Las Vegas better
than any other movie that has come before or after it.”8
It’s not accurate to say that, with Casino, Scorsese said his final piece
about organized crime. He’d take a look at it again from different angles
with Gangs of New York, The Departed, and The Irishman. It also wouldn’t
be accurate to say he had his fill of the style he pioneered with GoodFellas.
He’d revisit it again with The Wolf of Wall Street and even to some extent
with Bringing Out the Dead. But, for the moment at least, he’d take a rest
from such rapid-fire, music-infused violence and with his next film would
instead turn toward the polar opposite of worldly indulgences, casual
criminality, and deeply unsympathetic characters: He’d turn his gaze toward
Tibet and the rise of the fourteenth Dalai Lama.
 17

KUNDUN (1997)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: December 25, 1997
WRITTEN BY: Melissa Mathison
STARRING: Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong, Gyurme Tethong, Tulku Jamyang
Kunga Tenzin, Tenzin Yeshi Paichang
RUNNING TIME: 134 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

W
peace?
hat would a man sacrifice in order to bring salvation to others? At
what cost does it come? And can one overcome violence through

There are no easy answers to these questions. The fourteenth Dalai

Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and the foremost figure in
Tibetan Buddhism, is one of the few who could. Fleeing Tibet at the age of
twenty-four in the wake of the 1959 Tibet uprising, the Dalai Lama has
lived his life in exile, awaiting a day when he can return to a free Tibet. He
is eighty-three years old as of this writing. It’s unlikely he will see his
dream fulfilled in this lifetime, though for the Dalai Lama at least, there is
always next lifetime.
Kundun explores the early life of Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai
Lama, from shortly after his birth in 1935 to ascending as the leader of
Tibetan Buddhism in 1940 and finally his flight from Tibet during the 1959
Tibetan uprising, with a focus on his spiritual growth as a young man and
how his compassionate brand of spirituality ran headlong into the behemoth
that was (and remains) communist China, at the time led by Chairman Mao.

ANALYSIS
Prior to The Age of Innocence, few would have looked to Martin Scorsese
for a meditative art film focused on an Eastern culture little seen in the West
at the time and a culture best known for its embrace of nonviolence.
Screenwriter Melissa Mathison (E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial) thought
otherwise, suggesting Scorsese be brought on as director. And indeed, the
director found himself intrigued with the material: “I’m fascinated by one
person in the world who is full of compassion and full of love, the idea of
this enlightened being who has unconditional love for all sentient beings. Is
this possible? I don’t know if the film answers that; perhaps all it can do is
give an impression of what Tibetan culture was like.”1
There is an understated beauty to Kundun that is apparent from the title
cards, with striking Eastern-tinged music by Philip Glass guiding us over
vivid depictions of sand art. It’s an immediate signal that we’ll be in a
different time and place than seen in other Scorsese pictures. So, too, is the
tone dramatically different from what we’ve seen before—though perhaps
the first surprise is that much of the picture features child actors, a rarity in
his filmography. It wouldn’t be for another fourteen years, with Hugo, that
the director would again make young actors this prominent a part of a
movie.
Here, the very young Dalai Lama (Tenzin Yeshi Paichang), prior to his
discovery by spiritual leaders, is a precocious, demanding child of two who
appears to have an inflated sense of his own place in the world. At dinner,
he insists his father move so he can sit at the head of the table. He demands
that others tell the story of the night he was born. He shows fierceness
unlike other children his age. Later, when a lama shows up during their
search for the next Dalai Lama (in the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism,
the Dalai Lama is reborn after death, necessitating a search for the new
Dalai Lama in order to maintain succession), the boy points to the lama’s
beaded necklace. “This is mine,” he declares. In another child this might
seem forward and unwanted. Here, it’s a sign.
The boy’s true inner nature is depicted in a scene in which he sees two
beetles in conflict. He separates the two, placing them at a distance from
one another as if to say, “You can coexist.” A naïve belief, perhaps, given
the experience he will later have with China’s Chairman Mao (Robert Lin)
but also a beautiful belief. Violence rules the world, it seems to say, but
there can be another way.
These signs of potential divinity are prominent throughout the early
discovery sequences. Scorsese takes the reality of resurrection, of death and
rebirth, and of the Dalai Lama’s divine nature as a matter of course. Kundun
does not question his divinity, nor does it question the idea that this long
cycle of resurrection is reality. Faith and belief are paramount. We are never
shown anything that could be described as supernatural. No hearts pulled
from chests or water turned to wine, as in The Last Temptation of Christ.
Most of what we see could be explained in real-world terms though
sometimes involving extraordinary coincidence, such as the boy correctly
choosing items that belonged to former Dalai Lamas. The one moment that
leaps past this and ventures into the realm of the near unbelievable is when
the child says his teeth are being kept in a cupboard. Unprompted, he opens
a cabinet, goes through some items that have obviously been there a long
time, and opens a package that contains the jawbone of a former Dalai
Lama. This borders on the supernatural, yet Scorsese treats it straight, with
unquestioning belief.
Certainly, the lamas who find, educate, and serve the young Dalai Lama
believe. Their hands shake when they recognize him for who he is. When
he is told of his true nature, we see through his eyes in a wonderful shot
through another lama’s robes, the boy not yet part of this strange new way
of living but also shielded within it as if in a womb. He is the Buddha
returned again but will have to grow into the role with the help of these
men, just as Scorsese’s version of Jesus of Nazareth needed his disciples to
fully embrace who and what he was. For the moment, he is still very much
a child. When the boy is finally named the fourteenth Dalai Lama, his
family bows before him, his older brother giving him a puzzled and
annoyed look as Kundun (one of the names given to him in Tibetan
Buddhism) smiles back with delight. It’s a charming moment that speaks to
the human side of this divine person.
And he is indeed human. There is no healing lepers or resurrecting the
dead. This is a boy (and then a young man and then a man) who is
rebellious and willful and intent on enjoying his life. He takes a car and
crashes it. He looks on as a rat drinks from a cup, the others around him
deep in meditation, a combination of joy and mischief and compassion and
wonder etched on his face. At one point, he asks one of his friends and
advisors if the lamas found the wrong child. Could it be that he isn’t the
Dalai Lama after all? No, his friend replies with utter certainty. But like the
Jesus of Last Temptation, the Dalai Lama is not always certain. The things
he is forced to confront in Kundun are not obstacles to be overcome with
divine power; they are obstacles to be overcome with will and focus and
devotion to nonviolence. In the midst of a director’s career typified by how
we engage in and react to violence, here is a film about avoiding it. The
Dalai Lama succeeds in that task, at great cost to himself and his people,
but fails in his greater task of keeping Tibet free.
His father passes away. As practiced by Vajrayana Buddhists in areas of
Tibet, Sichuan, and portions of Mongolia, his body is subjected to sky
burial, a practice in which a corpse is placed on a mountaintop to
decompose naturally or, more often, to be eaten by vultures. The idea is that
the body is but a shell, an empty vessel once the spirit has departed, so the
body is given back to nature as intended, thus preserving the circle of life.
Here, the Dalai Lama witnesses his father’s sky burial—in this case, the
body is cut into pieces—just as he hears the news that Tibet has been
ordered to become part of China and succumb to Chinese rule. The layers
here are fitting, the loss of his father set alongside the potential loss of his
land and people, a pair of endings, each emotionally complicated in their
own way.
Tibet finds itself “crashing into the Twentieth Century, they find
themselves face-to-face with a society that is one of the most anti-spiritual
ever formed, the Marxist government of the Chinese communists,” Scorsese
said. “What interests me is how a man of non-violence deals with these
people.”2
 Soon, speakers are blaring Chinese pride music outside. “They have
taken away our silence,” the Dalai Lama laments. Things are about to
change. Again, echoes of previous Scorsese movies in a seemingly unlikely
place. Casino depicts the end of the era of mafia rule in Las Vegas;
GoodFellas, the end of the golden age of the classic Italian mobster; The
Last Temptation of Christ, the end of the old laws and the beginning of the
new; and even Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, the end of one life and the
birth of a new. So, too, is that theme present in Kundun. The Dalai Lama
travels to China to meet Chairman Mao in the hopes of preserving both
peace and Tibet itself. But it’s not to be. Mao tells him, “Religion is poison.
… Tibet has been poisoned by religion.” Though said with feigned concern
and a smile, this is, spiritually at least, a declaration of war. “That’s exactly
what the Dalai Lama told us he said,” Scorsese remembered, “and how Mao
moved closer to him on the couch. And that the Dalai Lama couldn’t look at
him anymore, he just looked at Mao’s shiny shoes, and knew that that man
is just going to wipe everything away.”3
It does not take long for Mao’s veiled threats to become reality. The
Dalai Lama meets with him several times, always in good faith, initially
believing he can be reasoned with, but there is no reason here. Mao believes
Tibet is his, that it is China’s. And the Tibetan people are in no position to
stop him.
When the Dalai Lama was a child, his parents would often tell the story
of the night of his birth. The great point of the anecdote was that he did not
cry when he was born, a trait that set him apart. But he weeps when he
learns of the atrocities the Chinese army perpetrates upon his people,
massacres and butchery, rapes, people being forced to fornicate in the
streets, children being made to shoot their own parents. Kundun envisions
himself in a sea of bodies, bloodied lamas by the hundreds, stretching as far
as he can see, like blood-red flowers in a field, an image of horror and
beauty.
He realizes he must sacrifice his ancestral home so that he may continue
on as a spiritual leader for his people. He must leave Tibet. He vows, “I will
liberate those not liberated. I will release those not released. I will relieve
those unrelieved,” and with that, he begins his difficult flight from the lands
in which he had been born, died, and reborn again and again. Glass’s music
surges as the beautiful sand art first seen in the title cards is swept away.
Each advance of the Chinese, each violent act, each person who dies in
rebellion—all of them are symbolized in this destruction of beauty. Tibetan
sand mandalas, as this art is called, are lush, beautiful “paintings” of sand,
painstakingly created by a team of monks and depicting deities and other
imagery. They are then ritually destroyed as a representation of the transient
nature of life. Once destroyed, the sand is returned to a body of moving
water and returned to nature. All things must pass. All things are cyclical in
nature. Just as the sand mandala is destroyed, so, too, is the Tibet the Dalai
Lama knew. For different reasons, of course, but a new mandala will one
day arise again from the same sands, and (or so goes the hope) a free Tibet
will arise again, too. That is the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s lifelong mission,
even today.
In the final sequences of the film, he flees Tibet, always just one step
ahead of the Chinese who wish to take him into custody. Glass’s music
never ceases for the final ten minutes, building and building until it
becomes both tense and hypnotic. The Dalai Lama and his guides reach the
border of India. They bow to him. As he looks back, he sees a vision of
them dead on their horses, killed, presumably by those who hunt them. He
does not speak of it. Instead he nods a thanks to them, seeing that they are
still among the living, and he crosses the border. There, one of the border
guards asks him, “Are you the Lord Buddha?”
“I think I am a reflection,” he says, “like the moon on water. When you
see me, and I try to be a good man, see yourself.” Bereft of his spiritual
home, exiled from the place from which he belongs, all the fourteenth Dalai
Lama can do is serve as an example of how to live, how to be, how to exist.
When faced by violence, to exist in peace. When faced by turmoil, to exist
in calm. When faced by oppression, to exist in the perpetual hope of
freedom springing anew.
Like so many Scorsese films, Kundun ends with collapse and loss, the
protagonist left without something they cherish or desire or hold dear:
admiration and the thrill of victory for Jake LaMotta; access to an easy life
for Henry Hill; a successful music career for New York, New York’s Jimmy
Doyle; passion for Newland Archer; family stability for Sam Bowden; and
many more. But unlike so many Scorsese films, Kundun, through the spirit
of the Dalai Lama, ends with something often scarce in his filmography:
hope.
CONCLUSION AND IMPACT
Today, the fourteenth Dalai Lama is still in exile. He lives in India and
travels the world speaking on the plight of the Tibetan people, who still live
under the yoke of Chinese rule. He still preaches the gospel of nonviolence.
Whether there will be a fifteenth Dalai Lama remains an open question.
The Chinese government will not recognize one chosen on the basis of
reincarnation. If Tibet remains under Chinese control, the Dalai Lama says
he will not reincarnate within Tibet. The Chinese government insists
otherwise. In 2014, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said, “The
title of Dalai Lama is conferred by the central government, which has
hundreds of years of history. The (present) 14th Dalai Lama has ulterior
motives, and is seeking to distort and negate history, which is damaging to
the normal order of Tibetan Buddhism.”4 Yet in 1994, when the Dalai Lama
named a Tibetan boy the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second-
highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, the Chinese government captured the
boy and put another in his place, seeming to confirm the Dalai Lama’s
observation that “there is an obvious risk of vested political interests
misusing the reincarnation system to fulfill their own political agenda.”5 So
the struggle continues up until today.
Unsurprisingly, Kundun stirred up political controversy in China. For a
time, Scorsese was even banned from the country. He couldn’t get his films
distributed there, either, until Hugo received a small release in 2012. And it
didn’t just cause problems for the director: “The picture seriously damaged
business relationships between China and The Walt Disney Co., which had
produced and distributed the film over Beijing’s objections. Relations
weren’t normalized until the studio apologized, as part of the negotiation
process leading up to the creation of Shanghai Disneyland.”6
The picture was another box-office failure, receiving a highly limited
release and only bringing in $6 million, but it was generally praised by
critics for its visual beauty and garnered four Academy Award nominations
(Art Direction, Costume Design, Cinematography, and Score). Michael
Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune said of the picture, “In the post-1980s
movie era of blooddrenched demolition derbies and explosive high-tech
extravaganzas, it may be the kind of artistic feat that gets insufficiently
appreciated.”7
 But by this point smaller, more personal films that fail at the box office
had become standard for Martin Scorsese, a director often at odds with the
financial realities of Hollywood productions. Yet that wouldn’t stop him for
making his next picture, a bizarre, druggy look at an insomniac ambulance
driver obsessed with a dead homeless girl, a concept that was about as
appealing to mainstream audiences as it sounds.
 18

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD

(1999)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: October 22, 1999
WRITTEN BY: Paul Schrader
STARRING: Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving
Rhames, Tom Sizemore
RUNNING TIME: 121 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

D
eath is an ever-present entity in Martin Scorsese films, but it
wouldn’t be accurate to say that the director is preoccupied with the
subject. Rather, death is a mere fact of life, something unavoidable,
something many of his characters take as a matter of course. Bringing Out
the Dead takes the theme of death and brings it to the fore, blending it with
more prominent Scorsesian themes like redemption and guilt—lots and lots
of guilt. It’s also a meditation on how being in close proximity to death on a
regular basis drives a person to a mental place just askew from reality.
Though saving lives, the paramedics and ER nurses of the film are as
twisted, callous, and antisocial as any of the gangsters in the director’s
crime films, in no small part because their daily exposure to the worst
humanity has to offer has made them numb to the idea of compassion.
The film is based on the bestselling book of the same name by Joe
Connelly, who described it as semiautobiographical. The movie focuses on
Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage), a paramedic working a bad Manhattan
neighborhood in the early 1990s, a period when violent crime in New York
City had spiked past its 1970s highs. He and Larry (John Goodman)
respond to an elderly man in cardiac distress, assuring the man’s daughter,
Mary (Patricia Arquette), that they can revive him. They do, but the man
remains in a coma. Frank and other partners respond to a series of calls,
largely to drug dealers and users, drunks, and other less-than-savory
characters. Frank grows increasingly disoriented as the picture wears on.
Unable to sleep and seeing visions of a homeless girl, Rose (Cynthia
Roman), he had earlier failed to save, he rescues a drug pusher from a fatal
fall, protects a disturbed drug user from a beating, then realizes what he has
to do in order to free himself from visions of Rose. Frank goes to the
hospital where the man he saved at the start of the picture is being kept on
life support, unplugs him, then goes to Mary to tell her that her father has
passed. Only then does Frank appear to have found peace.

