Martin Scorsese: Education and Influences on a Cinematic Master
Martin Charles Scorsese, born November 17, 1942, is an American filmmaker who emerged as a major figure during the New Hollywood era. His contributions to cinema have been recognized with numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, four BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and three Golden Globe Awards. He has also received prestigious honors such as the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute, the Kennedy Center Honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the BAFTA Fellowship. Scorsese's journey to becoming a cinematic icon was shaped by his education, personal experiences, and a deep appreciation for film history.
Early Life and Education: A Foundation in New York City
Martin Charles Scorsese was born in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York City, and spent his formative years in Little Italy in Manhattan. Both of his parents, Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, worked in the Garment District. Raised in a predominantly Catholic environment, Scorsese's early life experiences profoundly influenced his cinematic vision.
As a child, Scorsese suffered from asthma, limiting his participation in sports and other activities. Instead, his parents and older brother frequently took him to movie theaters, sparking a lifelong passion for cinema. Scorsese's Roman Catholic upbringing instilled in him a sense of morality and a fascination with themes of guilt, faith, redemption, and love, which he would later explore in his films.
Initially considering a vocation in the priesthood, Scorsese enrolled in Cathedral Prep, a preparatory seminary, at the age of 15. However, he soon realized that his true calling lay elsewhere. "I realized that vocation is not because you want to be like some other person," Scorsese explained. "That person could be inspiring to you but it has to be a true vocation. There were other things in my mind. I was obsessed with cinema."
Deciding to pursue filmmaking, Scorsese enrolled in Washington Square College (now NYU), earning his B.A. He later received an M.A. from the Tisch School of the Arts, where he was influenced by Italian neorealism and French New Wave filmmaking. Scorsese has mentioned on several occasions that he was greatly inspired in his early days at New York University by film professor Haig P. Manoogian.
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Formal Film Education at NYU
Scorsese's formal film education at New York University (NYU) played a crucial role in shaping his cinematic sensibilities and technical skills. He earned both a Bachelor of Science degree in film communications in 1964 and a Master of Arts degree in the same field in 1966 from NYU's School of Film.
At NYU, Scorsese was exposed to a wide range of cinematic styles and techniques. He studied the history of motion pictures and learned the fundamentals of filmmaking, including camera operation, lighting, and editing. He also made several short films, including What's a Nice Girl like You Doing in a Place like This? (1963) and It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964), which garnered awards and recognition. His most famous short of the period is the darkly comic The Big Shave (1967), which features Peter Bernuth. The film is an indictment of America's involvement in Vietnam, suggested by its alternative title Viet '67.
Scorsese's first professional job was when he was at NYU he was the assistant cameraman to cinematographer Baird Bryant on the John G. Avildsen directed short film Smiles (1964). Scorsese stated: "It was really important because they were filming on 35mm". He stated he was terrible at the job because he could not judge the distance of the focus.
One of Scorsese's most influential professors at NYU was Haig P. Manoogian, who emphasized the importance of personal storytelling and encouraged students to develop their unique voices as filmmakers. Manoogian's focus on individual expression and his aversion to melodrama had a profound impact on Scorsese's approach to filmmaking.
Influences: Italian Neorealism, French New Wave, and Hollywood Classics
Scorsese's cinematic vision was shaped by a diverse range of influences, including Italian neorealism, French New Wave, and classic Hollywood cinema. He was particularly drawn to the works of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, John Ford, and Alfred Hitchcock.
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Italian neorealism, a cinematic movement that emerged in post-World War II Italy, emphasized realism, social commentary, and the portrayal of everyday life. Films such as Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1946) inspired Scorsese with their gritty realism and their focus on the struggles of ordinary people. In his documentary Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy), Scorsese noted that the Sicilian episode of Rossellini's Paisà (1946), which he first saw on television with his relatives who were themselves Sicilian immigrants, had a significant impact on his life.
The French New Wave, a film movement that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s, challenged traditional filmmaking conventions and embraced experimentation and personal expression. Scorsese acknowledges owing a great debt to the French New Wave and has stated that "the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since, whether they saw the films or not." He was particularly influenced by the works of Godard and Truffaut, who pushed the boundaries of cinematic language and explored complex themes with a youthful energy and iconoclasm.
Scorsese also drew inspiration from classic Hollywood cinema, particularly the films of John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. He names John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952) and The Searchers (1956) as formative influences. He remembers responding "very strongly" to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). He admired Ford's ability to create epic narratives with a strong sense of place and character, and Hitchcock's mastery of suspense and psychological thriller.
Scorsese has also cited the works of Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Ishirō Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya as major influences on his career.
Early Career: From Who's That Knocking at My Door to Mean Streets
In 1967, Scorsese made his first feature-length film, the black and white I Call First, later retitled Who's That Knocking at My Door, with his fellow students actor Harvey Keitel and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, both of whom were to become long-term collaborators. The film, an intimate portrayal of life in Little Italy, earned Scorsese encouraging reviews and helped launch his career.