ANALYSIS
Death is everywhere. It surrounds Frank Pierce. It hangs over his shoulder
as he works, often with a kiss of religious and spiritual imagery. He talks of
“spirits leaving the body and not wanting to be put back, spirits angry at the
awkward places death had left them,” and in the neighborhood he works,
awkward places abound. The people he treats are addicts, drug dealers,
prostitutes, the mentally disturbed, homeless who have lost touch with
wider society, drug users deep in the throes of their addictions, street
criminals, victims of street criminals, the sick, the mad, the deranged. His
city is filled with miserable people leading miserable lives. This is Travis
Bickle’s world but seen through the eyes of someone who wants to save it
rather than purge it in bloodshed.
 The apartment where we first see Frank work is a picture of normality
by comparison. There, he must revive an older man (Cullen O. Johnson)
who has gone into cardiac arrest. A cross hangs on the wall over the bed.
(How many times have we seen this in a Scorsese movie?) He asks the
family to play the old man’s favorite music, Frank Sinatra, and the victim’s
pulse returns. He provides aid and saves the man’s life.
What Frank doesn’t know is that this is someone who did not want to be
saved, someone who was ready to depart this life. It’s one of a pair of guilts
that torment him throughout the picture, each in contrast to the other. The
old man was ready to pass, but ER doctors keep reviving him, more than a
dozen times bringing him back from the brink. Keeping him alive only
prolongs his suffering, and as the movie progresses, Frank begins imagining
the old man is talking to him from his coma, asking to be allowed to die.
Seeing him cling on against his wishes is an anchor on Frank’s psyche.
The other guilt that plagues him is a larger anchor, however: Rose. Rose
was an eighteen-year-old homeless girl whom Frank could not save. As his
insomnia increases and his shifts become more chaotic, he sees her face
more and more. It’s painted on everyone he sees. She is beneath every
hoodie, around every corner, etched on every pedestrian. These phantom
versions of her ask why he didn’t save her. He has no answer. This pair are
his spiritual burdens. They are the emotional trauma he must work through
even as he helps others through their physical trauma. The elderly man
wanted to die. The young woman wanted to live. Frank feels as if he’s
failed both of them.
This sets Frank apart from many other Scorsese protagonists. His is a
different sort of guilt than the usual Scorsese guilt. In earlier pictures, the
nature of a character’s guilt was often vague or unspecified (Who’s That
Knocking at My Door? and Mean Streets) or stemmed from things they
couldn’t fully confront or acknowledge (Raging Bull and Cape Fear),
usually their own behavior. Here, Frank’s guilt takes a specific form and
specific substance. It is guilt for failure on his part, failure to save the lives
he is tasked with saving, as represented by Rose. It’s not about the
individual. Rose is a stand-in for all of them. In his narration, Frank says,
“After a while I grew to understand that my role was less about saving than
about bearing witness. I was a grief mop. It was enough that I simply
showed up.” He is, in some sense, a temporary Messiah for the people he
serves, there to absolve them of sin as much as he is to lift them from pain.
Those brief moments of being cared for, of being attended to, of being
treated like a human are powerful to people who have largely been ignored
by wider society. “He knows he’s not God,” Scorsese said, “but there’s a
pride because he has the power to bring someone back to life. He thinks he
is divine to a certain extent, and it’s very moving when it strikes him that he
may not be.”1
That’s the role Frank is fulfilling, and it’s why his failure to save Rose
looms so large for him. Unlike such squadmates as Tom Wolls (Tom
Sizemore) or ER workers like Nurse Constance (Mary Beth Hurt), Frank
doesn’t want to forget that those he serves are people. The people he and his
colleagues serve can make that difficult, however. Like several other
pictures by the director, Bringing Out the Dead doesn’t have much in the
way of plot. Instead, it’s a series of interconnected vignettes depicting
Frank’s life as a tired, tormented paramedic. Each of these vignettes gives
us a glimpse of people torn down by poverty or addiction and a city that
considers them second-class citizens. He’s accompanied by one of three
different partners throughout: the pragmatic Larry, who represents what
Frank could be if still of sound mind; the religiously hopeful Marcus (Ving
Rhames), who represents the kind of hubris that can come of taking your
role as a life-saver too close to heart; and the violently psychopathic Tom,
who represents someone who has lost sight of what they are and why they
do what they do.
When riding with Marcus, Frank is told that he has to accept that death
is just a part of the job. You don’t think about it; otherwise it will consume
you. Seeing Rose’s face everywhere makes Frank want to quit. In fact, a
running gag in the film is that he wants to be fired, but his boss refuses to
do so, always making excuses to put off his firing for a few more days. But
Marcus knows quitting won’t work, anyway: “You think just ’cause you
quit, them ghosts is gonna quit you? It don’t work that way, Frank.”
Bringing Out the Dead’s often-hallucinogenic approach to exploring
character can be disorienting. Frank discovers himself not through direct
experiences but through visions, dreams, and hazy images of the world.
This isn’t merely a stylistic choice by Scorsese. Rather, it ties into the
spiritual journey Frank is on and the disconnect between our bodies and our
souls. Mary’s father lives on in a shell and wishes to depart the world. Rose
has already passed, but her spirit lives on in Frank and in his memories. He
keeps her here, tied to the world through his regret and guilt. We see the
streets of New York as strange, twisted visions, the people and their essence
seeming to be two different things. We get fleeting impressions of them
rather than an actual view of their humanity. It’s that latter view that Frank
must recapture if he is to cast guilt off his shoulders and find the redemption
he so desperately needs.
When Frank returns to a drug den where he had earlier found Mary (and
where he experienced a horrifying hallucination of Rose’s death), he finds
Cy (Cliff Curtis), the guy who runs the place, speared on a wrought-iron
balcony fence and teetering precariously over the side of the fourteenth
floor. Emergency workers have to blowtorch the fencing to remove him,
sparks flying into the night air, their beautiful lights turning into fireworks.
It’s strangely beautiful. When Frank was here last, he sought escape in
drugs and rest but could not find it. He sought peace and instead found
haunted memories. But his return is different. Though tainted with death
and injury, it’s an awakening. The sparks and fireworks are a celebration, or
the gates of his mind being opened, the moment when the purpose of his
work comes back into focus. He’s not there to judge or condemn people.
When they’re vulnerable and on the brink, people are just people. His role
is to save them, even drug dealers.
This is further solidified in his final encounter with Noel (Marc
Anthony), a disturbed drug user who has been losing his grip on reality.
Throughout the picture, Frank encounters Noel—on the streets, in the ER,
and even with Mary, with whom Noel once stayed. Each time, Noel grows
increasingly erratic and detached from the real world. Frank and Tom chase
after him, but then things get dark. Tom is a psychopath, a violent man who
looks down on the people he serves. They’re not human to him. A part of
him seems to enjoy their suffering. It’s almost a game to Tom, but this time,
it’s a violent game that snaps Frank out of his mental fog. The New York
here is plucked from Taxi Driver, all wet streets and decaying people and
hopelessness. The presentation and approach are similar to what Scorsese
developed in GoodFellas, with a needle-drop pop music soundtrack,
narration, and aggressive scene shifts. But the heart of it is quite different
from either. Though it touches on common Scorsese themes, guilt being the
most prominent, Bringing Out the Dead resolves itself with an air of
distant, dreamlike hope that is rarely present in his work. It manifests itself
in this alleyway with Frank, Tom, and Noel.
 After Tom beats Noel with a bat, Frank chases off Tom and performs
mouth-to-mouth on the beaten addict. In any other film depicting the lives
of paramedics, this procedure would appear normal. In Bringing Out the
Dead, it’s a noteworthy decision on Frank’s part because, for most of the
picture, the paramedics have talked about how they avoid doing it. Most
only did it once. They had a bad experience, or more commonly, they just
didn’t want to perform such an intimate procedure with the kind of people
they serve. There is a habit of dehumanizing the people in the
neighborhood, seeing them as something filthy and other, which infects the
entire crew. So when Frank performs mouth-to-mouth, it’s a big moment.
It’s a redemptive moment. This is Frank’s sacrifice. His giving of himself to
save another. It’s not as potent as volunteering to be nailed to a cross, but
the spirit of the act is the same. In saving Noel, in a way Frank finally saves
Rose, too. He sets her spirit free and gives her peace.
This selfless act—he’s no longer just going through the motions—
awakens something in him, a memory of why he does the job in the first
place, perhaps, or an acknowledgment that the people he serves are indeed
people, something many of his colleagues seem to have forgotten. He
travels to Mary’s father’s hospital room, hooks himself up to the equipment
monitoring his vital signs to throw off the readings, and then allows the old
man to die. He becomes the old man, in a sense, temporarily serving as a
stand-in for him so he can finally pass in peace. This is a case where saving
a life means allowing someone to die rather than suffer. Death is natural.
You can’t always stop it. Sometimes, you shouldn’t stop it. By freeing the
old man from his torment, Frank frees himself of his final burden.
With this weight off him, he goes to see Mary. He tells her that her
father has passed. In response, she tells him something he said to her at the
start of the film: “You have to keep the body going until the brain and heart
recover enough to go on their own.” As she says this, she wears Rose’s
face. The picture ends with Frank and Mary sitting in quiet contemplation,
the morning sun streaming in through the apartment window, bathing them
in light. Through death, they’ve each rediscovered life.
Death has been a presence in almost all Scorsese films to this point, but
he never dwelled on it the way he dwells on it here. In his crime pictures
especially, death is a matter of course. It’s just part of the fringe world these
people exist in. Here, however, death is something different. It’s a fact of
life, yes, but it’s an aspect of life deeply connected to people and the lives
they lead. It’s a movie about forgotten deaths, about the daily tragedies we
either don’t see or pointedly look away from. It’s also about embracing a
life well led and the peace that comes at the end. Frank’s redemption isn’t
about saving Rose or allowing Mary’s father to die; it’s that he came to
recognize these people as people. He came to understand the role he plays
in their lives and accept the sacrifice he is tasked with making. Bringing
Out the Dead has more in common with The Last Temptation of Christ in
that regard than any other Scorsese picture. Frank Pierce is no Messiah, but
he does give a part of himself so that others can live.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Bringing Out the Dead failed at the box office despite garnering positive
reviews, but the picture’s success is secondary to what it accomplished: It
proved that the aesthetic and style and formula of GoodFellas could be used
for something other than a gangster picture and still result in an artistic
success. The rapid-fire pace, MTV-infused soundtrack, high energy,
narration, and creative camera choices were all worked out there (and
further refined in Casino), then were cast in a completely different context
here while still working to great effect. That makes it interesting, then, that
his next picture would be a return to crime yet would be markedly different
than any crime picture he had ever done before.
 19

GANGS OF NEW YORK

(2002)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: December 20, 2002
WRITTEN BY: Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, Kenneth Lonergan
STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz
RUNNING TIME: 168 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

S
omewhere in an alternate universe, there is a Martin Scorsese who
crafted a five-season, fifty-hour dramatic television series on the
history of New York City, of which Gangs of New York is but a part. Even
in this universe, Gangs of New York fits into a tapestry of Scorsese pictures
that, when taken as a whole, sketches out a broad history of life in New
York, usually (but not always) focused on life in the streets.
Gangs is an ambitious picture, as far as scale is concerned, arguably the
most technically ambitious of his career, aside perhaps from The Irishman’s
CGI wizardry. It’s one that had been in his mind for many years—literally
decades—and one that even after being made fell short of what he hoped to
accomplish with it.
It’s little surprise he was drawn to the material. In some respects, it’s
Mean Streets set in the 1860s, albeit with a plot driven more by standard
tropes than personal experience. The setting is pure Scorsese, though,
exploring the deeper past of the neighborhood that made him who he is. “I
grew up in that area. And when I became aware of St. Patrick’s Old
Cathedral and the graveyard around it, with the names on the tombstones, I
realized the Irish were there before the Italians,” he told Richard Schickel.1
He first encountered the book by Herbert Asbury from which the movie
is drawn in 1970. He started working with Jay Cocks (who wrote The Age
of Innocence and Silence screenplays) to carve stories from the book and
craft them into a screenplay. By the late 1970s, he had a “beautiful” script,
but being neck deep in New York, New York and in the midst of one of the
most volatile and draining parts of his career, Scorsese decided he couldn’t
pursue the project. By 1990, they had revisited the project again, reshaping
the story around Bill the Butcher and a boy named Amsterdam seeking to
avenge his father. But he still needed a studio willing to fund such an
ambitious picture. It would be yet another decade until it was made. And it
turned out ambitious, indeed—so ambitious that it swelled way over
budget, causing Scorsese to invest millions of his own money into the
production and prompting sharp clashes between the director and now-
disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.2
Daniel Day-Lewis returns to Scorsese’s work as Bill the Butcher,
playing a character of roughly the same time and place as he does in The
Age of Innocence (a touch earlier, actually) but at the polar-opposite end of
society. Every bit as composed, genteel, and refined as Newland Archer is,
Bill is the opposite, a brutal, ostentatious man who chews the scenery to
pieces and murders without qualm. A number of notable actors have small
roles throughout—Cameron Diaz, John C. Reilly, Liam Neeson, and others
—but the most important addition to the Scorsese roster is Leonardo
DiCaprio as Amsterdam Vallon. This would be the first of five films and
counting for the pair, effectively dividing the director’s career up into the
De Niro era and the DiCaprio era. The tale here is a simple one: Bill killed
Amsterdam’s father. Once old enough, Amsterdam infiltrates Bill’s gang,
earns his trust, and attempts to kill him. He fails, but in the midst of Civil
War–era riots, the pair clash one last time, and Amsterdam is able to get his
revenge.

ANALYSIS
Scorsese films are most often preoccupied with exploring the human
condition in some way, with setting and genre merely an excuse to explore
similar themes from different angles. The Age of Innocence looks and feels
much different than, say, Mean Streets, but at their heart they’re both about
the complexities of human needs and interactions. Raging Bull isn’t about
boxing; it’s a movie about the human condition that happens to feature
boxing. Casino isn’t about how organized crime in Las Vegas works; it’s
about the conflict that comes when incompatible wants are pitted against
one another. And so on.
Gangs of New York largely lacks this element of the director’s work.
This isn’t to say the key characters don’t have inner lives and
understandable motivations. Amsterdam is clearly driven with a specific
purpose, and though the script doesn’t appear to give Bill much in the way
of inner complexity, he’s given so much depth by Daniel Day-Lewis that
it’s easy to read far more into the character than what you find in the
screenplay (surely a factor in his casting in the first place, given that Lewis
delivered the same kind of depth in The Age of Innocence).
Yet what does the picture say, exactly? Fitting for its ambitious scale,
there is little in the way of exploration of the individual. Instead, Scorsese
explores a slice of New York society in the 1860s. We don’t learn about
what makes Amsterdam tick; we learn about what makes this part of
America tick. Our complex historical relationship with immigration, our
long history of racial segregation, political corruption, the way in which
demagogues can whip people into such a fearful frenzy that they will act
against their own best interests—this is a film that peels back the layers of
society rather than of individuals.
This makes Gangs more relevant today than it was upon release. Bill is
a principled man, but his principles are twisted and driven by fear of the
other. He controls his neighborhood through fear and not merely by fear of
the violence he will inflict on people who cross him. It’s fear of the other,
fear of foreign invaders to American soil, fear of being supplanted by
people who aren’t “real” Americans. Bill puts himself between the
supposed “natives” who were born in America and the immigrants coming
to her shores. He positions himself as serving the interests of the people of
his neighborhood, as being willing to speak aloud about the fears they
secretly have, yet he sows that fear. He waters it and nourishes it. And he
makes every effort to dehumanize the Irish he so clearly despises. They’re
not real Americans, he says. They’re not legitimate. They don’t respect our
ways. The message rings familiar. Not much has changed in the United
States, save perhaps the targets of the Butcher’s xenophobic ire.
The opening fight sequence provides some backstory for a variety of
characters and motivation for Amsterdam, but the more important role it
plays is introducing the world of Five Points in Manhattan, a place the New
York Times said was once the “world’s most notorious slum.” “The
newspapers dwelt interminably upon its alleged violence and depravity.
Readers were thrilled and repulsed by tales of murder, mayhem and sexual
license. By the late 1830s the Five Points was already infamous enough that
tourists from around the world made regular ‘slumming’ trips,” the Times
reported, while also noting that most of the claims of rampant violence
appear to have been greatly exaggerated. “The overwhelming reality of the
Five Points, and the one thing that all observers seem to have gotten right,
was the misery. The endless drudgery and the low pay. The appalling
sanitation and the firetrap tenements. The plagues of cholera, measles,
diphtheria and typhus that struck hardest at children and infants.”3
The picture opens in torch-lit caves filled with grimy-looking people
wielding archaic weapons. If this is to be an urban drama, there is no sign of
it here. It’s not until the doors are kicked open and the streets of Five Points
are revealed that we realize we’re in the middle of the city. That contrast
between the primitive and contemporary is symbolic of the savagery within
a supposedly civilized place we’ll see throughout the movie. Consider the
terms we often use to discuss organized crime: underground and underbelly
and the like, always suggesting something hidden from view beneath an
otherwise normal exterior. Here, that idea is literalized.
It’s only the Irish immigrants who are truly underground in Gangs,
though. Bill the Butcher operates openly and apparently with the blessing of
his neighborhood (though some of that support is driven by terror at his
violence). The fight for the neighborhood is between those “born right wise
in this fine land, or the foreign hordes defiling it,” according to Bill, pitting
his gangs against an array of Irish immigrant gangs, led by “Priest” Vallon
(Neeson). When Priest is killed, he instructs his son just before he dies,
“Don’t ever look away.” It’s important that he knows the sacrifice people
like his father made to live free.
Sixteen years later, Amsterdam is released from the orphanage where he
had lived. As he departs for his old neighborhood, he tosses away his
pocket Bible. It sinks into the waters surrounding New York. Faith is fine,
but it won’t protect him on these violent streets. Amsterdam finds his
freedom and returns home just as slavery is abolished in the southern states.
This synchronicity doesn’t just foreshadow the draft riots that will explode
in the final act of the film; it sets the stage for the moral conflict that is
central to the narrative. Amsterdam versus Bill isn’t merely a story about
avenging a boy’s father; it’s a story about fighting for the heart of the
American ideal. That slavery was abolished is in theory a transformative
moment in US history, but the truth is that such racial and ethnic hatreds
could not be abolished with a pen. They still linger today, and modernday
Bill the Butchers still stir up mistrust of foreign “invaders.”
Early on, Amsterdam takes us on a tour of the neighborhood,
introducing us to each of the five avenues of Five Points through narration
and an instructive overhead shot, with further narration outlining the
political climate of the neighborhood, the various gangs who call it home,
and more. It’s an info dump of exposition, the sort of thing most directors
seek to avoid, but by this point in his career, Scorsese had turned it into
something of an art form, using it in Casino, GoodFellas, and others.
Again, this doesn’t merely provide the setting within which Amsterdam’s
pursuit of vengeance takes place; it provides the context for the broader
themes of xenophobia, fear of outsiders, and what it means to be a “real”
citizen of a place.
The sprawling sets of Gangs of New York served as the backdrop for what would be the
start of the director’s second great collaboration, this time with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Miramax/Photofest

The vengeance narrative that provides us a reason to explore this world

is fairly straightforward. Bill killed Amsterdam’s father. Amsterdam wants
revenge. Bill has no idea Amsterdam is Priest’s son and allows him to get
close. Amsterdam bides his time, has some conflicted feelings, and Bill
discovers who he is before he can act. Amsterdam is beaten nearly to death,
branded, and let loose, after which he gathers a gang of sympathetic Irish
and then confronts and kills Bill. It would be gripping if it wasn’t so
predictable, though Scorsese makes each step along this otherwise clichéd
path work on multiple levels, in no small part thanks to the work of Day-
Lewis.
When Amsterdam tells Johnny (Henry Thomas, “Elliott” of E.T. fame)
he won’t kill Bill the Butcher at his first opportunity because “you kill a
king; you don’t stab him in the dark; you kill him where the whole court
can watch him die,” we know Amsterdam is making excuses because he
finds Bill’s power and lifestyle uncomfortably alluring, but it also sends a
second message: Unless exposed to the light of day, corruption and evil
perpetuates itself. When Amsterdam thinks of a way to skirt the law and
keep their illegal boxing matches going, Amsterdam getting pulled into
Bill’s orbit is secondary to the idea that, in this slice of the United States,
the image of abiding by the law is more important than the law itself.
Legendary New York political figure William “Boss” Tweed (Jim
Broadbent) even says, “The appearance of the law must be upheld,
especially while it’s being broken.”
The very presence of Tweed as a character enhances the secondary
concerns of the picture. He’s not just a figure from old political cartoons;
he’s a person, and what he represents is the system’s willingness to look
away from wrongdoing provided that willful ignorance lines one’s pockets.
These are truths still inherent in today’s American politics. Time and again,
we see Tweed and Bill flex on one another, each attempting to hold their
power over the other—one power “legitimate,” the other not, but both all
too real in this environment—and as a result, neither paying much attention
to the people they supposedly represent. When Amsterdam suggests
moving the unsanctioned fights just outside the Manhattan boundaries onto
floating barges, it’s not merely an illustration of Amsterdam ingratiating
himself to Bill; it’s also a nod at how easily the spirit of the law is subverted
with the help of politicians willing to look the other way. Tweed allows it to
happen in exchange for Bill delivering immigrant votes to him (a proposal
Bill refuses because he hates immigrants). As a further example, when the
brawling former mercenary Walter “Monk” McGinn (Brendan Gleeson) is
elected sheriff, he’s almost immediately murdered by Bill. It happens in
broad daylight, in front of witnesses. Tweed again looks the other way.
Similarly, the Union’s supposed defense of slaves and potential slaves
is, as we see later, not necessarily representative of the people in the Union.
Many still want to see black citizens as lesser or not as citizens at all. The
government is signing up immigrants right off the boat to go die for a cause
and for their new country, but there are few signals that the cause is
genuine. It’s just politics.
This isn’t to say Tweed (movie Tweed or otherwise) was on par with
Confederate leaders. Rather, it’s to suggest that Tweed’s presence is a
commentary on how buyable morals are in politics. One understands that,
while Tweed knew he had to take a pro-Union view, there was still a portion
of the populace who supported slavery. His concern is not with taking a
clear moral position; it’s with playing both sides to garner votes.
 The murky morality of 1860s United States is perhaps best depicted in a
single tracking shot showing immigrants right off the boat being made into
citizens, being signed up to go to war, then marching onto a second boat to
go fight for the Union. As the camera follows the boarding new soldiers, a
coffin swings into view, and the camera switches course to follow it as it’s
hoisted onto the dock with dozens of other coffins. In setting the reality next
to the promise, new citizens going to fight for their new country set next to
the bodies of those who came before, it’s a stark reminder of the human toll
of war and the way in which the victims of war tend to be the poor and
desperate.
The vengeance narrative comes to a head at the same time the political
narrative comes to a head. New York City explodes with violence during
the draft riots of 1863. This true historical event lasted four days and
consumed most of Lower Manhattan and remains today one of the largest
civil insurrections in US history. Working-class Irish rioted, attacked
African Americans, and destroyed property. President Abraham Lincoln
was forced to dispatch militia regiments to regain control. The riots were
sparked by the drawing of draft numbers pulling working-class young men
into the war effort—you could buy your way out of the draft for three
hundred dollars, effectively inoculating the rich—though the tinder had
already been in place well before the draft, as white laborers worried that
the Emancipation Proclamation would flood the city with black workers
and provide competition for work. (Again, echoes of this mentality still
reverberate in today’s political climate, with Hispanic and Latino
immigrants the new targets.) Herbert Asbury, the author of the book upon
which the movie is based, estimated the death toll of the riots to be nearly
two thousand, though that number is widely disputed. Leslie M. Harris puts
the number closer to 120.4
In the film, this explosive violence takes place just as Amsterdam and
Bill have their final confrontation, staged similarly to the first, the cycle of
violence and vengeance coming full circle. But this time, it’s Bill who is
bested. Amsterdam gets his revenge.
The final shots are of a cemetery, the Manhattan skyline dominating the
horizon across the river. The years fade by, the city changes, until finally
we’re looking at a contemporary New York City (though even that skyline
now appears archaic, shown in its pre-9/11 form). The years have moved
on. The city has become something new, but the seeds of what made it
remain. Just as individuals are molded and shaped by their past, so, too, is a
society. Gangs of New York is not merely a period piece and a revenge tale.
It’s a fable about the soul of America.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

With a huge $100 million budget—large even today, and this was a 2002
picture—a nearly three-hour running time, and a sprawling recreation of
Five Points that involved the construction of dozens of buildings, Gangs of
New York was by far Martin Scorsese’s most ambitious production to date.
He eschewed the digital effects that were starting to become commonplace
in the industry, instead taking an old-Hollywood approach to recreating the
time and place of the story on a grand scale. Though it was nominated for
ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor
for Daniel Day-Lewis, it did not take home a single statue. It also faltered at
the box office. Prerelease expectations suggested the picture would be
Martin Scorsese’s magnum opus, decades in the making. Instead, it turned
out to be an entertaining period piece that doesn’t fully explore the many
themes it introduces.
One can’t fault the director’s vision. Gangs of New York is in some ways
a big-picture culmination of Scorsese’s exploration of New York City, a
way for him to say, “I’ve explored the city’s underworld from every angle,
now let’s see how we got here in the first place.” But Scorsese works best
when his focus is on individuals, which is why, despite the subject matter
seeming to be unusual for him—a wealthy mogul and aviation genius who
succumbs to mental illness—his next picture would be far closer to his
sensibilities as a storyteller.
 20

THE AVIATOR (2004)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: December 14, 2004
WRITTEN BY: John Logan
STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John
C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda
RUNNING TIME: 170 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

E ven when one accomplishes great things, things so great they seemed
lifted out of myth and legend, there remains a human being behind
those accomplishments, one as flawed and troubled as the rest of us.
Sometimes even more so. Such is the subject of Scorsese’s 2004 biopic on
Howard Hughes, an exploration of genius and madness that at times also
doubles as a love letter to the cinema of Hughes’s era.
The screenplay by John Logan had been kicking around Hollywood for
a few years already, with Leonardo DiCaprio attached almost from the start.
After nearly ending up in the hands of director Michael Mann (Heat,
Collateral), New Line Cinema hired Scorsese. The move helped solidify
the director’s fertile new working partnership with DiCaprio, which has
resulted in five films as of this writing (with a sixth in preproduction,
Killers of the Flower Moon), and again proved that anyone pigeonholing
Scorsese as a crime director has an unfairly narrow view of his vision.
The Aviator focuses on Hughes’s life from the late 1920s to the late
1940s. Obsessed with completing his epic air-combat movie Hell’s Angels
(1930), Hughes (DiCaprio) hires Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) to run the
day-to-day operations of his businesses. His film debuts, he becomes
romantically entwined with legendary actress Katharine Hepburn (Cate
Blanchett), and then becomes obsessed with setting a world speed record in
his H-1 Racer airplane. He smashes the record and, high on his triumph,
purchases Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA), with his sights set on
offering not just nonstop coast-to-coast flights in the United States—a first
at the time—but also international flights from New York to Paris.
Unfortunately for Hughes, Pan Am owner Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) and
his bought-and-paid-for US senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) plan to
block Hughes’s move through legislation. Hepburn leaves Hughes, and the
aviator’s obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms worsen as he
pursues two major government projects, a spy plane and a huge air-
transport vehicle dubbed the Hercules (and disparagingly called the “Spruce
Goose” by critics). Falsely accused of war profiteering by Brewster, Hughes
has a major mental break and locks himself inside a room for months, stuck
in a fit of repeated phrases and behavioral obsessions. He snaps out of it just
in time to successfully defend himself in front of the US Senate and show
the world that the “Spruce Goose” can actually fly—but his madness never
truly goes away, and the picture ends with Hughes teetering on the verge of
another major mental break.

ANALYSIS
Genius and madness often go hand in hand. Decorated professor Dean
Keith Simonton, PhD, once noted that, according to peer-reviewed research,
“on average, the more eminent the creator, the higher is the expected rate
and intensity of the psychopathological symptoms.”1 Few in the twentieth
century have been as eminent as Howard Hughes, and few men of
prominence have been madder. For Scorsese, the trick of The Aviator was in
how to depict both in a way that is simultaneously honest and entertaining
without being exploitative.
The director had been down this road before. Nick Nolte’s character in
New York Stories is a creative genius who has to put himself (and his
partner) through emotional torture in order to wring out his art. The Jesus of
Nazareth depicted in The Last Temptation of Christ seems to waver back
and forth between vivid insights into the human condition and bouts of
mania. And in the tail end of GoodFellas, Henry Hill’s incessant drug use
leads to a manic day of paranoia.
We also have examples of Scorsese depicting characters who are
disconnected from reality. In Raging Bull, for example, when Jake
LaMotta’s obsessive observations have him fixated on Vickie, we see it in a
subjective viewpoint that lets the viewer understand the deep paranoia in
LaMotta’s mind, even if we don’t relate to it. We can feel Frank Pierce’s
growing detachment from reality as Bringing Out the Dead progresses. And
even in Mean Streets, a scene of a drunken Charlie stumbling through a bar
is potently immersive, letting the viewer feel the fog he is in.
But the director had never so directly confronted the subject matter as
he does with The Aviator, a picture that pulls few punches in showing how
both genius and madness consumed Howard Hughes. Hughes was a titan.
After initially making his splash as a movie producer with films like Hell’s
Angels and Scarface (1932), which in 1983 was remade by Brian De Palma,
Hughes went on to become a dominant force in the aviation industry,
breaking flight records, helping conceive of innovative new aircraft, and
making absurd amounts of money. Yet Hughes also suffered from OCD, an
affliction that would grow to debilitating levels over the course of his life,
until he eventually became more famous for being a recluse than for being
an innovator.
DiCaprio brings Hughes to life in one of the actor’s great performances,
bouncing effortlessly between egomaniacal heights of achievement and
humiliating lows stemming from his condition. Though DiCaprio first
worked for Scorsese in Gangs of New York, this is where their partnership
truly blossomed. It’s a mirror of Scorsese’s relationship with Robert De
Niro in that regard, with De Niro debuting in a crime picture (Mean Streets)
and their creative partnership truly flowering with a picture about a man
disconnected from society (Taxi Driver). Further pictures featuring the
actors would explore delusional obsessions (The King of Comedy; Shutter
Island); audacious levels of greed (Casino; The Wolf of Wall Street); and, of
course, trust and betrayal in the world of crime (GoodFellas; The
Departed). (Interestingly, given the fact that he effectively replaced De Niro
as the director’s go-to actor, DiCaprio was initially recommended to
Scorsese by De Niro.2)
Hughes struggles through each triumph and accomplishment, a
successful genius on the outside but filled with torment on the inside. One
wonders to what extent Scorsese saw himself in the maverick, pushing
himself through masterpieces like Raging Bull even while struggling to
maintain his grip on his health, career, and even his own sanity. Certainly,
the director had some tough periods when his health and difficulties with
drug abuse made it harder to tap into his creative genius, times when his
personal torment could only be exorcised through cinematic expression.
Still, even with such struggles, the director never had the kind of near-
mythical mental breaks Howard Hughes had. “In my mind, his obsessive-
compulsive disorder is like the labyrinth that he gets stuck in,” Scorsese
said, “sort of like the Minotaur. He’s got wings, like the ones Daedalus
makes for his son, Icarus, the wings to get out of that labyrinth, but he flies
too close to the sun and the wings melt, and he comes down. There’s a
Hughes metaphor there. His pride and his ego destroyed him, too.”3
Saying his pride and ego destroyed him, too, is unfair, though. Scorsese
pictures are often about endings, about collapse, about the end of an era or
golden age of a person’s life. There is a seed of that here. The picture ends
with a triumphant Hughes having proven his impossible beast of an aircraft
can fly but with Hughes also on the verge of another serious mental break.
Collapse is coming. Just as often, Scorsese protagonists bring their downfall
on themselves. Loss permeates his work. There is a degree to which the
Travis Bickles, Jake LaMottas, and Henry Hills of his world are responsible
for their own troubles. They are culpable in their own collapses. But that
cannot be said about Howard Hughes. He was proud, yes. Arrogant to the
point of being reckless, sure. Brimming with ego, albeit well-deserved ego,
no doubt. But his mental illness was not his fault. He did not choose his
affliction, and there is little in the film to suggest he acted in a way to
exacerbate his problems. His condition was beyond his control. At best, he
could have withdrawn from his pursuits as a business magnate, aviator, and
filmmaker and focused entirely on seeking help, yet consider the era in
which he lived, when mental disorders were ill understood and often treated
in barbaric ways. Even such luminaries as the Kennedys were not immune
to the era’s poorly conceived ideas of how to treat mental illness,
lobotomizing Rosemary Kennedy, younger sister of President John F.
Kennedy, and leaving her unable to speak intelligibly. Considering the
ignorance of the time, any reticence by Hughes to seek treatment would be
understandable.
Here we should pause for a moment to discuss OCD. It’s an affliction
many of us discuss casually, often as if it’s just a humorous personality
quirk: “I’m so OCD. I hate when my books aren’t in alphabetical order.”
Actual OCD can be debilitating, however, resulting in intrusive thoughts,
such physical compulsions as repeated hand washing or picking at one’s
skin, and illogical repeated behaviors. These behaviors are genuine
compulsions that generally cannot be controlled and that often disrupt a
person’s life and health. Various forms of therapy and medication are
required to help manage the symptoms. Without proper management, severe
cases can all but cripple a person’s ability to function.

Leonardo DiCaprio fully immersed himself in the role of Howard Hughes, which involved
intense depictions of mental illness. Miramax/Warner Bros./Photofest
 Hughes had no one to help him manage his symptoms, at least no one
professionally qualified to do so. Early in his life, his OCD was
undiagnosed and untreated. It built over the course of years. Scorsese
depicts this by carefully introducing symptom after symptom and increasing
their intensity as the film wears on. For example, in an early scene, after
touching a chair in his screening room, Hughes reacts as if he has
something stuck on his hand, though there is nothing there. It’s minor but an
early signal of what’s to come. Later, he obsesses over a piece of fluff on
someone’s lapel, he gets caught in an uncontrollable cycle of asking for
blueprints from a staff member, he washes his hands until he bleeds, and
other symptoms that grow in severity as the movie progresses.
Too much sensory input and being surrounded by too many people at
once triggers him, too. At the premier of Hell’s Angels, flashbulbs become
weapons, faces washed out in their bright lights. Having to tread over the
broken bulbs overwhelms him so much that, when it comes time to do a
preshow interview, he can only offer vague, nonspecific answers to
questions that haven’t been asked. (Hughes was partially deaf, which also
contributed to the difficulty of navigating such a mob scene.)
Such frantic situations were often difficult for him to withstand. When
first meeting Katharine Hepburn’s family, the meal is a chaotic web of
cross-talk and overlapping conversations, stitched together brilliantly by
Scorsese and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker. At least four
conversations are happening at once, often involving the same people
bouncing back and forth between them. Even for viewers it becomes
difficult to follow. For Hughes, it was maddening. He finally snaps when
one of the Hepburns says the family does not care about money. “That’s
because you have it,” Hughes says. “You don’t care about money because
you’ve always had it.” The moment mortifies Katharine Hepburn, but it’s
an instructive part of his character, not just in showing his difficulty in such
situations, but also in depicting how focused he was on working and
accomplishing things.
Much of the film, most importantly those moments of fraying reality,
hinges on Schoonmaker’s talents as an editor. It’s easy to see why she took
home a statue for this picture, too. The sense of being unbalanced along
with Hughes, of being fixated on an object or just feeling off from everyone
else, comes as much from the cutting as it does from DiCaprio’s
performance.
 The centerpiece for the trio of Schoonmaker’s, DiCaprio’s, and
Scorsese’s talents on this picture and of the narrative overall is Hughes’s
dramatic mental snap prior to his Senate hearings, when he locked himself
in a room for months on end. This sequence showcases the flip side of the
Hughes’s coin, the mad contrast to his innovative magic. The picture builds
one triumph atop another, from successful film to huge business ventures to
record-breaking flights to bedding the most desirable actresses in the world.
They are peppered with setbacks, yes—his clashes with Trippe and
Brewster; OCD flare-ups; a couple of plane crashes, one nearly fatal—but
largely his trajectory is (appropriately) upward. With Scorsese, however, a
character’s collapse is almost always inevitable. The hermit sequence is
Hughes’s collapse. It’s a difficult scene, disturbing in a way outside the
violence and vulgarity that usually provide the cringes in Scorsese pictures.
Movie images flicker across Hughes’s scarred skin. His brain is caught in
repetitive thought loops. Milk bottles are emptied by the dozen and then
filled with urine. Assistants arrive to aid him, but we’re not even sure if
they are real or hallucinations.
Most frightening of all is that this is based on truth and may even
underplay what Hughes went through during his real-life isolation. He
really did lock himself naked in a screening room. He lived there in pain
and solitude for four months. He ate nothing but chocolate bars. His body
was wracked with pain, even the touch of clothing causing him discomfort.
His health fell apart. His hygiene was nonexistent. This was a man—a
brilliant, adventurous man—disintegrating at the seams. And shockingly,
the real Howard Hughes would only grow worse as the years went by. “By
1968 Hughes had become the ghoulish recluse that history would
remember. He was only 63, but looked thirty years older. Emaciated, with
freakishly long hair and nails,” he went so far as to purchase a local TV
station simply so he could dictate its programming, which usually involved
playing the same movie over and over and over and over.4 The breakdown
is horrific to witness and is one of the most memorable of the director’s
career.
A common theme in Scorsese’s work is one of collapse, yet for a few
brief moments, it almost appears as if The Aviator will buck the trend.
Hughes manages to break free of the snare his mind has set him in and
attends a Senate hearing Brewster has staged to embarrass the mogul.
Instead, the billionaire playboy lifts himself up and walks out of the
hearings triumphant, then goes on to pilot his massive Hercules aircraft on
its one and only flight. These are, by any measure, major victories.
Yet before he has even a few moments to bask in these glories, he sees
men in white gloves seeming to surround him. Whether they are real or not,
we don’t know, but they terrify him. Something snaps. He sees great things
ahead but cannot reconcile that with his fear of these men. He begins to
repeat to himself, “The way of the future. The way of the future. The way
of the future. The way of the future.” His real collapse is yet to come, a
terrible reminder that the most difficult battles we face are the ones waged
inside us.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

The Aviator was a tremendous critical success, receiving eleven Academy
Award nominations and winning five, including Best Supporting Actress for
Cate Blanchett. It also won Best Film at the BAFTAs and Best Picture at
the Golden Globes. For both Blanchett and DiCaprio, the film added
credence to the argument that both are among the greatest performers of this
generation. Schoonmaker was again awarded for her work as editor, a
reminder of her importance in Scorsese’s oeuvre. Finally, it allowed
Scorsese to indulge in his love of old cinema, showcasing how Hughes
made Hell’s Angels as well as playing with color to emulate the two-strip
and three-strip Technicolor of the period.
But more important than critical accolades is what The Aviator did for
the director’s working relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio. Following
Casino, De Niro ceased to be Scorsese’s go-to actor. This wasn’t a
conscious choice on the director’s part; it was merely a combination of
circumstance and age. De Niro was lined up to be in Gangs of New York,
for example, but production delays caused scheduling conflicts that could
not be worked out.5 He was asked to take a lead role in The Departed, too,
as either Frank Costello or police Captain Queenan, but turned it down to
direct his own film, The Good Shepherd.6 He finally returned to Scorsese’s
work after a twenty-four-year absence with 2019’s The Irishman.
With this picture, Scorsese found another performer willing to put in the
work and reach the depths of emotional complexity he found in De Niro.
He and DiCaprio would go on to make three more pictures together after
this, each markedly different than the other, also much like his work with
De Niro. But unlike the director’s work with De Niro, the next collaboration
between Scorsese and DiCaprio would finally net Martin Scorsese his
elusive Academy Award for Best Director.
 21

THE DEPARTED (2006)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: September 26, 2006
WRITTEN BY: William Monahan
STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark
Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga
RUNNING TIME: 151 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

I f it takes a star-studded cast and plot-heavy picture to finally get Martin

Scorsese an Oscar for Best Director, so be it. Despite being another film
with a focus on the criminal underworld, The Departed doesn’t bear much
resemblance to previous Scorsese crime pictures. It’s a remake of the 2002
Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, which won critical acclaim and a slew
of Asian cinema awards upon release. It even spawned two sequels.
Scorsese’s version adheres closely to the original’s tight plot, moving the
setting to Boston and loosely basing the crime boss on real-life mobster
Whitey Bulger but otherwise leaving the story beats intact. The result is a
narrative-dense picture lighter on the deeper character exploration typical of
the director’s work.
In The Departed, police cadets Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and
Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) graduate the academy and enter the state
police at roughly the same time. Costigan’s unsavory family background
prompts Captain Oliver Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Sergeant Sean
Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) to put Costigan in deep undercover, stripping him
of his identity so he can successfully infiltrate a gang led by Frank Costello
(Jack Nicholson), the Boston crime boss. What they don’t realize is that
Sullivan has been working for Costello since he was a child, and with
Sullivan quickly rising through the ranks, that gives Costello a huge edge
over the police. Queenan, Dignam, and others know there is a mole in the
state police; they just don’t know who it is—and it’s Sullivan who is tasked
with finding him. In other words, his job is to root out himself. Meanwhile,
both Sullivan and Costello know there is a police informant somewhere in
the gang—Costigan—but no one knows his identity, either. Through an
intricate chess match of deception, Costigan grows closer to Costello,
Sullivan grows closer to discovering who Costigan is (and vice versa), and
it all completely implodes when Costigan discovers that crime boss
Costello had been an FBI informant all along. After a series of moves and
countermoves, Costello’s men kill Queenan; Sullivan shoots and kills
Costello; Costigan discovers that Sullivan is the mole and attempts to take
him in, only to be killed for his efforts; then Sullivan is hailed as a hero,
only for him to be killed by Dignam. And that’s only skimming the surface.
Needless to say, there is a lot going on.

ANALYSIS
Are we defined by our deeds? Do our intentions matter, or does that only
matter if someone else knows our intentions? And to what extent does
someone else’s view alter who we really are? The Departed is one of the
most plot-heavy pictures of Scorsese’s career. For a director whose work is
often typified by narratives that are less driven by plot than they are by
character exploration and episodic storytelling, this picture’s narrative
tapestry demands close attention throughout. You can’t drop in in the
middle. The story beats, complex character relationships, and twists and
turns represent the kind of traditional story Scorsese normally eschews.
Gripping as the plot is, however, beneath its intrigue and suspense is a
film concerned with examining the notions of trust; betrayal; truth; lies;
and, most of all, identity. And while pure plot isn’t in Scorsese’s
wheelhouse, those themes certainly are:
The world I came from was very much based on loyalty and trust, and even beyond family
ties; it comes from the old Sicilian world where godparents were as important as blood
relatives. And I think that’s why so many of the stories I’ve done are rooted in a kind of
tribal behavior that has to do with betrayal. When a person does “betray” the other—he or
she—why does that happen? What puts that person very often in a place where they have no
choice, they couldn’t do otherwise—and where the decision is not good either way—that’s
very interesting to me.1

Both Costigan and Sullivan are central to these themes, though they
permeate every other character, as well. Through its crime-driven thrills,
The Departed explores the masks we wear, the different people we can be
depending on circumstances and surroundings, and how that affects our
relationships with others. One of the first ways it does this is through
introducing the idea of code switching. The term itself is not used in the
picture, but the concept is. Code switching is when someone moves
effortlessly between two languages or ways of speaking, often dependent on
context. The term is a linguistic one but in recent years has come to be part
of discussions on culture and culture clashes, especially among those who
float between differing social classes or ethnic groups. “Many of us subtly,
reflexively change the way we express ourselves all the time. We’re hop-
scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts
of our own identities—sometimes within a single interaction,” journalist
Gene Demby observed.2 Think of the person whose Southern drawl is more
pronounced when home among family but that disappears in business
contexts, or the person of color who speaks one way when among fellow
people of color and another when with people of other ethnic groups (a
practice so common, comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele
made it a mainstay on their acclaimed sketch show Key and Peele). Code
switching is especially common among those who have left deeply ethnic or
cultural communities, often employed out of a desire to leave behind the
past, out of shame, or simply to fit in with a new community.
 When Costigan is first called into Queenan’s office, Dignam drills him
about his life and background. One of the things he zeroes in on is whether
Costigan spoken differently when home with his father in South Boston
when compared to when he spent time on the upper-class North Shore with
his mother. And naturally, he did. From a plot perspective, this gives them a
good reason to choose Costigan for their deep-undercover assignment. He’s
already adept at fitting in as a so-called Southie, or poor resident of South
Boston. He can change his manner on the fly depending on who he’s talking
to, essential in what he’s being asked to do. Beyond the plot, it’s also
instructive about who Costigan is and the neighborhood he comes from. He
aspired to escape, to rise above the petty crooks and criminals that line his
family tree. Still, he knows that to be accepted in that rough community
means being one of them. It means putting on false faces and pretending he
is something he is not in order to remain part of the group. It also means
pretending he’s not a Southie when among his higher-class kin, too, acting
in a way that perhaps does not come naturally to him in order to
successfully navigate a world he does not belong to. This is the complicated
realm of code switching.
For Costigan, though it helps him in his undercover work, it also serves
to confuse his sense of self. Who is he, really? Is he the working-class
young man who escaped his poor neighborhood and became something
more than a street thug? Is he a dedicated police officer playing a role? Or
is he a fraud, someone pretending to be “better” than the place he was born
but destined to remain what he’s always been: an unimportant member of a
lower rung of society? There are no answers to these questions, not even for
Costigan himself. The deeper he gets into his assignment, the more
uncertain he becomes about where he belongs. Maybe he’s a great police
officer waiting to rise above it all. Maybe what Dignam told him is correct:
He’s just a future thug from a family of thugs. Maybe he’s all of it. Maybe
he’s none of it.
Sullivan’s sense of self is clearer. Groomed as a young boy by the allure
of Costello’s power and influence, Sullivan doesn’t appear to doubt who he
is and why he is with the police. His role is to further Costello’s interests.
He came from the South Boston streets, yes, but like Costello, he believes
he’s smarter than those working-class shlubs. (Henry Hill expresses similar
aloofness in GoodFellas.) And under Costello’s tutelage, the lines aren’t
merely blurred between cop and criminal. There are no lines. “When you
decide to be something, you can be it. That’s what they don’t tell you in the
church,” Costello tells him. “When I was your age, they’d say you could
become cops or criminals. Today what I’m saying to you is this: When
you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?”
Sullivan’s choice of apartment plays into this idea. That his apartment
has a clear view of the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House is
important symbolism, both with relation to the film’s themes of corruption
and vice and for Sullivan himself. That gold dome is an aspiration for him,
something that represents what he knows he can never be: legitimate,
honorable, just. That’s not to say the government is any of these things—
much of The Departed makes clear it is anything but—but in Sullivan’s
eyes, having the dome at a distance but still visible is layered with meaning.
It makes legitimacy and power seem attainable yet just out of reach. Living
there is like hanging a favorite idol on your wall: “This is someone I aspire
to be.” For the audience, the suggestion is otherwise. Having Sullivan
looking over the State House instead brings to mind corruption and the
corrosiveness of power and the reasons so many distrust government.
Part of this choice comes from the isolation inherent in poor urban
communities, especially ethnic urban communities. The extent to which
street toughs and organized crime can influence the character of a
neighborhood is spelled out in the opening lines of narration, as Costello
tells us, “I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my
environment to be a product of me.” As he says this, we see footage of
street fights (reminiscent of the opening scene of Who’s That Knocking at
My Door?), lines of police in the streets, civil unrest. South Boston is a
character unto itself. The picture isn’t focused on unpeeling what life is like
there—there is no focus on everyday life as a Southie and little attention
paid to regular people in the community—yet the influence of the
neighborhood permeates everything. It’s written onto the skin of the
characters. It’s etched into their bones. We see this throughout the director’s
work, especially in his crime pictures, though it’s also present in movies
like After Hours, in which Paul Hackett takes a short cab ride within his
own city and yet ends up in a world that is all but alien to him, populated by
a people and local culture he does not know how to navigate.
That’s South Boston and the people who live there. It’s a world unto
itself. It’s also why Sullivan plants himself within view of the State House
rather than in his own neighborhood. It’s an exercise in faking it until you
make it. Costigan can only survive in the world of South Boston because
he’s not just a cop; he’s from that world. He is uniquely qualified to fit in.
And most important of all, he aspires to be better than his origins, which
makes him easy to manipulate. When Sergeant Dignam reads him the riot
act about his family’s unsavory past, it feels relentless and unfair, as if
Costigan is being held accountable for the actions of others. But it’s meant
to feel that way. We have to accept the idea that he would be willing to
throw away respectability and stability in order to operate in deep
undercover. He’s told in no uncertain terms that he won’t last in the police
force—not because he’s incapable but because a host of factors make him
unsuitable for life in uniform. He’ll be compromised. He’ll be driven away.
He’ll never earn the respect of his peers. If he actually wants to do some
good, Dignam convinces him, it will have to entail going back to his roots
as a street kid. This means throwing away the idea of appearances and
accepting the notion of looking like he never escaped his community.
Costigan is not driven by pride. He’s pragmatic. He recognizes that
identity is something malleable; it’s not something we can necessarily
control because so much of what we think of as our identity is based not on
how we see ourselves but on how others see us. He really is just some kid
from a South Boston family of criminals. Maybe Dignam is right. In the
eyes of the world, maybe that’s all he’ll ever be. So he agrees to throw away
his success in pursuit of the greater good.
Roger Ebert observed that, for both Costigan and Sullivan, their act is
so thorough and so ingrained in their day-to-day life, it’s difficult to excise
it from what we see on-screen—to the credit of Leonardo DiCaprio and
Matt Damon, who must provide layers of performance in order to present
the honesty such compounded dishonesty demands in order to be
convincing. “It is in the nature of the movies that we believe most
characters are acting or speaking for themselves,” Ebert wrote. “But in
virtually every moment of this movie, except for a few key scenes, they are
not. Both actors convey this agonizing inner conflict so that we can sense
and feel it, but not see it; they’re not waving flags to call attention to their
deceptions.”3
The layers of mistrust and the idea that no one is who they seem
permeates everything, even one-off bit players. A priest, for example,
appearing to sit in judgment of Costello and his crew, yet a priest who
moments later is revealed to have been abusing young boys (a real-life
scandal outlined in detail in the brilliant Spotlight in 2015). Or when
Costigan and Dr. Madolyn Madden (Vera Farmiga), the psychiatrist treating
Costigan and dating Sullivan, discuss the harm and value of lying, their
conversation is as much a metacommentary on the film itself as it is an
insight into the characters. “If you lie, you’ll have an easier time getting
what you want,” Dr. Madden tells Costigan, and though she’s talking about
his request for Valium, the statement serves as a broader comment on the
film’s narrative. Everything in this movie is false. Everyone is playing
multiple roles, to the point where some aren’t sure of who they really are.
Costigan’s ability to fake it, his natural code switching, is evident during
his therapy session. As the pair talk about lying and truth, the scene
crosscuts with Costigan acting as an accomplice to murder, meeting with
Captain Queenan and Sergeant Dignam, and working through mental
anguish at home as he confronts the things he has to do while undercover.
It’s a remarkable bit of out-of-continuity editing that goes a long way
toward underscoring the degree to which he must walk between worlds.
Still, Costigan is smart. He understands how the neighborhood works.
Getting close to Costello means getting on his radar without getting himself
killed—and in the criminal underworld, getting noticed is a good way to get
killed. But he stirs up just the right kind of trouble and lands himself in a
room with Costello, which is just one passage in the larger maze he must
navigate. Scorsese himself knows this well, having witnessed this kind of
street politics from his apartment window in Little Italy. Swap New York
for Boston, swap Italians for the Irish, and the gist is the same. Make too
great a name for yourself on the street without the sanction of the local
boss, and it’s trouble.
Or better yet, make no name for yourself. Because that’s the paradoxical
thing about a picture so intent on the idea of identity: These characters are
tearing their souls to pieces to shape how they are seen, yet the most
important thing for all of them is to not be seen at all. Such is the nature of
identity.
In the end, virtually all the main characters, save Dignam and Dr.
Madden, are killed, some justifiably, some not. If there is a lesson here,
perhaps it’s less about truth, trust, and betrayal as it is about one simple
idea: There is nothing more important than being true to who you really are.
Anything else is a death sentence, figuratively or otherwise. For a director
who has repeatedly struggled through box-office bombs and studio
interference to stay true to who he is as a creator, surely that message
resonated.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

The Departed is rarely listed among Scorsese’s best works. It is as of this
writing not considered a classic, modern or otherwise, and is never uttered
in conversations of the best films of all time. Still, it got Martin Scorsese
over the hump.
Prior to The Departed, Scorsese had been nominated for Best Director
in the Academy Awards five times, including for two of the movies widely
considered among the best of all time, Raging Bull and GoodFellas. For
Raging Bull, he lost to Robert Redford’s Ordinary People; for GoodFellas,
to Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves, widely considered one of the
biggest snubs in Oscar history. He was also nominated for his work on The
Last Temptation of Christ, Gangs of New York, and The Aviator. (Note that
Best Director is not the same as Best Picture. Taxi Driver, for example, was
nominated for Best Picture but not for Best Director.)
So when he finally won for The Departed, close to forty years after his
debut, there was both a sigh of relief as well as some whispering that maybe
the Academy was merely making up for previous slights. Graham King,
producer on the picture, shot “lasers out of his eyes at the reporter who
suggested backstage at the Academy Awards that the crime drama might
have been a lesser work from its newly anointed Oscar-winning director.”4
In fact, after getting passed over several times, including exhaustive awards
campaigns for Gangs of New York in 2002 and The Aviator in 2004,
Scorsese “had come to terms with the fact that the Academy doesn’t honor
the kinds of films he makes, and his publicist Leslee Dart made it clear at
the outset that he wouldn’t be jumping through the usual hoops” lobbying
for an award with The Departed.5 Yet buzz preceded it, buzz that suggested
regardless if The Departed was a classic, it was time to finally honor Martin
Scorsese: “So obvious was this outcome that Scorsese’s filmmaker pals—
Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg—were tapped to
present the honor that night.”6
Scorsese’s return to the world of organized crime not only featured a star-studded cast, but
it also finally landed him his long-awaited Oscar for Best Director. Warner Bros./Photofest

So did he even deserve the Oscar for this picture? Of course he did.
That The Departed does not sit with his very best does not matter.
Comparing Martin Scorsese’s work to his own work is almost unfair
because by the time he did The Departed he had already done pictures like
Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas. Take any midtier picture by
Alfred Hitchcock or Akira Kurosawa, and you still might have some of the
most outstanding directing work of the year. Movies like Suspicion and
Dial M for Murder are fantastic, but stacked next to the best by the same
creator—Rear Window, Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, and so on—they seem
like lesser movies. Such is the case here. The Departed was going against
Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima (directed by Clint Eastwood), The Queen, and
United 93. All good movies, but the only other strong case for the award is
for Eastwood’s war movie. So Martin Scorsese won the award because he
earned it. It took a while, sure, but he got there, and he deserved it. That he
got there with a picture that seemed like a crime movie but that was actually
a movie about being something we aren’t ended up being a great setup for
his next picture, too, a genre film that wound up being his most probing
psych eval since Bringing Out the Dead and a picture very much about
being something you’re not.
 22

SHUTTER ISLAND (2010)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: February 19, 2010
WRITTEN BY: Laeta Kalogridis
STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle
Williams, Emily Mortimer
RUNNING TIME: 139 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

F or most directors, Shutter Island would be one of the better movies of

their career, a well-crafted, gripping thriller with a shocking twist. For
Martin Scorsese, it’s a lesser film, only worth a cursory chapter in an
otherwise lengthy summation of his career. I’m not doing that, mind you.
Shutter Island is as worthy of dissection as any other Scorsese picture, one
rich with layered characters and themes that run well beneath the movie’s
surface trappings. It’s such a different kind of picture for him, however, that
it’s easy to overlook how it fits into the grand sweep of his work.
Based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River),
Shutter Island sinks viewers into the journey of supposed US marshal
Edward “Teddy” Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) or, more accurately, Andrew
Laeddis, a man who killed his mentally disturbed wife after she drowned
their three children and who as a result also suffered a debilitating mental
breakdown. Now he imagines himself as Teddy, paired up with Marshal
Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to first find a missing patient at the Shutter
Island facility for the criminally insane, then to root out a conspiracy
involving government mind-control experiments. All of this is in his head,
however, revealed to both Teddy and the audience in a twist ending worthy
of M. Night Shyamalan. His partner is actually Dr. Sheehan, colleague of
Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley). The pair were making one last effort to
free Teddy of his delusions; otherwise he would undergo a lobotomy. Their
efforts briefly work, but in the end, Teddy lapses back into delusion—or
does he? As with most of Shutter Island, the answer is not always clear
upon first viewing.
(Note that, due to the nature of this film, most characters have two
names. For the purposes of this chapter, I generally refer to them by the
name Laeddis [a.k.a., Edward “Teddy” Daniels] perceives them to have
because those are the names the characters are referred to throughout most
of the movie. This includes his own name.)

ANALYSIS
A man is his experiences. There is no running from them. There is no
shutting them away. We can only face them or go mad trying to hide from
them. But often, the guilt of trying to hide from them can be so
overpowering it can break us. In many ways, Shutter Island is a bog
standard “twist” thriller, the sort of pure genre picture Martin Scorsese
tends to avoid unless business arrangements or an impending career crisis
forces his hand toward the mainstream (e.g., The Color of Money and Cape
Fear). What boils beneath the surface is the real draw, however, because it
not only lets Scorsese tinker with a modern take on classic noir and gothic
thriller, but it also allows him to delve into character exploration in a way
he’d never done before.
Shutter Island is a rare Scorsese film where the idea of spoilers actually
matters. Similar to such pictures as The Sixth Sense, an integral part of the
experience is not knowing what is coming and then, on second viewing,
seeing the picture with new eyes. Many (if not most) Scorsese works are
more concerned with the journey than any particular destination. We’re not
on the edge of our seats wondering if LaMotta will win his next fight or if
Hughes will get his “Spruce Goose” to fly. It’s the character study that is
important in these works, the life experiences they explore, the worlds and
people they help us understand.
Here, because the picture is told from Teddy’s perspective, a character
study is inherently flawed, coming as it does through an unreliable narrator.
At the very least it requires repeated viewings to get to the core of what
drives him—and what drives him is the classic Scorsese anguish: guilt.
Driven by mental illness, Teddy’s wife set fire to their apartment. Rather
than seek help for her, they moved to a lakeside cottage to seek peace.
There, she drowned their three children. In his grief, he shot and killed her.
These compounded layers of tragedy drive him so mad that he becomes
disconnected from reality. At the start of the picture, however, we know
none of this. Like Teddy, we believe he is a federal investigator searching
for a missing woman who (of course) drowned her children.
The very first lines of the picture ring differently once you know the
truth: “Pull yourself together, Teddy. It’s just water. It’s a lot of water.”
Initially, this just appears to be seasickness, not an uncommon trait to give a
character. When he arrives at the docks of Shutter Island, the guards are
strapping weapons and looking ready for trouble, despite no evident danger
—because the real danger is Teddy himself, though he doesn’t know it yet.
When he mentions to Deputy Warden McPherson (John Carroll Lynch) that
his boys seem on edge, the Deputy Warden says, “Right now, we all are.”
It’s the truth, too, but not for the reasons Teddy thinks. He is the one they
fear. He’s the reason they are ready for trouble.
This entire song and dance is an elaborate ruse, an experiment to snap
Teddy out of his psychosis and return him to reality. How much we see on-
screen is real and how much is imaginary is never quite clear. In some
instances, we’re seeing Teddy interact with real people playing roles for the
benefit of the experiment. In others, the people we see do not exist. He and
his “partner,” Chuck Aule (who is actually Teddy’s psychiatrist, Dr.
Sheehan) are taken to see Dr. John Cawley, the head psychiatrist at the
facility. A dangerous patient has escaped, he tells them, and the pair are
tasked with tracking her down. The patient, Rachel Solando (Emily
Mortimer), allegedly drowned her own children. It’s as if Dr. Cawley is
planting seeds in Teddy’s head, hoping to get him to recognize himself in
the story. Somehow, this woman disappeared from her cell. The doctor says
it’s like Rachel “evaporated,” an appropriate descriptor, given the nature of
Teddy’s wife’s crimes. He also explains to Teddy that Rachel has created a
fictional reality around herself, believing the doctors and nurses and staff
around her are actually cops and delivery people and others. Teddy asks,
“How is it possible the truth never gets through to her?” He doesn’t realize
he’s asking about himself.
The answer to his question, of course, is that feeling guilt over tragic
failures can be the unseen hand guiding a person’s thoughts and actions.
Despite the theme being so prevalent in the director’s work, rarely is it as
direct as this. Scorsese characters are wracked with guilt but often don’t
know why. They sense that they are sinful in some way but either cannot
face it directly (Charlie in Mean Streets), shift blame onto others (Jake in
Raging Bull), or feel guilt for things they did not do (Paul in After Hours).
Frank Pierce’s guilt in Bringing Out the Dead is the closest to that
experienced by Teddy, rooted in a failure on his part to save someone who
could have been saved. Teddy’s is further compounded not only by the fact
that it was his children he lost—three of them, all young—and that he could
have prevented it had he gotten the help his wife needed but also by the fact
that he took his wife’s life as a result. It was more a mercy killing than one
stemming from hurt and anger, but to perceive so much blood on your
hands? “Out, damn’d spot! Out, I say!”1
Everything he sees and experiences over the course of the picture is a
manifestation of this crushing burden. When a storm hits while Teddy and
Chuck are exploring a graveyard, the storm is Teddy’s subconscious
screaming at him, imploring him to either snap back to reality or run further
from it. He’s inundated with images of water, images of the sea, of crashing
waves and the quiet violence of nature. These are contrasted with visions of
fire and ash, of clouds of cigarette smoke that seem to have lives of their
own, of matches that act as daggers in the dark. Even in his fantasy world,
he cannot escape the tragedy that transformed him. Hints of it appear
repeatedly, symbolism woven into the seemingly ordinary. Even the skies
pour down the very thing used to kill his children. Curious, then, that Dr.
Cawley and Dr. Sheehan (as Chuck) seem to encourage him to plunge
further into his fantasy. That’s the one thing Teddy is right about: They are
conducting experiments on the mind—on his mind. “Crazy people are the
perfect subjects,” he says. “They talk; no one listens.” But here, people are
listening intently.
While in a mausoleum, Chuck seems to urge on Teddy’s delusions.
“Everything about this place stinks,” he says, offering a laundry list of
suspicious activities that seem to point to the island being some grand
government experiment. He all but urges him to question everything he
sees. This would seem to push him further into madness rather than draw
him out of it. He does it again later, after the storm (if there ever actually
was a storm), when he urges Teddy to go to ward C. He pushes Teddy
further into the fictional world he’s created for himself, presumably in the
hope of making him see that it’s fictional. That appears to be his entire MO.
When he offers Teddy a copy of the intake form for Andrew Laeddis, the
imagined arsonist who set the nonexistent fire that Teddy believes killed his
wife, the papers are actually Teddy’s. Chuck is attempting to trigger a break
from the fantasy.
This happens again when Teddy confronts Rachel Solando, who has
supposedly reappeared after being missing for a day. She’s actually a nurse
playing a role, but Teddy doesn’t realize that. Instead, he believes she is a
deranged patient who has mistaken him for her dead husband. “My Jim is
dead, so who the fuck are you?” she demands. It’s a layered question. To
Teddy, it appears to be part of the trauma Rachel is experiencing. Once you
know Rachel is just playing a role, it seems to just be part of her act. In
reality, it’s both of these things, but most important of all, it’s an honest
question. It’s an attempt to force Teddy to think about who he really is. It’s
a push toward the truth. Who is he?
As Teddy searches ward C for the truth behind Shutter Island, he
encounters a patient in solitary, George Noyce (Jackie Earle Haley). This
prompts a discussion about truth and deception. “This isn’t about the truth,”
Noyce tells him. “It’s about you.” Noyce questions him about Chuck,
suggesting his partner is not all that he seems. “I trust this man,” Teddy
insists. But Noyce knows what’s really happening and says, “Then they’ve
already won.”
Teddy already mistrusts the caretakers of the island, deeply so, but for
the wrong reasons. The audience can’t trust them, either, in no small part
because the reality we’re offered is often twisted and difficult to believe.
Teddy’s curious ride with the warden late in the picture, for example: The
warden seems to try to open Teddy’s mind to violence, suggesting it’s a
basic part of human nature and trying to tease out his capacity for horrific
acts. If Teddy is in truth a deranged man disconnected from reality, then
why take this approach? Or was most of this conversation in his mind? We
know some of the things he does and endures are real. He really does beat
up a fellow patient; he blows up Dr. Cawley’s car; he assaults a guard.
These things really happen. But he also has phantom conversations. We
know the warden is real, but perhaps that conversation wasn’t. After all, a
lengthy conversation with the “real” Rachel Solando (this time played by
Patricia Clarkson) never actually took place because the person doesn’t
exist. And he sees phantom versions of his deceased wife (Michelle
Williams) again and again. Truth and fiction are tightly wound together
because they are also wound together in his mind: the fire caused by his
wife, the false story of an arsonist, the drowning, the imaginary patient, and
on and on. It’s all layered together into a tangled knot, with every action,
every memory, every conversation having several meanings. The use of
multiple meanings cascades over the picture until even for the viewer true
thoughts and fiction become a difficult-to-decipher blend. When Teddy
confronts Dr. Cawley about the Shutter Island operation—experimenting
with the human mind as part of a government operation, or so Teddy
believes—Cawley responds indignantly, “I’ve built something valuable
here, and valuable things have a way of being misunderstood in their own
time. Everyone wants a quick fix; they always have. I’m trying to do
something people, yourself included, don’t understand, and I’m not going to
give up without a fight.”
This response is perfectly in keeping with what Teddy is accusing the
doctor of doing, but upon second and third viewing, it’s clear that Cawley is
actually speaking about his attempts to treat Teddy and that his comments
are intended for his fellow doctors, not Teddy himself. His work really is
misunderstood, as the other doctors don’t believe in what he’s doing. He
really is trying to avoid a quick fix (i.e., medication). This is all a grand
experiment, one last chance at shaking Teddy from his delusions. And it
works, at least momentarily. Once pushed beyond the limits of credulity,
Teddy comes to his senses and realizes he’s actually Andrew Laeddis, a
man whose wife murdered their children and a man who in turn killed her.
In the picture’s final moments, however, it appears that the effect was
only temporary. Andrew again begins speaking to Dr. Sheehan as if he’s
Teddy and the doctor is Chuck, hinting at the same conspiracy that had
already consumed him. Dr. Sheehan is heartbroken at the relapse. But as
with all in Shutter Island, things are not as they seem. Teddy drops a clue
with his final words to Sheehan: “Which would be worse: To live as a
monster or to die as a good man?” As soon as he asks the question and
begins to walk away, Dr. Sheehan stands and calls for him, “Teddy?” But
Andrew doesn’t respond to the name Teddy. He just walks on because in
that moment he is Andrew, his real self. He gives one last look to Dr.
Cawley. His eyes are clear. He is not seeing anything that isn’t there. This
sudden regression was an act. He’s made a choice. He’s going to die as a
good man rather than live as a monster: lobotomized, empty, a shell of who
he was, but a good man, nonetheless.
In Scorsese pictures, escaping one’s past is a trick few can manage. The
past is defined by past deeds, misdeeds, and ill-made decisions, and it hangs
over Scorsese protagonists like a vulture. Even as far back as Who’s That
Knocking at My Door? the Girl finds that a past for which she bears no
blame still affects her life in a negative way. In a very Catholic way, the
only way to purge these past sins, real or imagined, is through sacrifice.
That’s how you absolve yourself. Paul Hackett is entombed as a statue
(After Hours). Sam Bowden’s family is torn apart before he can move past
his sins (Cape Fear). Henry Hill gives up having all his desires fulfilled just
to cut ties from his past (GoodFellas). Paradoxically, Frank Pierce has to let
someone die in order to lift his guilt (Bringing Out the Dead). And of
course, the ultimate sacrifice is Jesus Christ’s in The Last Temptation of
Christ, one made not for himself but for all of mankind. Teddy’s decision is
not so broad and sweeping, but it comes from a similar place. “He was
literally taking the weight of the cross, that character, the guilt that he had,
what he did, what he experienced in his life,” Scorsese said. “That guilt was
real, and that is interesting to me.”2
That Shutter Island gave the director an opportunity to explore a
character’s debilitating guilt through the lens of classic film genres—noir,
gothic horror, procedural thriller—was in some ways just a bonus. Few
directors are as steeped in film history as Scorsese. He is a walking, talking
list of obscure references to little-seen pictures. A chance to dabble with
some of those techniques and to give nods to those older films, especially in
a genre he doesn’t usually work in, is an appealing one.
 But ultimately, for Scorsese it always comes down to character and
theme. He may not typically make this kind of thriller, but if the theme is
there, it becomes a Scorsese picture. Shutter Island is a picture steeped in
Catholic imagery. It’s less overt here than in other pictures. There are no
crosses, no crucifixes, no rosary beads, but the bloody search for
redemption is. “The most important legacy of my Catholicism is guilt,” the
director once said. “A major helping of guilt, like garlic.”3 Andrew Laeddis
(a.k.a., US marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels) can probably say the same.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Despite Shutter Island being a picture seemingly well out of Scorsese’s
wheelhouse, or at least what most people would consider his wheelhouse, it
ended up being a major financial success, netting nearly $295 million
worldwide on its $80 million budget. Only the Wolf of Wall Street would
earn more money (not adjusted for inflation). It was a hit with international
audiences. Critically it was more of a mixed bag, but genre pictures had
never been his forte, no matter how well crafted. As good as pictures like
The Color of Money and Cape Fear are, they don’t bleed Scorsese. He
made them his, yes, but they aren’t representative of what he does best. His
next film wouldn’t be, either, yet it would still manage to turn a shockingly
unexpected genre from him—a family-friendly adventure—into a colorful,
dynamic window into his soul.
 23

HUGO (2011)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: October 10, 2011 (New York Film Festival),
November 23, 2011 (wide release)
WRITTEN BY: John Logan
STARRING: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha
Baron Cohen
RUNNING TIME: 126 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

A PG-rated family adventure that leans heavily on special effects,

children with parent issues, and a slightly otherworldly sense of
wonder, Hugo may as well be a Steven Spielberg film. It certainly has all
the surface trappings of one. Yet dig deeper, and this unlikely entry into the
Scorsese catalog suddenly seems tailor-made for the director, who was in
his late sixties when it was made.
Adapted from the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
(who is distantly related to legendary producer David O. Selznick), both tell
the story of Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an orphan living in the walls of
a French train station. Hugo has no home and no family, but what he does
have is a broken mechanical man, an automaton that is his last link to his
deceased father. A cranky old toy shopkeeper (Ben Kingsley) catches him
stealing parts, which the boy uses to repair the automaton, and insists he
work to atone for his theft. Hugo befriends the man’s goddaughter Isabelle
(Chloë Grace Moretz), and together the pair uncover the mystery of the
automaton only to reveal another mystery: how the mechanical man is
linked to Isabelle’s godfather. They discover that he is Georges Méliès, a
real-life, celebrated film pioneer who created hundreds of groundbreaking
early films, including A Trip to the Moon (1902) and A Fantastic Voyage
(1904). Once beloved but now forgotten by the public, Méliès lives in
obscurity, thinking his art is forgotten—but thanks to Hugo and Isabelle, he
is rediscovered, and his work is finally given the honor it deserves. Though
Hugo and his adventures are fictional, Méliès’s story is very real, including
his collapse into anonymity and subsequent rediscovery. Appropriate, then,
that a student of film history like Martin Scorsese should direct a picture
that is as much a love letter to early cinema as it is a family-friendly
adventure story.

ANALYSIS
There comes a point in a person’s life when they begin thinking about their
legacy, about what they will leave behind, about the things that will define
them after they are gone. This is especially true of creative people, who live
and breathe and exist through their creations. Hugo is a picture about many
things—loss, isolation, family—but most of all, it’s a film about legacy.
That Martin Scorsese would explore this subject matter in the latter
stages of his career is hardly surprising. His first feature had been released
forty-five years prior. At the time he made Hugo, he was quickly
approaching his seventies. Scorsese is not the type to stop looking ahead to
new projects; his ceaseless work since Hugo is proof enough of that. Even
as this is written, the director has several productions under way. However,
he has always looked to the past, as well. No one has scrutinized Martin
Scorsese’s work as thoroughly as Martin Scorsese himself. Further, few in
the industry have as much love, admiration, and knowledge of cinema
history as he does. Combine that with our natural tendency to begin looking
back as we get older and to start thinking about what we’re going to leave
behind, and the appeal of this PG-rated, family-friendly, Spielbergian
adventure movie—perhaps the most un-Scorsese picture of his career—
becomes apparent.
The primary legacy that takes center stage is that of Georges Méliès, an
early pioneer of filmmaking who helped propel the new art form from a
novelty into a true exploration of dreams and fantasies. When we first meet
Kingsley’s character, he appears to be nothing more than a bitter, old man to
provide a foil for our plucky, young protagonist, a cliché from a thousand
children’s fables. He shows a strange interest in Hugo’s notebook, but the
interest could be anything. We’ve seen enough fables of this sort to guess
it’s probably something related to greed: a link to hidden wealth, perhaps,
or maybe just the general disdain for children, a trait typical in stories such
as this. But it doesn’t take long for it to become apparent that Kingsley is
not the standard cliché. His interest in Hugo—or more precisely, his interest
in making Hugo go away—is rooted in a deep, unseen pain.
As Hugo and Isabelle probe further into mysteries Méliès does not wish
them to discover, we learn why he feels such pain: The things he poured his
soul into appear lost to time, destined to be forgotten. It’s not merely that he
was a success who has since been cast aside by the public, a once-renowned
man now working in anonymity. That alone might be cause for bitterness.
No, his pain runs much deeper than that. Méliès believes his life’s work has
been destroyed. Imagine such a shadow hanging over you. Imagine the
makings of your very being wiped away without a trace. He would feel a
shell of who he was, as if a piece of himself was missing, maybe the most
vital piece. And indeed, that is how the Méliès of Hugo feels.
All this begins, however, with Hugo exploring his own legacy and that
of his father (Jude Law, in a brief cameo). All he has left of his father is an
automaton, a kind of clockwork figure that can draw pictures when it’s
working. These were (and remain) real creations dating back to ancient
times. From the medieval era forward, the craft that went into these
automatons took dramatic leaps forward, with some able to play musical
instruments, write or draw, dance, and more. The real-life history of these
devices is remarkable, and in the real world, Méliès really was an
aficionado. In this fictional world, Hugo seeks to repair the automaton,
hoping it will give him one last message from his father. They used to repair
it together, so it symbolizes a shared creation, a legacy the two of them
share. He wants to preserve a part of the past that represents an important
aspect of his life.
Scorsese is no stranger to such efforts to preserve the past. He is the
founder of the Film Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to film preservation
and restoration. “Of all the arts, [film is] the most fragile,” Scorsese said.
“Very often we do find ourselves having to make the case for it—make the
case that film is art, make the case to preserve the past and support the
artists of the present.”1 The restoration and preservation of a beloved film
by an influential director, the restoration and preservation of a beloved relic
left behind by your father—these ideas each spring from the same place.
The past Hugo wishes to preserve isn’t about physical objects, of
course. Though he’s adept with his hands, clockworks and automatons are
not his real concern. The physical object is merely his last remaining
connection to his father, the one touchstone he still has to the normal life of
his youth, when he still had a parent who loved him, before being taken in
and forced to work for an alcoholic uncle and before he then became a
homeless boy living in the walls of a train station. The automaton is the last
vestige of their relationship. Much as film made Scorsese who he is, this
mechanical man made Hugo who he is. The boy’s efforts may be personal,
but they lead him down a path that intersects directly with Scorsese’s real-
world concerns about honoring and preserving the rich history of cinema.
The automaton represents one thing for Hugo but something quite different
to Isabelle’s Papa Georges, the bitter, old toy stand proprietor. When he and
Isabelle discover who Isabelle’s godfather really is, they are astonished: not
necessarily because they know his work—they don’t—but because they had
no idea he was a creative genius.
The pair learn that Papa Georges (a.k.a., Méliès) began doing stage
magic but became enamored with the potential of film in 1895 after seeing
a private showing of the Lumière brothers’ cinematograph, an early camera
and projector. He went on to create his own, and in 1896 he began making
films—hundreds of them between then and 1913, films of wild imagination
and increasing complexity, pioneering special effects and in-camera tricks
and gaining international renown for the flights of fancy he put on-screen.
But financial troubles eventually consumed him, he burned his sets and
costumes, and his films were melted down to make shoe heels. Indeed, most
of the facts of Méliès’s life as depicted in Hugo are true. Some small details
were changed—he was not found by a boy named Hugo, and he did not
marry the actress Jehanne d’Alcy (Helen McCrory) until 1925, after he had
stopped making movies—but the essentials are factual.
In the real world, it was in 1924, after writer Georges-Michel Coissac
interviewed him for a book on French cinema, that his name was dragged
back out of obscurity. That book was the first time the filmmaker’s
importance began to be recognized and his work rediscovered. The next
few years were a time of renewal for Méliès, a time when newspapers and
magazines began to profile the old master, and in 1929 a grand gala was
held to celebrate his work, just as seen in Hugo. He spent the last eight
years of his life beloved and honored for his art, which was very nearly
forgotten.
So consider a man like Martin Scorsese being confronted by such a
story. Set aside Scorsese’s desire to preserve film history. Instead, look at
him as a creator, as a man who expresses who he is through his art. How
tragic must it be to consider your life’s work being forgotten. How crushing
an idea that must be. Until 2006, Scorsese’s legacy appeared to be on course
to be “The Best Director Not Named Alfred Hitchcock or Stanley Kubrick
Never to Win a Best Director Oscar.” The Departed rectified that oversight.
With that monkey off his back and the latter years of his career looming
before him, it’s little surprise that matters of legacy became important to
him, even if only subconsciously. While the director was in the midst of
filming Hugo, film critic Richard Schickel observed that Scorsese “says that
at his age (sixty-eight during this flurry of activity), he more and more feels
the pressure of time and his own mortality. So much to do, possibly so little
time” and also noted that the director “worries about leaving enough money
to ensure his children’s future” because so much of his money is directed
right back into his films or toward film preservation.2
There were times in Scorsese’s career when he worried he’d never make
a film again. The dark days of the late 1970s, when drugs fueled him, his
health declined, and New York, New York was a box-office and critical
bomb. Or most of the 1980s, when he struggled to get dream projects
funded and relied on small scripts (After Hours) and commercial cash grabs
(The Color of Money) to stay relevant. The fear of fading away from the
work he loved so much had to have been a spiritual burden on the middle
portion of his career. So Hugo is about not wanting to be forgotten. It’s
about the importance of that which we leave behind and of being
recognized for it. It’s about the parts of our soul we give to the world.
In Hugo, Méliès all but gives up after his muse—film—is taken from
him. His days are modest drudgery at a train station. Simply evoking the
memory of what he used to do is painful to him. When Hugo and Isabelle
accidentally get into a chest containing many of his old drawings, he breaks
down, calling Hugo cruel. Hugo does not understand why. He only knows
he has somehow hurt the man. But for Méliès, seeing those old images is a
painful reminder of a part of himself he believed was lost.
Creative people want to create. They need to create. They also wish for
their creations to be recognized, even if they were created primarily for
themselves. So when Hugo and Isabelle first show interest in Méliès’ life
work, he cannot embrace their interest because, as far as he knows, his life’s
work is gone. Without it, he is no longer the man he was. It’s only when
author René Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg) enters the scene that things
change. Tabard is not only a great student and fan of Méliès’s, but he also
actually owns a reel of A Trip to the Moon. He screens a copy for the
children and d’Alcy. Méliès discovers that a piece of his legacy still
remains. That alone is enough to awaken him.
And in those final moments of the picture, when it’s revealed that after
an exhaustive search, more than eighty of his films have been found (as of
this writing, more than two hundred Méliès pictures have been discovered),
Georges Méliès is himself again, a purveyor of fantasy, a master of magic, a
weaver of dreams—a man who has recaptured his legacy and who knows
his place in the world is secure.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Hugo was a first for Scorsese in many ways and not merely for being a
family-friendly children’s adventure. The CGI-heavy picture was also a 3-D
production, a technique at the time often slammed as a trendy gimmick but
that Scorsese embraced to beautiful result. “No one had ever shot like this
in 3D before,” producer Graham King told the Hollywood Reporter. “A
small part of what’s great about how Scorsese tells you a story is the way he
moves those cameras, right? The tracking shot in Goodfellas, for example. I
thought, if he does those kinds of tracking shots in 3D—wow. It’ll be
fantastic.”3
The movie is peppered with the kind of small stories Scorsese delights
in, too, including a whimsical romance between a pair of endearing regulars
at the station (Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths), which is often
played like a silent film, and the almost-tragic sadness of Sacha Baron
Cohen’s Inspector Gustave Dasté character, who pines for a florist (Emily
Mortimer) and who masks the shame he feels for his war-crippled leg
through authoritarian malice, though his heart isn’t truly in it.
Critically, the picture was a hit, seen as a delightful surprise from a
director generally associated with darker fare. Hugo earned eleven
Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director,
winning five (mostly in technical categories), and also landed on a slew of
critics’ top-ten lists. Yet at the box office, Hugo bombed. On a budget
exceeding $150 million, it barely scraped its way to a $185 million
international take. After marketing costs and other factors, it was a net loss
for the studio. “Let’s just say that it hasn’t been an easy few months for
me,” King said at the time. “There’s been a lot of Ambien involved.”4
In some ways Hugo marks the start of the final phase of Scorsese’s
career—and given the subject matter, that’s appropriate. This is a director
with nothing left to prove. All that’s left is for him to tie a bow on his
legacy before he shouts his final “Action!” Perhaps that’s why his next
picture would be one of his wildest and most carefree yet: a biopic on a
scummy stock scammer that ended up being one of the biggest hits of his
career.
 24

THE WOLF OF WALL

STREET (2013)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: December 17, 2013
WRITTEN BY: Terence Winter
STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie
RUNNING TIME: 180 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

F
or all his pictures featuring unsavory characters operating on the
wrong side of the law, depictions of pure, unadulterated, gleefully
malicious greed are surprisingly rare in the Scorsese filmography. There is a
light kiss of it in GoodFellas, but Henry is motivated more by the high of
being a mobster than he is by the money. Greed is written all over Casino,
yet Robert De Niro’s character, “Ace,” is more concerned with running a
tight operation than he is squeezing dollars out of it for himself. The power
is the draw, not the money. The scammers of The Color of Money do it for
the hustle, not the cash. Even billionaire Howard Hughes in The Aviator
was motivated more by a sense of adventure and accomplishment than he
was by accumulating more wealth. Then along comes The Wolf of Wall
Street, which dives headlong into a subject that had previously only been on
the periphery of Scorsese’s most common themes.
Based on the real-life story of stock scammer Jordan Belfort, who
chronicled his rise and fall in an autobiography of the same name, The Wolf
of Wall Street follows Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) as he and his cohorts at
disgraced firm Stratton Oakmont—right-hand man Donnie Azoff (Jonah
Hill) chief among them—rip off investors, take copious amounts of drugs,
sleep with prostitutes, and generally engage in every form of debauchery
imaginable before their whitecollar crimes eventually catch up with them.
After ripping off countless millions from investors on penny stocks, FBI
investigator Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) takes Belfort down, shattering
the young con man’s marriage to Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie) and
toppling a firm that in just a few short years had earned one of the seediest
reputations in an industry already known for immoral levels of greed.
Much like The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street was a pet project brought
to Scorsese by DiCaprio, who won a bidding war against Brad Pitt for the
rights to the story.1 The film kicked around Hollywood for a few years,
attached to several other directors (including Ridley Scott) before finally
coming back to DiCaprio’s first choice.
Ironically, given the subject matter of the movie, production company
Red Granite was caught in a financial fraud scandal, allegedly moving
around billions illegally. The story is still unfolding as of this writing and
threatens to implicate a number of global high rollers. In addition to
producers Joey Mc-Farland, Riza Aziz, and Jho Low, the “globe-spanning
investigation also has implicated a former Malaysian prime minister,
employees of a prestigious Wall Street investment bank, a member of the
Fugees rap group and a top Republican fundraiser.”2 Though DiCaprio was
gifted a Picasso painting by Low, which he has since returned, “It is
believed DiCaprio, Scorsese and others involved in the film did not know
the source of Red Granite’s money.”3 And for their part, in 2017, Red
Granite representatives insisted none of the funding for the film “was in any
way illegitimate.”4 Still, when life imitates art…
ANALYSIS
Is it possible to sympathize with the unsympathetic? And is there anything
to be learned from someone as deeply selfish as Jordan Belfort? “Greed, for
the lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed
clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has
marked the upward surge of mankind,” said Gordon Gekko (Michael
Douglas) in Wall Street (1987), Oliver Stone’s morally gray examination of
1980s’ Wall Street culture that inspired just as many people to pursue a
career in finance as it did repulse them.
There is not much gray in The Wolf of Wall Street, which examines
some of the same ideas but in a much different way. Jordan Belfort makes
little effort to justify or explain his pursuit of wealth and the voracious
appetites it feeds. The film is presented in the same whirlwind, episodic,
narration-driven style of GoodFellas and Casino but without the moral
complexities of either. Belfort is, for lack of a better term, a dirtbag.
Whereas Henry Hill is put off by the violent depths his colleagues will sink
to and Sam “Ace” Rothstein struggles to maintain an air of respectability in
his operations, Belfort cares for nothing beyond his next Quaalude or sexual
encounter. Hill has little remorse in ripping people off, but he doesn’t
appear to take much joy in it, either. Rothstein knows he’s manipulating
high rollers in his casino, but that’s the cost of doing business in an industry
where both sides are knowingly playing one another. Belfort, on the other
hand, knowingly targets vulnerable people down on their luck, gleefully
takes their money, and flips them off as he does it. He seems to enjoy
running people into the ground. He measures his value as a human being by
his wealth. “Money doesn’t just buy you a better life, better food, better
cars, better pussy,” he says. “It also makes you a better person.”
Belfort gets his start under the tutelage of Mark Hanna (Matthew
McConaughey), an eccentric Wall Street broker who waves away the idea
that it’s mutually beneficial for broker and client alike to make money on
their investments. The only goal, he says, is to move money from your
client’s pocket into your own. Belfort takes this notion to heart. When he
learns about the huge commissions generated by selling penny stocks—
high-risk, low-cost stocks often associated with unproven new companies—
he begins to build a firm focused entirely on pushing these highly profitable
(for him) investments. Initially, he’s not bilking the rich with these deals.
The focus is on working-class people who can’t afford to lose money on a
bad investment. His first wife, Teresa Petrillo Belfort (Cristin Milioti), calls
him out on it:
“Wouldn’t you feel better if you sold that stuff to rich people who could, like, afford to lose
all that money?”
“Of course, but rich people don’t buy penny stocks. They just don’t.”
“Why not?”
(in narration) “Because they’re too smart, that’s why not.”

This utter lack of respect for the people who provide a living for Belfort
is evident from the start of the picture to the end. He pumps his fist when he
hears a potential client’s spouse has passed away, knowing that
vulnerability makes them a good mark. He flips people off or feigns sexual
assault while on the phone with them. The suicide of former employees gets
but a casual, dismissive mention. When he breaks the fourth wall to explain
to the audience how an IPO (initial public offering) works, he interrupts
himself and says the details don’t matter; all that matters is that they were
making money hand over fist. He later interrupts another fourth-wall-
breaking explanation when telling the audience how his scams worked. The
clear message—and it’s one that doesn’t change throughout the picture—is
that Belfort doesn’t care about anything other than getting his. “There is no
nobility in poverty,” he tells his employees. “I have been a rich man, and I
have been a poor man, and I’ll choose rich every fucking time.”
Typically, Scorsese films contain some kind of insight into the people
on-screen, an examination of the human condition. Even if seen through the
lives of deplorable people, he depicts themes that apply to all of us in some
way. He has a talent for making us empathize with horrid people. The Wolf
of Wall Street contains none of that. Belfort (or at least the Belfort we see
on-screen) has no layers. His inner life is as shallow as his public persona.
Debauchery is certainly nothing new in the Scorsese catalog—drinking,
violence, sex, drugs, and rock and roll are as essential to his work as trees
are to Christmas—but rarely are these traits presented as being so much fun.
Typically, such lifestyles come laden with their own problems. In Mean
Streets, Charlie’s street life leaves him wracked with unfocused guilt. The
weight of impending violence weighs on Henry Hill’s soul. Drug use in
Bringing Out the Dead leaves people empty shells of what they once were.
Jake LaMotta’s attraction to violence comes in part through a deep sense of
self-loathing and insecurity. And so on.
So what does Wolf tell us about Belfort? What drives his greed-over-all
philosophy? Is there a more complex morality underlying his actions or an
inner turmoil or conflict that leads him down this ugly road? Not really.
He’s a shallow man focused on shallow pursuits. And while it would be
unfair to suggest that his pursuits are depicted as being without
consequence—he does lose it all in the end, after all, and along the way he
ruins his family, crashes cars, and has embarrassing drug overdoses—the
presentation is that these events are zany and hilarious. Belfort pops
Quaaludes while his luxurious yacht sinks. He overdoses and only manages
to save Donnie from choking to death thanks to a dose of cocaine (and
taking it is likened to Popeye eating spinach), the punch line of the entire
sequence being that Belfort crashed on his way home after driving in a
drug-induced stupor. And on and on. Scorsese pictures don’t judge their
characters. His focus has always been to depict unsavory people in ways
that allow us to see them as human beings rather than clichéd crooks and
criminals and scumbags, to understand that these are people as layered and
complex and nuanced as the rest of us.
Scorsese’s filmography is filled with depictions of sleazy characters, but perhaps none is as
sleazy as Leonardo DiCaprio’s take on stock scammer Jordan Belfort. Paramount
Pictures/Photofest

But there is no nuance in Jordan Belfort. This is a picture that probably

wouldn’t work without DiCaprio’s charm. As sleazy as the character is,
there are moments when he’s undeniably entertaining. When FBI agent
Patrick Denham interviews Belfort on Belfort’s yacht, for example, their
cat-and-mouse verbal sparring is pointed and funny. His frustration at being
cut off from sex by Naomi is also humorous, as is the moment when he
turns it around on her thanks to a hidden camera. And when he decides to
renege on his deal with the FBI and stick with his company, it’s difficult to
avoid feeling some degree of pity for him. That’s all thanks to DiCaprio.
There is a glee to the proceedings that makes Wolf a black comedy
rather than a character profile or drama. It may use many of the same
techniques and approaches Scorsese perfected in GoodFellas, but unlike
that film, Wolf doesn’t ask to be taken seriously—quite the opposite. Even if
the stories in it are true—Belfort is hardly the most credible of sources,
after all—they are often so preposterous that it’s hard to believe they reflect
reality. Though many of the techniques are familiar, Scorsese does try a few
new things. In several scenes, rather than narration we hear the characters’
thoughts, listening as they say one thing and think another. There is also a
surprising amount of CGI enhancement in the picture. Fresh off the
production of Hugo, Scorsese abandoned the tangible, tactile approach to
set construction he took in Gangs of New York and instead relied heavily on
digital set extensions. These effects are largely seamless, so invisible that,
even when you know where they are used, they’re difficult to spot.
After three hours of sex, drugs, and ripping people off, Belfort’s
schemes finally collapse underneath him. His tiny empire crumbles. He is
shamed, loses it all, and ends up in prison. The picture asks no sympathy for
Belfort from the audience, nor would he get any if asked. Here, Scorsese’s
often-nonjudgmental approach to depicting heels means this is all presented
matter-of-factly. There is no condemnation, nor is there sadness in his
downfall. It just is.
In the film’s final moments, the real Jordan Belfort makes an
appearance to introduce his fictional version, who now gives presentations
on sales techniques. For a brief moment, the aspect ratio of the picture
changes, subtly suggesting that Belfort is lesser than he was: smaller,
shrunken, less significant. He has been diminished. Then, in a callback to
an earlier scene, Belfort—DiCaprio’s Belfort, not the real one—begins
asking attendees to sell him a pen. There, in his element and talking about
selling, the aspect ratio opens up again. These shifting aspect ratios tell us
something important about him: Jordan Belfort isn’t really alive unless he’s
selling someone something they don’t need. So in a way, there is pity for
Belfort after all: pity that he had such an empty inner life; pity that such
unfocused greed drove him; pity for him, but no sympathy. Not even Martin
Scorsese could manage that trick.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Today, the real-life Jordan Belfort is still paying restitution to his many
victims. He pushes a sales training program online and gives motivational
speeches. Leonardo DiCaprio even endorsed his program, saying, “Jordan
stands as a shining example of the transformative qualities of ambition and
hard work.”5 And unsurprisingly, he continues to be a lightning rod for
controversy.
As for the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street ended up being a huge
success, raking in close to $400 million worldwide, making it Scorsese’s
highest-grossing film to date (not adjusted for inflation). It received largely
positive reviews from critics, too, who likened it to GoodFellas on Wall
Street. It received five Academy Award nominations, including yet another
nod for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as acting nominations for
DiCaprio and Hill.
Wolf received its fair share of criticism, too, however, especially for its
uncritical portrayal of Belfort. In an open letter to Scorsese and DiCaprio,
Christina McDowell, daughter of Belfort associate Tom Prousalis, said the
movie celebrated “our national obsession with wealth and status and
glorifying greed and psychopathic behavior” and that the pair of
moviemakers “successfully aligned yourself with an accomplished criminal,
a guy [Belfort] who still hasn’t made full restitution to his victims.”6 The
Wall Street Journal called it a “hollow spectacle,” among many similar
criticisms in other outlets.7 For his part, DiCaprio said, “I hope people
understand we’re not condoning this behavior, that we’re indicting it. The
book was a cautionary tale and if you sit through the end of the film, you’ll
realize what we’re saying about these people and this world, because it’s an
intoxicating one.”8
In some ways, The Wolf of Wall Street was Scorsese doing what he’s
often had to do in his career: making something familiar in order to earn
him the luxury of pursuing a more personal project next. And that’s exactly
what happened here. Following the huge financial success of this picture,
the director finally settled in to make a picture he’d been trying to get made
for decades, a slow, meditative examination of faith set on the island of
Japan. Like his previous two films focused on faith, it would be a financial
failure, but at this juncture of his career, how much does that really matter?
 25

SILENCE (2016)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: December 23, 2016
WRITTEN BY: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
STARRING: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Ciarán
Hinds, Liam Neeson
RUNNING TIME: 161 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

ilence has been called the third in an unofficial trilogy focused on
S exploring men of faith, a film that follows in the footsteps of The Last
Temptation of Christ and Kundun in examining just how deeply faith can
mold us, shape us, challenge us, and drive us. It’s also the third in a series
of pictures Scorsese struggled for years to get made, joining Temptation and
Gangs of New York as personal projects that for a time seemed as if they’d
never materialize.
But on the heels of the massive success that was The Wolf of Wall Street,
Silence finally came together after twenty-six years of gestation. The movie
is based on a 1966 book of the same name by Shūsaku Endō. The novel
chronicles the Shimabara rebellion, an Edo-period uprising in 1637 and
1638 that led to strict enforcement of Japan’s laws of the time against
Christianity, and more specifically examines the experience of Christian
missionaries in the region who struggled with holding fast to their beliefs or
renouncing them in order to end the suffering of others.
When Jesuit priest Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson) writes of the
brutal torture of Christians he witnesses in Japan, two priests he mentored,
Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam
Driver), are shocked—but they are even more stunned by the news that
Ferreira allegedly renounced his faith. Seeking the truth, the pair journey to
Japan with fisherman Kichijirō (Yōsuke Kubozuka), hoping to save
Ferreira’s soul. There, they encounter villagers who live in fear of their faith
being discovered. They remain in hiding for a time, administering to the
villagers and taking their confessions, but they are discovered after
Kichijirō betrays them to Governor Inoue Masashige (Issey Ogata). Garupe
is drowned while trying to save a group of unrepentant Christians from
being murdered by Masashige’s men. Rodrigues remains in their custody.
Rodrigues finally reunites with Ferreira, who says he renounced his faith
years ago under the belief that Christianity could not survive in Japan. After
struggling with the decision, Rodrigues finally relents and commits
apostasy, renouncing his faith, marrying a Buddhist woman, and living out
his days in peace. But after his death, as his body is being burned, we see a
crucifix in his hands, telling us that, for long years, he silently clung to his
beliefs.

ANALYSIS
There is nothing unusual about questioning your faith. For some, this kind
of self-reflection will strengthen their faith. For others, it will cause them to
abandon it. Regardless of the outcome, questioning is human. We’re hard-
wired for it.
Far more unusual is unwavering faith even in the face of torture and
death. Martin Scorsese has examined this idea several times in his career,
most prominently in his three movies focused on the subject. Silence is the
third of those movies, and it may be the most difficult of the three both in
terms of entertainment value—the pacing is glacial—and when it comes to
the questions it poses about the nature of belief. In Last Temptation and
Kundun, the main characters are not merely men of faith; they are divine
beings in human form, aspects of God and Buddha, respectively, who walk
the earth as mortals. By contrast, in Silence the men Scorsese focuses on are
mortals through and through. There is nothing divine or supernatural about
them. All that sets them apart from others is the strength of their faith.
And the conditions under which their faith is challenged are horrifying.
The very first shot of the film depicts decapitated heads. We then see people
being tortured at natural hot springs, scalding water slowly dripped on
them. These men “asked to be tortured so they could demonstrate the
strength of their faith and the presence of God within them.” This sets the
tone early and establishes a potent message for the picture to explore: Faith
is so powerful that people are willing to suffer and die rather than turn away
from it.

Martin Scorsese’s third film on the nature of faith and spirituality took more than two
decades to go from idea to finished film. Paramount Pictures/Photofest
 For Sebastião Rodrigues and Francisco Garupe, their journey to Japan is
not merely to administer to the Christians there, who once numbered
300,000 strong. It’s not to find out the truth about whether Cristóvão
Ferreira truly renounced his faith, either. It’s to save Ferreira’s soul. If he is
hiding his faith, then his eternal soul is in danger, and because he mentored
them, they feel a personal debt to him.
Once there, they find that Christians must live in secret, hiding their
beliefs for fear of being tortured or killed. Anthony Lane describes the
scene in the New Yorker:
There are pageants of cruelty on view, as the faithful are hung on crosses and planted at the
sea’s brink, so that the tide will rise and lash them into submission and a drenching death;
others, while still alive, are bundled in straw and either incinerated or casually tipped
overboard; nastiest of all is the plight of those who are shrouded and suspended upside down,
with a careful nick in their necks, so that the blood will not go to their heads but drip
downward. Thus, they are kept unfainting and awake. What binds the scenes together is
Rodrigues, bearing witness and—so he hopes and prays—sharing in the anguish of his
flock.1

“To hide like this must be a terrible burden,” Rodrigues says in

narration. “I was overwhelmed by the love I felt from these people even
though their faces couldn’t show it. Long years of secrecy had made their
faces into masks. Why do they have to suffer so much? Why did God pick
them to bear such a burden?” The dilemma faced time and again by
characters in the film, the main characters and supporting cast alike, is in
being asked to renounce their faith or face terror and death. Many do,
stepping on sacred images to display their (often-feigned) willingness to
walk away from their beliefs. Kichijirō, the fisherman who brought
Rodrigues and Garupe to the country, does this so effortlessly that one
begins to wonder just how devout he really is. Yet the things he has faced
have been horrific. He has seen friends and family burned alive for refusing
to deny their Christianity. “Wherever I go,” he says, “I see the fire and
smell the flesh.” So he casually defiles sacred icons so that he might live,
then, when in safety and privacy, begs to be given a chance to make
confession. For him, what is in his heart is more important than what he
outwardly displays.
This is not so easy for Rodrigues. It’s not about desecrating
iconography. Caesar A. Montevecchio observes, “as Rodrigues distributes
various trinkets of Christianity to the villagers, even undoing his rosary and
giving out individual beads, he notes with an air of disapproval that he
thinks the people value signs of faith more than faith itself.”2 His focus is
instead on their hearts and souls. Initially, he believes his purpose in life is
to spread his spiritual beliefs to others, no matter where he is. It is why he
walks the earth. When in hiding from the inquisitors, he sees his own
reflection in a body of water, and in it he sees Christ’s face. This is not
hubris on his part, at least not overtly. Rather, it’s a sincere belief that he
shares a similar purpose. It is his role to bring people into God’s love, and if
he must suffer to reach this end, as Christ did, then so be it. That is his fate.
And much like Jesus Christ, Rodrigues is betrayed by someone close to
him, in this case Kichijirō, who turns him in to the inquisitors for a handful
of coins. Later, while in a cell, Kichijirō asks to be forgiven. Rodrigues
agrees. He does not sense malice in him; in fact, he only thinks of him as
worthy of pity, a wretched and sad man. Scorsese called Kichijirō a
“character (Rodrigues) can’t stand who keeps running around asking for
confession, and keeps ratting on all the Christians. It turns out that’s Jesus.
Jesus is the man you can’t stand. He’s the one you’ve got to forgive. He’s
the one you’ve got to love.”3
When first set before the inquisitors, Rodrigues is defiant. Slaughter
will not suppress a people’s true belief, he says. It will do the opposite.
“The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church,” he tells them. Truth is
universal, and God’s word is truth no matter where you are in the world. Yet
Governor Inoue Masashige, who heads the inquisition, sees it differently.
He says that Christianity cannot thrive in Japan; it does not belong there:
“Everyone knows a tree which flowers in one kind of Earth may decay and
die in another. It is the same with the tree of Christianity. The leaves decay
here.”
This is not a battle Rodrigues can win, and that is what so thoroughly
tests his faith. He watches his friend Garupe die trying to save villagers
from being drowned by inquisitors. He sees innocent people tortured and
killed. He sees people of faith renounce their beliefs. Masashige tells him
their blood is on his hands: “Think of the suffering you have inflicted upon
these people just for your selfish dream of a Christian Japan.” All he has to
do is renounce his faith, and their suffering will end. He saw Christ’s image
in his own reflection, but his task is the opposite of Christ’s. In order to
bring healing, he must turn away from God’s word, not embrace it; “Silence
takes the trajectories of Jesus and the Dalai Lama, who must learn to accept
their immense, sacred responsibilities, and reverses them in the story of
Rodrigues, the priest who embarks on a holy mission and is ultimately
stripped of everything he values.”4
When Rodrigues is finally reunited with Ferreira, he finds a man who
will not acknowledge the faith he once devoted his life to spreading.
Ferreira gave up. “There is a saying here: Mountains and rivers can be
moved, but man’s nature cannot be moved,” he tells his former student.
Now, rather than spread the Gospel, Ferreira teaches people about medicine
and astronomy, spreading scientific knowledge rather than the word of God.
Unspoken in this is that Ferreira is clearly worn down and terrified. It’s not
that he lacks faith; it’s that his mental and spiritual endurance has been
spent. He knows he was fighting a battle that he could not win, so he
capitulated. Ferreira insists that the Japanese do not truly believe in the
Christian God, anyway; their belief is based on a misunderstanding, a
twisted and incorrect view of what God is. Those who have died in God’s
name, he says, did not die for the Christian God.
Seeing his old mentor thinking this way devastates Rodrigues. He thinks
it is “worse than any torture to twist a man’s soul in this way.” He believes
love—human love, God’s love, all love—can overcome any trial. And
indeed, for Scorsese, that is one of the central themes of the film: “It’s about
love itself. And pushing the ego away, pushing the pride away. It’s about the
essential nature of Christianity itself.”5
Masashige thinks otherwise, challenging the most deeply held reasons
Rodrigues has to live. People suffer and die in the name of Jesus, but,
Masashige says with a stab, Rodrigues is not Jesus: “You see Jesus… and
believe your trial is just like his. Those five in the pit are suffering too, just
like Jesus, but they don’t have your pride. They would never compare
themselves to Jesus. Do you have the right to make them suffer?”
For Ferreira, there is a degree of pragmatism in the renunciation of his
faith. God is silent, he says, but Rodrigues doesn’t have to be. Apostatizing
himself, renouncing God in order to end the suffering of these people,
would be the “most painful act of love that has ever been performed.”
Finally, when challenged again to turn his back on Christianity, Rodrigues
sees the image of Christ before him, and Christ speaks, telling him it’s okay,
go ahead, take the step. Desecrate Christ’s image and renounce his faith.
Rodrigues does. The moment is depicted in near silence.
 Rodrigues later marries a Japanese woman and adopts a Buddhist
lifestyle. He appears to have fully renounced his beliefs, just as Ferreira did,
but Ferreira makes a telling comment when he says, “Only our Lord can
judge your heart.” Our lord. Ferreira still believes, but he believes in
silence. And though he gives no sign of it through many long years,
Rodrigues does, too. Our final image of him is his body in a cremation
basket, burning. Nestled in his hand is a hidden crucifix. He died with his
family, in silence, his faith with him until the very end.
Several decades prior, Scorsese’s Jesus Christ questioned his own
divinity and was plagued with doubts about his purpose in the world, only
at the end, when tempted by Satan, embracing his role as the savior of
mankind. As an older, more mature filmmaker, Silence tells a much
different story of faith. Rodrigues sees Christ in himself, and he never
wavers; he never doubts; he never buckles. But he also does not outwardly
embrace his role, for to do so would mean doing harm to others. His
decision to embrace his faith in silence is a pragmatic one, one born from
his desire to end the suffering of those around him.
Faith is not a display. It’s not a show. It’s not an icon or symbol or
speech. It is something inside us, something personal, something
intertwined with who we are. No amount of torture could take that from
Rodrigues. Even in his long years of outwardly walking away from the
tenets of Christianity, he still held them inside himself.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

Martin Scorsese spent nearly thirty years trying to get this movie made,
facing a series of ups and downs that repeatedly pushed the project further
and further into the future. It was a passion project. But perhaps
unsurprisingly, given its plodding pace and heady subject matter during a
time when the box office is dominated by gigantic CGI action, Silence was
also a huge financial flop, unable to scrape together even half of its
production budget.
Critics loved it, however, and while it didn’t get the sea of Academy
Award nominations that have almost become traditional for Scorsese
movies, it landed on a slew of lists of the best films of the year and won
strong critical accolades. Perhaps more importantly, it provided Scorsese
closure on a project that had consumed years of his life—an important
accomplishment for a director entering his twilight years.
Not that there is any sign of him slowing down. His next picture would
be a nearly $200 million crime epic using cutting-edge CGI technology and
featuring an array of acting luminaries, including Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel,
Joe Pesci, and a name intimately familiar to Martin Scorsese fans: Robert
De Niro, in his first role for the director in twenty-four years. It would be
another mob picture, but it would be unlike any he had done before.
 26

THE IRISHMAN (2019)

FILM DETAILS
RELEASE DATE: September 27, 2019 (New York Film Festival),
November 1, 2019 (theaters), November 27, 2019 (Netflix)
WRITTEN BY: Steven Zaillian
STARRING: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci
RUNNING TIME: 209 minutes

ABOUT THE FILM

T hey say you can’t go home again. But no one told Martin Scorsese
that. The Irishman is a sprawling crime epic starring Scorsese
mainstays Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel, as well as actors
like Al Pacino, Anna Paquin, Ray Romano, and others. The picture is an
amalgam of Scorsese old and new, a period piece focused on gangsters and
featuring many of his old players but one relying heavily on cutting-edge
technology and, far more importantly, a story focused on the idea of looking
back on one’s life.
The road to The Irishman was a long (and expensive) one. The film is
based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses, a biography of mob hitman
Frank Sheeran, who told his story to Charles Brandt while on his deathbed.
Though his claims are unproven and controversial—former FBI agent John
Tamm and others say Sheeran’s tale is “baloney, beyond belief”—Sheeran
confessed to knowing the truth behind one of the enduring mysteries of the
twentieth century: who was behind the disappearance of Teamsters leader
Jimmy Hoffa.1 Sheeran claims he murdered the infamous union leader.
Much like the extended gestation of Gangs of New York, Silence, and
The Last Temptation of Christ, The Irishman took a long time to get off the
ground—twelve years, according to De Niro, who, much as he did with
Raging Bull, introduced the director to the book upon which it’s based. “I
read it and I said, ‘Marty, you should read this book because I think maybe
this is what we should try and [do],’” De Niro said. “We started this whole
process in 2007, so it’s been a long time coming.”2
Though the Hoffa narrative dominates the film, The Irishman is about
the full scope of Sheeran’s adult life. The story spans roughly sixty years,
and with the emergence of digital “de-aging” technology that allows
decades to be digitally painted off an actor, it became possible to tell
Sheeran’s story without having to use multiple actors portraying him and
his cohorts at different periods of their lives. Doing an entire film with that
tech, however, would prove to be an expensive proposition.
At one point, Paramount was behind the production, but as costs rose
and rose and rose—reports peg the budget at upward of $160 million,
making it Scorsese’s most expensive picture to date—the studio got cold
feet and bailed out.3 It took Netflix to step in and rescue the production, an
unusual arrangement given Scorsese’s deep belief in the purity of the
theater experience. It takes big money to make a big picture, though, and
the director said, for a picture like this, he needed corporate backing that
was willing to roll the dice on his grand vision: “People such as Netflix are
taking risks. The Irishman is a risky film. No one else wanted to fund the
pic for five to seven years. And of course we’re all getting older. Netflix
took the risk.”4
Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro had one last hurrah with Martin Scorsese in The Irishman,
and thanks to digital technology, they played younger versions of themselves.
Netflix/Photofest

The picture filled gossip columns for two years. Writers speculated
about theatrical releases, financing, the ballooning budget, and more. It
stirred up controversy, too, thanks to Netflix’s reticence to give it a proper
theater release. “Netflix is facing pressure from other industry groups to
conform to Hollywood norms,” the Hollywood Reporter observed months
prior to release.5 The movie was released in theaters on November 1, 2019,
and onto Netflix’s streaming service just weeks later, on November 27, but
the theatrical release was limited to a scant few independent theaters
scattered across the country.
Prior to release, president of the National Association of Theater
Owners John Fithian was dismayed not only that the picture would be in the
theater for just a few short weeks but also that the number of theaters
showing it would be numbered in the dozens rather than in the thousands:
“This is a major director, a cinephile, who has made all kinds of important
movies for our industry. And The Irishman is going to play on one-tenth of
the screens it should have played on, had Netflix been willing to come to an
understanding with our members.”6 (By contrast, a heavily Scorsese-
inspired movie released around the same time, Joker, debuted on more than
four thousand screens.)
But the times, as Scorsese documentary-subject Bob Dylan once sang,
are a-changin’, and not even Martin Scorsese is immune. Movies are a big
business, and despite decades of critical acclaim and having already earned
his place among the all-time greatest directors, even Scorsese is subject to
Hollywood’s focus on the bottom line. He had to go where the money was.
Because of that, potentially the last great mob movie by one of the
twentieth century’s greatest directors was seen by most on home television
screens rather than in theaters.
Just as unusual for him was the extent to which technology dictated how
the finished product appeared. Though in many ways an old-school director
who prefers traditional filmmaking techniques, Scorsese is no Luddite.
Pictures like The Aviator and Hugo lean heavily on contemporary digital
special effects. So does The Wolf of Wall Street, though in that case most
effects are invisible, made up largely of digital compositing to create
locations that don’t actually exist. None of this is remarkable. Tools are
tools. The extent to which The Irishman would use digital technology
would prove to be groundbreaking, though, especially for a movie that has
more in common with The Godfather than it does Star Wars. Technical
wizardry was used throughout the entire three hours and thirty minutes to
make De Niro, Pesci, and others appear younger than they actually were,
often by decades. The results are nearly seamless, though early in the
process the question of whether it would work worried even Scorsese.
“Why I’m concerned, we’re all concerned is that we’re so used to watching
them as the older faces,” Scorsese said. “Now, certain shots need more
work on the eyes.… Does it change the eyes at all? If that’s the case, what
was in the eyes that I liked? Was it intensity? Was it gravitas? Was it
threat?”7 He needn’t have worried. If The Irishman accomplished anything,
it was to prove that de-aging technology is no longer just for action
tentpoles. It is ready for mainstream dramas.
For a time, it appeared that Scorsese was done with mob movies. He
told film critic Richard Schickel that “Casino was the final one.” He went
on to make The Departed, but that was a much different kind of crime
picture than what had come before. Still, even all those years ago, he
dropped a tantalizing hint at what was to come. Schickel asked if the
director would ever again be drawn toward doing another mob picture.
Scorsese told him, “No. If anything, it would be something that would be
from a perspective of someone who’s in their 70s, looking back.”8 A decade
later, that’s exactly what The Irishman ended up being.
In The Irishman, Frank Sheeran (De Niro) is a World War II veteran
working as a delivery truck driver after the war. After getting caught
running scams on the side, he is recruited into the Bufalino crime family by
Russell Bufalino (Pesci), a quietly menacing mob boss who sees potential
in Sheeran’s sociopathic brand of muscle. Russell introduces Frank to union
leader Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), and Frank begins to work for him as a
bodyguard. The arrangement is a productive one, until Hoffa does a brief
stint in prison for fraud and loses control of the union. Once released, he
seeks to again be elected president of the Teamsters. Eager to reclaim the
top spot in “his” union, Hoffa’s campaign promise to stop loaning money to
mob-connected entities proves a bridge too far for Bufalino and his
associates. Hoffa is told he must back down. He refuses. That seals his fate.
Frank is ordered to kill the man who was once a friend of his family, and as
he always had, he does his grisly duty. After Hoffa’s murder, Frank’s family
grows distant, and one of his daughters, Peggy (Paquin), stops speaking to
him altogether. He spends his final years first in prison and then alone in a
nursing home, every person he was ever close to now cut out of his life or
dead. And that is where he dies, alone and unloved.

ANALYSIS
“You don’t know how quickly time goes by until you get there.” It’s fitting
that Frank Sheeran delivers this, the film’s thesis, to an anonymous nurse
with just ten minutes left in the movie rather than to a loved one or someone
close to him. In all his seventy-plus years, Frank was never truly close to
anyone. To Jimmy Hoffa, for a time, until he put a bullet in his friend’s
head. To Russell Bufalino, though only to the extent that he was Russell’s
muscle. But not to his wives. Not to his daughters. Frank was little more
than an empty shell, a sociopath dutifully trudging his way through a life of
theft, murder, and betrayal.
 Though the excitement built around The Irishman centered on the idea
of Scorsese doing one last mob movie with the likes of De Niro, Pesci, and
Keitel, along with his first work with Pacino, the picture is less about the
mob than it is about memory and legacy, about the way we fall into
relationships with people and fall out of them again, and about how little
agency we often have in our own lives. The mob narrative provides the
surface-level excitement, but the real meat is underneath.
For all the wild things he gets involved in, Frank Sheeran has little
agency. Throughout the picture’s three-and-a-half hour running time, he is
rarely an active participant in the decisions that guide the course of his life.
Near the start of his criminal endeavors, he offers to sell sides of stolen beef
to a connected man. This gets his foot in the door. Following that one
decision, all else is largely out of his hands. He’s pulled into the wider
world of organized crime by Russell Bufalino. It’s Russ who effectively
gives him to Hoffa, for whom he acts as muscle. It’s also Russ who pushes
him to kill the same man. Between that introduction and murder, he spends
most of his time doing Hoffa’s bidding. For someone as imposing as Frank
Sheeran, he’s not a man who takes control of his own life, but the
significance of this is not clear to either the audience or to Frank himself
until he is in his twilight years. By then, it’s too late.
Frank’s relationships form the core of the narrative—his ties to Hoffa,
his work with Russell, his ever-decaying closeness (or lack thereof) to his
daughters—and they tend to be relationships of habit or convenience.
Russell serves as a mentor to him, quietly molding him into the ruthless
killer he’d become, but if there is true affection there it’s tainted by the
realities of their mob relationship. Russell admires Frank’s skills, but one
gets the sense that it’s the same sort of admiration he’d give a brawny
workhorse plowing the fields. Frank, meanwhile, is just along for the ride—
literally, in the case of the narrative framing of the picture, which depicts
the pair and their wives driving toward Detroit for the inevitable end of the
Hoffa story. Frank drives. Russell directs him. So it goes.
With his family, there is mere emptiness. He provides for them but
doesn’t love them. His first wife is cast aside as soon as he meets a woman
he finds more desirable. His second wife is relegated to chattering in the
back seat of the car. And his four daughters, though he says he loves them,
are kept at arm’s length, living in fear of his ease with violence, intimidated
by his imposing presence, and left wanting a true father figure, which
Peggy ends up finding in Hoffa. It’s not that Scorsese ignores the Sheeran
family life—in fact, numerous scenes depict them picnicking together, out
bowling, and acting as families do—it’s that Frank’s family life largely
involves going through the motions. He never truly knows how to love
them and is only able to confront this reality at the end of his days.
The one true display of love and joy we see in all this comes not
between Frank and his daughters but between Hoffa and Peggy (played by
Paquin as an adult and by Lucy Gallina as a child). She adores him, and he
her, while her own father is kept at a distance. In fact, Peggy goes the entire
film with only two lines. Most of her screen time is spent staring silently at
her father with disappointment and loathing. This has been a point of
criticism for some—“(Scorsese) doesn’t particularly understand women,
nor has he sought to,” one critic wrote—though her seemingly slight role
belies the importance of her presence in the film.9 It’s true that the
director’s pictures are virtually always focused on the male experience, with
most female characters barely even reaching “supporting” status. A strong
case can be made that Scorsese’s filmography has a dearth of strong female
characters (though it’s worth noting that a whopping nine women have
received Academy Award nominations for roles in Scorsese films, two of
them winning). And indeed, this appears to be the case with Peggy, too, a
surprising choice given that she’s portrayed by an Oscar-winning actress.
Peggy’s case can be deceiving, however. Her dialogue is scant, amounting
to about six or seven words in the entire picture, but her presence is a potent
one. She is both a personification of Frank’s guilt and a representation of
his detachment from anything that can be seen as humanity or love. Indeed,
she is the moral conscience of the narrative, the one who forces us to look
past the intrigue and conflicts and drama and see Frank’s life for what it
truly is. She represents how the audience should react to the kind of life led
by people like Frank Sheeran.
If in GoodFellas and Casino we take a perverse kind of joy in seeing
bad people do bad things, then here our reaction is different. The emptiness
of Frank’s existence is stark. He coasts through his days, killing as ordered
and finding no joy in anything: not in his job, not in his family, and not
even a sick kind of joy in the brutality he engages in. He just is. So when he
trudges through his final days alone in a nursing home, he has nothing left
to look back on, save bloodied hands and an empty legacy. The one light he
might have had, his daughters, is closed to him. One daughter admits they
were always frightened of him, that they couldn’t go to him with their
problems because they feared what he might do—an early scene depicts
him brutalizing a shopkeeper who shoved Peggy—and that, despite his
claims to have done the things he did to protect them, they never felt safe in
his presence. And as for Peggy, she won’t even speak to him, turning her
back on him from the moment of Hoffa’s disappearance to Frank’s eventual
death. More than anyone else in the movie, she sees him for what he truly
is, and her judgment is unwavering.
Hers is a small role on the surface, yet in many ways it’s one of the
film’s most important. Paquin may lack lines to deliver, but Peggy’s silence
is potent and a major part of what makes her such an effective character.
She carries a heavy load with her silence, and that silence has a lot to say
about who and what Frank Sheeran is. The picture would be weaker without
her presence.
Indeed, that the movie opens and closes on a Frank Sheeran who has no
one is no accident. The opening shot pushes through the corridors of a
nondescript nursing home and lands on an elderly Sheeran in a wheelchair,
beginning to tell the story he’ll continue to tell as narration throughout the
film. He is not surrounded by loved ones. He appears to have no friends in
the nursing home. All he has are his memories of a life ill led.
This makes Scorsese’s (likely) final gangster epic quite different from
what came before. Despite criticism to the contrary, fan favorites like
GoodFellas never truly glorify the lifestyle they depict. The fall, after all, is
the most essential ingredient of these rise-and-fall stories. They were
exciting, though, and for brief moments it was easy to see how intoxicating
the mob life could be. Not in The Irishman. Frank’s hits aren’t adrenaline-
filled rushes of violence. They’re so matter-of-fact that even a flashy hit
like his murder of rising star Joseph “Crazy Joe” Gallo (Sebastian
Maniscalco) is just another job to be done, little different than a blue-collar
worker loading another box on the truck. The work isn’t thrilling or
alluring; it’s cold and empty.
If The Irishman is a victory lap for Scorsese and his collaborators,
something many commentators characterized it as in the days leading to its
release, then no one told him that. There is no victory here, no glory, no
basking in the glow of a life well led. The Irishman is filled with regret at
having let the days slip by and at having failed to nurture the relationships
that should have been most important.
 Wedged in the middle of the story of Frank Sheeran’s life is the Jimmy
Hoffa story, or at least the latter portion of it, making The Irishman
something of a Frankenstein’s monster. Picking up after Hoffa had already
risen to one of the most powerful people in the country, the infamous labor
leader is depicted by Pacino as a hot-headed, stubborn mule of a man,
beloved by his legions of union members but a terror behind closed doors
when he doesn’t get what he wants. Here Pacino doesn’t merely steal
scenes (and indeed, he steals every scene he’s in). The entire narrative is
snatched up from Sheeran, with Hoffa’s story becoming the fulcrum upon
which it pivots. Sheeran’s lack of agency is clearest here. Anyone who gets
caught up in Hoffa’s orbit is quickly in deep. Hoffa clashes with industry
leaders, with other unions, and especially with the new American royalty of
the period, the Kennedys. For an hour or more, they are a looming presence
that casts a shadow over all Hoffa does, appearing on-screen only via news
clips but influencing his every decision. Much as he does with Peggy’s
character, Scorsese plays with implication here, too. Phrases, gestures,
glares—they all speak volumes. When news of the assassination of John F.
Kennedy appears on television, Hoffa doesn’t say anything. Instead, his
face reads quiet relief—and perhaps of something more, some unspoken
knowledge that is outside this film’s reach. It’s as if Hoffa knew the
president was killed by the same people he was financially tied to. (The
strong implication that Kennedy was killed at the behest of the mafia, which
lost access to countless millions thanks to Kennedy’s Cuba policies, is
reaffirmed later, too.)
It’s a curious choice, this decision to veer into Hoffa’s life for the
middle chunk of the picture. A creative editor could probably lift two hours
out of the middle of The Irishman and present it as its own distinct movie.
These are the only stretches when the film is concerned with anyone but
Frank. We need these scenes, though. We need the life and vigor Hoffa
brings to the narrative because they serve as a reminder that Frank Sheeran
wasn’t just some street thug. He was surrounded by some highly influential
people, people who could shape the fabric of American life at a whim. Yet
despite this proximity to power, Frank himself died a nobody. We only
know his name because he (claims to have) killed his friend. Otherwise, the
world would have no memory of him.
And this is a picture framed by memory. The opening scene is Frank
telling his story to an off-screen observer. We then move back decades, to
Frank and Russ on their long drive to go kill Hoffa, a memory that itself
fades into yet another layer of memory as they recall the first time they met
decades before that. And so it goes throughout, memories nested within
memories, all told by a lonely old man in a nursing home.
The Irishman would have been a much different picture had it been
made by a younger Scorsese. This is a picture concerned with looking
backward, with assessing one’s life, with taking stock of your legacy. These
are themes that pepper each of his last several movies, with both Silence
and Hugo examining the importance of leaving something behind, the
things that give light to our souls, and our reasons to continue on each day.
Yet Sheeran left nothing behind, save fractured relationships and bloody
corpses.

CONCLUSION AND IMPACT

As of this writing, it’s too soon to say what kind of impact The Irishman
will have on Martin Scorsese’s legacy, not to mention the legacies of De
Niro, Pesci, and Pacino. As this is written, the film is enjoying time as a
critical darling. How that will translate to financial success and awards
recognition and whether it will continue to be highly regarded in the years
to come remains to be seen.
Some things are clear, however. This may be the last great picture made
via one of the most remarkable collaborations in film history. Scorsese and
De Niro join Kurosawa and Mifune, Hitchcock and Stewart, Hitchcock and
Grant, and a scant handful of others as pairings who repeatedly created
indelible landmarks in cinema. As this book goes to print, Scorsese is in
preproduction on Killers of the Flower Moon, a picture that, if it sees the
light of day, will star both De Niro and the director’s second great acting
collaborator, Leonardo DiCaprio. Perhaps that will be his last hurrah.
Perhaps The Irishman is, and we just don’t realize it yet.
No matter how that theoretical picture pans out, The Irishman serves to
remind the viewing public of the genius in our midst. The legacy Martin
Scorsese leaves behind is enormous. Though pigeonholed by mainstream
viewers as a mob-movie director, his body of work is vast and varied, and
his devotion to the purity of the cinematic experience borders on the
religious.
It’s often hard to tell when you are living in the midst of important
artistic history. A director like, say, Alfred Hitchcock, was tremendously
popular in his day, and in his later years, he earned the respect of his peers,
but fully grasping the scale of his artistic achievements took the benefit of
hindsight. Such is the case with Martin Scorsese. Anyone reading this
knows his work is great. It has been decades since Roger Ebert declared
him our greatest living director. Yet it will take some time before those of us
who watched Scorsese’s career unfold can truly understand the significance
of his impact on cinema.
If The Irishman is the director taking stock of his life and work, then it’s
a bleaker picture than his career warrants. That much is certain. Through
rich character studies, black comedies, lush period pieces, meditative
explorations of faith, bold biopics, and—yes—hyperviolent mob movies,
Martin Scorsese has created a body of work that will still be influencing
moviemakers for decades to come. It seems like only yesterday that we
were shocked by Taxi Driver or thrilled by GoodFellas, and now he’s
nearing eighty and, presumably, the end of his career. But perhaps Frank
Sheeran said it best: “You don’t know how quickly time goes by until you
get there.”
 NOTES

INTRODUCTION
1. Gavin Smith, “The Art of Vision: Martin Scorsese’s Kundun,” Film Comment,
January/February 1998.
2. Gabrielle Donnelly, “Martin Scorsese Interview: ‘Catholicism Is Always in You,’” Catholic
Herald, December 22, 2016.
3. Anthony DeCurtis, “What the Streets Mean,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 1992.
4. Mary Pat Kelly, “Director Martin Scorsese Blends Improvisation with Discipline in Making
His Movies,” Washington Post, February 24, 2012.
5. Sam Ashurst, “Thelma Schoonmaker: Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’ Is ‘Not Goodfellas’
(Exclusive),” Yahoo Movies UK, February 8, 2019, https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/scorseses-
netflix-movie-irishman-not-goodfellas-says-thelma-schoonmaker-200309938.html.
6. Ian Christie, “Martin Scorsese’s Testament,” Sight and Sound, January 1996.
7. Peter Biskind, “Slouching toward Hollywood,” Premiere, November 1991.
CHAPTER 1: WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR?
(1967)
1. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 72.
2. Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese, 70.
3. Anthony DeCurtis, “What the Streets Mean,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 1992.
4. Roger Ebert, “Scorsese’s Last Temptation,” Chicago Sun Times, July 24, 1988.
5. DeCurtis, “What the Streets Mean.”
6. Roger Ebert, “I Call First,” Chicago Sun Times, November 17, 1967.
CHAPTER 2: BOXCAR BERTHA (1972)
1. Karen G. Jackovich, “Barbara Hershey Drops Her Hippie Past and a Name, Seagull, and Her
Career Finds Wings,” People, May 28, 1979.
2. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 90.
3. Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese, 91.
4. Martin Scorsese, commentary, Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorsese (Warner Home
Video, 2004), DVD.
5. Vincent LoBrutto, Martin Scorsese: A Biography (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), 129.
CHAPTER 3: MEAN STREETS (1973)
1. Martin Scorsese, commentary, Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorsese (Warner Home
Video, 2004), DVD.
2. Tonelli, Bill, “Arrivederci, Little Italy,” New York Magazine, September 16, 2004.
3. Jen Chung, “Neighborhood Wants San Gennaro to Sleep with the Fishes,” Gothamist, March
26, 2007, https://gothamist.com/news/neighborhood-wants-san-gennaro-to-sleep-with-fishes.
4. Chuck Willis, Destination America (New York: DK, 2005).
5. Stefano Luconi, “Forging an Ethnic Identity: The Case of Italian Americans,” Revue française
d’études américaines, no. 96 (2003): 89–101.
6. Roger Ebert, “Martin Scorsese and His New York Story,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 5, 1989.
7. Scorsese, commentary.
8. Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (New York: Henry Holt, 1982), 473.
CHAPTER 4: ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE
(1974)
1. Leighton Grist, The Films of Martin Scorsese, 1963–77: Authorship and Context (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 98.
2. “Second Chances,” Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, directed by Martin Scorsese (Warner
Home Video, 2004), DVD.
3. Peter Biskind, “Slouching toward Hollywood,” Premiere, November 1991.
4. Diane Jacobs, Hollywood Renaissance (Lancaster, UK: Gazelle Book Services, 1977), 141.
5. Ellen Burstyn, commentary, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Warner Home Video, 2004),
DVD.
6. Spencer Rich, “Single-Parent Families Rise Dramatically,” Washington Post, May 3, 1982.
7. Alison Burke, “10 Facts about American Women in the Workforce,” Brookings, December 5,
2017, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2017/12/05/10-facts-about-american-women-
in-the-workforce/.
8. Laura M. Holson, “Murders by Intimate Partners Are on the Rise, Study Finds,” New York
Times, April 12, 2019.
CHAPTER 5: TAXI DRIVER (1976)
1. Anthony DeCurtis, “What the Streets Mean,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 1992.
2. Chris Mitchell, “The Killing of Murder,” New York Magazine, January 7, 2008.
3. Thomas Tracey, “2017 Was Record-Low for Homicides in New York City, with NYPD
Logging Lowest Number in Nearly 70 Years,” New York Daily News, December 31, 2017.
4. Roger Ebert, The Great Movies (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 451.
5. CNN Staff, “Transcript of Video Linked to Santa Barbara Mass Shooting,” CNN, May 27,
2014, https://www.cnn.com/2014/05/24/us/elliot-rodger-video-transcript/index.html.
6. BBC News Staff, “Elliot Rodger: How Misogynist Killer Became ‘Incel Hero,’” BBC, April
26, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43892189.
7. Mark Hay, “The Strange, Centuries-Long History of Satanic Pedophile Panics,” Vice,
November 15, 2018, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59vgwa/the-strange-centuries-long-history-
of-satanic-pedophile-panics.
8. Richard Ruelas, “2 Arizona Arrests Have Ties to QAnon Conspiracy Theory Movement,”
Arizona Republic, August 7, 2018.
9. Amanda Robb, “Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal,” Rolling Stone, November 16, 2017.
10. Stephen Puddicombe, “Taxi Driver and the Frightening Truth about Our Current Political
Climate,” Little White Lies, February 19, 2017, https://lwlies.com/articles/taxi-driver-travis-bickle-
alt-right-politics/.
11. Thompson, Richard, “Interview: Paul Schrader,” Film Comment, March–April 1976.
12. Lori Mattix and Michael Kaplan, “I Lost My Virginity to David Bowie,” Thrillist, November
3, 2015, https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/i-lost-my-virginity-to-david-bowie; Stereo
Williams, “David Bowie and Rock ’n’ Roll’s Statutory Rape Problem,” Daily Beast, January 17,
2016, https://www.thedailybeast.com/david-bowie-and-rock-n-rolls-statutory-rape-problem;
Christopher Turner, “Sugar and Spice and All Things Not So Nice,” Guardian, October 2, 2009,
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/oct/03/brooke-shields-nude-child-photograph.
13. The Graham Norton Show, season 19, episode 9, aired May 20, 2016, on BBC One.
14. Sigmund Freud, Case Histories II (London: Penguin, 1988), 132.
15. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen, no. 1, DC Comics, September 1986.
16. Hugh Hart, “Watchmen’s World Draws Directly from Strangelove, Taxi Driver,” Wired,
March 4, 2009.
17. John Hinckley Jr., letter to Jodie Foster, March 30, 1981.
18. Doug Stanglin, “Federal Judge Allows Would-Be Reagan Assassin John Hinckley to Live by
Himself,” USA Today, November 17, 2018.
CHAPTER 6: NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977)
1. Anthony DeCurtis, “What the Streets Mean,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 1992.
2. Martin Scorsese, commentary, New York, New York, directed by Martin Scorsese (Warner
Home Video, 2004), DVD.
3. Chris Hodenfield, “You’ve Got to Love Something Enough to Kill It,” American Film, March
1989.
4. Martin Scorsese, American Film Institute interview, seminar hosted by James Powers, 1975.
5. Scorsese, commentary.
6. Vincent Canby, “Film: ‘New York’ in a Tuneful Era,” New York Times, June 23, 1977.
7. Chris Nashawaty, “How ‘Rocky’ Nabbed Best Picture,” Entertainment Weekly, February 19,
2002.
8. Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-’n’-Roll Generation
Saved Hollywood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 378–79.
CHAPTER 7: RAGING BULL (1980)
1. Stephen Galloway, “Martin Scorsese’s Journey from Near-Death Drug Addict to ‘Silence,’”
Hollywood Reporter, December 8, 2016.
2. Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock-’n’-Roll Generation
Saved Hollywood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 386–87.
3. Martin Scorsese, “Raging Bull: Before the Fight,” Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorsese
(MGM, 2006), DVD.
4. Martin Scorsese, Scorsese on Scorsese, rev. ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), 113–14.
5. Vincent LoBrutto, Sound-on-film: Interviews with Creators of Film Sound (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1994), 36.
6. Joe Pesci, “The Bronx Bull,” Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorsese (MGM, 2006), DVD.
7. Anthony DeCurtis, “What the Streets Mean,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 1992.
8. Yohana Desta, “‘This Is Overwhelming’: Why Martin Scorsese Almost Didn’t Make Raging
Bull,” Vanity Fair, April 28, 2019.
9. Richard Schickel, “Brutal Attraction: The Making of Raging Bull,” Vanity Fair, March 2010.
10. DeCurtis, “What the Streets Mean.”
11. Scorsese, “Raging Bull: Before the Fight.”
CHAPTER 8: THE KING OF COMEDY (1982)
1. Mike Evans, The Making of Raging Bull (Phoenix, AZ: 101 Distribution, 2009), 124–29.
2. Simon Abrams, “Martin Scorsese on The King of Comedy’s Modern Relevance: ‘There Are So
Many Ruperts around Us,’” Vanity Fair, June 27, 2016.
3. Martin Scorsese, “The King of Comedy: A Reconsideration,” in Scorsese by Ebert, by Roger
Ebert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 78.
4. Jane E. Brody, “Personal Health: Do’s and Don’ts for Thwarting Stalkers,” New York Times,
August 25, 1998.
5. Tim Grierson, “How ‘The King of Comedy’ Proved Jerry Lewis Was a Great Actor,” Rolling
Stone, August 20, 2017.
6. Abrams, “Martin Scorsese.”
7. Scott Macaulay, “Scorsese, De Niro, Lewis and Bernhard Recall The King of Comedy,”
Filmmaker, May 1, 2013.
CHAPTER 9: AFTER HOURS (1985)
1. Martin Scorsese, commentary, After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese (Warner Home Video,
2004), DVD.
2. Martin Scorsese, Filming for Your Life: Making After Hours (Warner Home Video, 2004).
3. Sam Ashurst, “Thelma Schoonmaker: Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’ Is ‘Not Goodfellas’
(Exclusive),” Yahoo Movies UK, February 8, 2019, https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/scorseses-
netflix-movie-irishman-not-goodfellas-says-thelma-schoonmaker-200309938.html.
4. Scorsese, Filming for Your Life.
5. Scorsese, Filming for Your Life.
6. Scorsese, Filming for Your Life.
7. Roger Ebert, Scorsese by Ebert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 87.
CHAPTER 10: THE COLOR OF MONEY (1986)
1. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 161.
2. Chris Hodenfield, “You’ve Got to Love Something Enough to Kill It,” American Film, March
1989.
3. Richard Corliss, “Remembering Paul Newman, Humanitarian and Actor,” Time, September 27,
2008.
4. Richard Corliss, “Midsection: Cross Purposes,” Film Comment, September/ October 1988.
5. Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese, 165.
6. Peter Biskind and Susan Linfield, “Chalk Talk,” American Film, November 1986.
7. Hodenfield, “You’ve Got to Love.”
CHAPTER 11: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST
(1988)
1. Martin Scorsese, Scorsese on Scorsese, rev. ed. (Faber and Faber, 2003), 124.
2. Allan Parachini and Dennis McDougal, “Art in the Eighties: Censorship: A Decade of Tighter
Control of the Arts,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1989.
3. Richard Corliss, “Midsection: Cross Purposes,” Film Comment, September/ October 1988.
4. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 168–69.
5. Richard Alleva, “On Screen: The Last Temptation of Christ,” Crisis Magazine, October 1,
1988.
6. Scorsese, Scorsese on Scorsese, 118.
7. John Dart, “Church Declares ‘Last Temptation’ Morally Offensive,” Los Angeles Times,
August 10, 1988.
8. Corliss, “Midsection.”
9. Dart, “Church Declares.”
10. Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese, 174–75.
11. Aljean Harmetz, “Ministers Vow Boycott over Scorsese Film on Jesus,” New York Times, July
13, 1988.
12. James D. Davis, “Christians Up in Arms over Movie,” South Florida Sun Sentinel, July 30,
1988.
13. Anthony DeCurtis, “What the Streets Mean,” South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 1992.
14. Roger Ebert, “The Last Temptation of Christ: A Reconsideration,” in Scorsese by Ebert
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 104.
CHAPTER 13: GOODFELLAS (1990)
1. Vincent Patrick, “Not-So-Organized Crime,” New York Times, January 26, 1986.
2. Martin Scorsese, commentary, GoodFellas, directed by Martin Scorsese (Warner Home Video,
2004), DVD.
3. George Anastasia, “Five Myths about the Mafia,” Washington Post, May 5, 2017.
4. Anastasia, “Five Myths.”
5. Gavin Smith, “Martin Scorsese Interviewed,” Film Comment, September/October 1990.
6. Amy Taubin, “Martin Scorsese’s Cinema of Obsessions,” Village Voice, September 18, 1990.
7. Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, eds., Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
(New York: Grove Press, 1996), 358–59.
8. Christopher Hooton, “The Sopranos and GoodFellas Shared 27 Actors,” Independent, January
29, 2016.
9. Jim Hemphill, “Of Tarantino and TV: The Legacy of GoodFellas,” Filmmaker, April 22, 2015.
10. Sam Ashurst, “Thelma Schoonmaker: Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’ Is ‘Not Goodfellas’
(Exclusive),” Yahoo Movies UK, February 8, 2019, https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/scorseses-
netflix-movie-irishman-not-goodfellas-says-thelma-schoonmaker-200309938.html.
CHAPTER 14: CAPE FEAR (1991)
1. Janet Maslin, “Film: Martin Scorsese Ventures Back to ‘Cape Fear,’” New York Times,
November 10, 1991.
2. Maslin, “Film.”
3. Peter Biskind, “Slouching toward Hollywood,” Premiere, November 1991.
4. Biskind, “Slouching.”
5. Daniel Cerone, “Playing the End of Innocence: Movies: Juliette Lewis Surprises Critics with a
Strong Performance as the Teen-aged Daughter in ‘Cape Fear.’” Los Angeles Times, November 20,
1991.
CHAPTER 15: THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993)
1. Gavin Smith, “Martin Scorsese Interviewed,” Film Comment, November/December 1993.
CHAPTER 16: CASINO (1995)
1. J. Patrick Coolican, “Was Life Really Better When the Mob Ruled Las Vegas?” Las Vegas Sun,
February 20, 2012.
2. Ian Christie, “Martin Scorsese’s Testament,” Sight and Sound, January 1996.
3. Thessaly La Force, “I Can’t Stop Watching ‘Casino’ and Thinking about Its Clothes,” Vice,
June 17, 2014, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xd54xd/i-cant-stop-watching-casino-and-
thinking-about-its-clothes.
4. Cathy Scott, “Does the Mob Still Exist in Las Vegas? Good Question,” Psychology Today,
December 31, 2014.
5. La Force, “I Can’t Stop.”
6. Christie, “Martin Scorsese’s Testament.”
7. David G. Schwartz, “In Las Vegas, One of the Mob’s Biggest Money Earners Tells All,”
Forbes, November 5, 2018.
8. Natasha Vargas-Copper, “Canon Fodder: Martin Scorsese’s Casino,” GQ, November 10, 2011.
CHAPTER 17: KUNDUN (1997)
1. Martin Scorsese, Scorsese on Scorsese, rev. ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), 225.
2. Ian Christie, “Martin Scorsese’s Testament,” Sight and Sound, January 1996.
3. Amy Taubin, “Everything Is Form,” Sight and Sound, February 1998.
4. Ben Blanchard, “China Tells Dalai Lama Again to Respect Reincarnation,” Reuters, September
10, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-tibet/china-tells-dalai-lama-again-to-respect-
reincarnation-idUSKBN0H50ST20140910.
5. Jake Swearingen, “China Will Make the Dalai Lama Reincarnate Whether He Likes It or Not,”
Atlantic, September 10, 2014.
6. Patrick Brzeski, “Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’ Lands Distributor in China,” Hollywood
Reporter, August 16, 2016.
7. Michael Wilmington, “Heaven Sent,” Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1998.
CHAPTER 18: BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999)
1. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 219.
CHAPTER 19: GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002)
1. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 226.
2. Laura M. Holson, “2 Hollywood Titans Brawl over a Gang Epic,” New York Times, April 7,
2002.
3. Kevin Baker, “The First Slum in America,” New York Times, September 30, 2001.
4. Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003), 279.
CHAPTER 20: THE AVIATOR (2004)
1. Dr. Dean Keith Simonton, “Are Genius and Madness Related? Contemporary Answers to an
Ancient Question,” Psychiatric Times, May 31, 2005.
2. Erin Hill, “Martin Scorsese on Leo DiCaprio: ‘We Speak the Same Language,’” Parade, June
12, 2012.
3. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 243.
4. Rene Chun, “How to Recreate Howard Hughes’ Legendary Screening Room,” Wired,
December 17, 2015.
5. Laura M. Holson, “2 Hollywood Titans Brawl over a Gang Epic,” New York Times, April 7,
2002.
6. Scott Feinberg, “‘Awards Chatter’ Podcast—Robert De Niro (‘The Comedian’),” Hollywood
Reporter, November 27, 2016.
CHAPTER 21: THE DEPARTED (2006)
1. Mick Brown, “Martin Scorsese Interview for Shutter Island,” Telegraph, March 7, 2010.
2. Gene Demby, “How Code-Switching Explains the World,” NPR, April 8, 2013,
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/08/176064688/how-code-switching-explains-the-
world.
3. Roger Ebert, “The Departed,” Chicago Sun Times, July 6, 2007.
4. “‘Departed’ Producer Defends Scorsese at Oscars,” Reuters, February 26, 2007,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oscars-king/departed-producer-defends-scorsese-at-oscars-
idUSN2626323420070226.
5. Kristopher Tapley, “10 Years Later: ‘The Departed,’ the Oscars, and the Non-Campaign
Campaign,” Variety, October 4, 2016.
6. Tapley, “10 Years Later.”
CHAPTER 22: SHUTTER ISLAND (2010)
1. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act V, scene 1.
2. Kaleem Aftab, “Martin Scorsese in Conversation: Guilt Trips of the Great Director,”
Independent, December 13, 2013.
3. Arturo Serrano, “The Spectacle of Redemption: Guilt and Violence in Martin Scorsese’s
Raging Bull,” Studia Gilsoniana, April–June 2015, 131.
CHAPTER 23: HUGO (2011)
1. Adam Yuster, “Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill Honor Martin Scorsese at
MoMA Film Benefit,” Hollywood Reporter, November 21, 2017.
2. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 383.
3. Jay A. Fernandez and Carolyn Giardina, “Making of Hugo,” Hollywood Reporter, November
15, 2011.
4. Patrick Goldstein, “Graham King on ‘Hugo’s’ Box-Office Woes: ‘It’s Been Painful,’” Los
Angeles Times, February 6, 2012.
CHAPTER 24: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)
1. Pamela McClintock, “Scorsese, DiCaprio Cry ‘Wolf,’” Variety, March 25, 2007.
2. Shashank Bengali, “The Global Financial Scandal That Has Spread from Malaysia to
Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2019.
3. Bengali, “Global Financial Scandal.”
4. Alex Ritman, “Jordan Belfort Says He Knew ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Producers Were ‘F—ing
Criminals,’” Hollywood Reporter, January 30, 2017.
5. Leonardo DiCaprio, endorsement video, Jordan Belfort, thewolfnetwork.com.
6. Ben Child, “The Wolf of Wall Street Criticised for ‘Glorifying Psychopathic Behaviour,’”
Guardian, December 30, 2013.
7. Joe Morgenstern, “‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Skims the Surface of Sin,” Wall Street Journal,
December 24, 2013.
8. John Hiscock, “Martin Scorsese Faces Mounting Criticism over The Wolf of Wall Street,”
Telegraph, January 3, 2014.
CHAPTER 25: SILENCE (2016)
1. Anthony Lane, “Martin Scorsese’s Strained Silence,” New Yorker, December 22, 2016.
2. Caesar A. Montevecchio, “Silence,” Journal of Religion and Film 21, no. 1 (April 2017).
3. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 367.
4. Bilge Ebiri, “Scorsese, ‘Silence,’ and the Mystery of Faith,” Village Voice, February 22, 2017.
5. Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese.
CHAPTER 26: THE IRISHMAN (2019)
1. Bill Tonelli, “The Lies of the Irishman,” Slate, August 7, 2019,
https://slate.com/culture/2019/08/the-irishman-scorsese-netflix-movie-true-story-lies.html.
2. Evan Real, “Robert De Niro on Making ‘The Irishman’ with Martin Scorsese: ‘It’s Been a
Long Time Coming,’” Hollywood Reporter, April 23, 2019.
3. Ben Mendelson, “Inside the Debate between Netflix and Big Theater Chains over ‘The
Irishman,’” Forbes, July 31, 2019.
4. Jacob Stolworthy, “The Irishman: Martin Scorsese’s ‘Risky’ Netflix Film to Be Released in
Cinemas,” Independent, December 3, 2018.
5. Rebecca Keegan, “Oscars 2020: How Netflix Plans to Win Best Picture with Scorsese’s Mob
Drama,” Hollywood Reporter, February 27, 2019.
6. Nicole Sperling, “Inside the Debate between Netflix and Big Theater Chains over ‘The
Irishman,’” New York Times, November 1, 2019.
7. Stephen Sorace, “Scorsese says De Niro, Pacino’s CGI Use in ‘The Irishman’ Left Him
‘Concerned,’” Fox News, May 30, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/martin-scorsese-
de-niro-pacino-the-irishman-de-aging.
8. Richard Schickel, Conversations with Scorsese (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 210.
9. Anne Cohen, “Does The Irishman Have a Woman Problem?” Refinery29, November 1, 2019,
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2019/11/8670267/the-irishman-anna-paquin-lines-women-
dialogue?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss.
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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric San Juan has authored or coauthored twelve books and counting,
including several works of film and television criticism. He examines the
cinema of Alfred Hitchcock in both A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the
Master of Suspense and Hitchcock’s Villains: Murderers, Maniacs and
Mother Issues (Scarecrow Press, 2009 and 2013, respectively), with author
Jim McDevitt, and explores the films of Akira Kurosawa with Akira
Kurosawa: A Viewer’s Guide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). He contributed
to the pop culture philosophy of Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of
Nerd Culture (2011) and authored both Stuff Every Husband Should Know
and Stuff Every Groom Should Know (2011 and 2013, respectively). He has
also independently published works of criticism on Breaking Bad, Mad
Men, and The Walking Dead and has written two books on local history.
Following a thirteen-year career as a full-time editor and journalist, he
now works as a freelance writer. In 2014, his Philadelphia Weekly feature
“After Sandy: The Jersey Shore Two Months Later” was recognized by the
Keystone Press Awards, and his work on politics, craft beer, and other
wide-ranging topics has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and
web publications. When he’s not in his ever-growing vegetable garden, you
can find him online at ericsanjuan.com, as well as on Facebook, Twitter,
and other social media platforms.