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Roger Ebert saw the film at the 1967 Chicago International Film Festival and wrote, in Scorsese's first published review: "it brings together two opposing worlds of American cinema. On the one hand, there have been traditional films like Marty, View from the Bridge, On the Waterfront and David and Lisa -- all sincere attempts to function at the level where real lives are led and all suffering to some degree from their makers' romantic and idealistic ideas, about such lives. On the other hand, there have been experimental films from Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke and other pioneers of the New York underground. In The Connection, Shadows and Guns of the Trees, they used improvised dialog and scenes and hidden and hand-held cameras in an attempt to capture the freshness of a spontaneous experience … I Call First brings these two kinds of films together into a work that is absolutely genuine, artistically satisfying and technically comparable to the best films being made anywhere.
Scorsese met Roger Corman after coming to Hollywood to edit Medicine Ball Caravan and Corman, who had seen and liked Who's That Knocking at My Door, asked Scorsese to make a sequel to Bloody Mama (1970). This came to be Boxcar Bertha (1972). It was Corman who taught Scorsese that entertaining films could be shot with very little money or time, preparing the young director well for the challenges to come.
Scorsese's breakthrough came with Mean Streets (1973), a semi-autobiographical film that explored the themes of guilt, redemption, and violence in the lives of young Italian-American men in Little Italy. The film, which starred Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, was a critical and commercial success and established Scorsese as a major force in American cinema.
Pauline Kael wrote: "Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets is a true original of our time, a triumph of personal filmmaking. It has its own hallucinatory look; the characters live in the darkness of bars, with lighting and color just this shade of lurid … It's about American life here and now, and it doesn't look like an American movie, or feel like one. If it were subtitled, we could hail a new European or South American talent - a new Buñuel steeped in Verdi, perhaps." By now the signature Scorsese style was in place: macho posturing, bloody violence, Catholic guilt and redemption, gritty New York locale (though the majority of Mean Streets was shot in Los Angeles), rapid-fire editing, and a soundtrack with contemporary music. Although the film was innovative, its wired atmosphere, edgy documentary style, and gritty street-level direction owed a debt to Cassavetes, Samuel Fuller and early Jean-Luc Godard.
Thematic and Stylistic Development
Scorsese's early work was characterized by its gritty realism, its unflinching portrayal of violence, and its exploration of complex moral issues. His films often focused on the lives of marginalized characters, such as gangsters, taxi drivers, and boxers, and explored themes of alienation, identity, and the search for meaning in a chaotic world.
In 1974, actress Ellen Burstyn chose Scorsese to direct her in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress. Although well regarded, the film remains an anomaly in Scorsese's early career as it focuses on a central female character.
Scorsese followed with Taxi Driver in 1976, which depicted a Vietnam veteran who takes the law into his own hands on New York's crime-ridden streets. The film established him as an accomplished filmmaker and also brought attention to cinematographer Michael Chapman, whose style tends towards high contrasts, strong colors, and complex camera movements. The film starred De Niro as the angry and alienated Travis Bickle, and co-starred Jodie Foster in a highly controversial role as an underage prostitute, with Harvey Keitel as her pimp. Taxi Driver also marked the start of a series of collaborations between Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader, whose influences included the diary of would-be assassin Arthur Bremer, John Ford's The Searchers (1956), and Robert Bresson's Pickpocket (1959).
Already controversial upon its release, Taxi Driver hit the headlines again five years later, when John Hinckley Jr. made an assassination attempt on then-president Ronald Reagan. Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, also receiving four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
Scorsese's stylistic trademarks include rapid-fire editing, innovative camera work, and the use of popular music to create atmosphere and enhance the emotional impact of his films. He is also known for his collaborations with actors such as Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, who have appeared in many of his most acclaimed films.
Later Career: Exploring New Genres and Themes
In the following decades, Scorsese continued to explore new genres and themes, while maintaining his distinctive cinematic style. He directed musicals (New York, New York, 1977), comedies (The King of Comedy, 1982), and historical dramas (The Age of Innocence, 1993). He also made several documentaries, including The Last Waltz (1978), a concert film documenting The Band's final performance, and No Direction Home (2005), a documentary about Bob Dylan.
The critical and financial success of Taxi Driver encouraged Scorsese to move ahead with his first big-budget project: the highly stylized musical New York, New York. This tribute to Scorsese's home town and the classic Hollywood musical was a box-office failure. The film was the director's third collaboration with De Niro, co-starring with Liza Minnelli. The film is best remembered today for the title theme song, which was popularized by Frank Sinatra. Although possessing Scorsese's usual visual panache and stylistic bravura, many critics felt its enclosed studio-bound atmosphere left it leaden in comparison with his earlier work. Despite its weak reception, the film is regarded positively by some critics. Richard Brody wrote: For Scorsese, a lifelong cinephile, the essence of New York could be found in its depiction in classic Hollywood movies. In 1977, he directed the Broadway musical The Act, starring Minnelli.
The disappointing reception of New York, New York drove Scorsese into depression. By this stage Scorsese had developed a serious cocaine addiction. However, he did find the creative drive to make the highly regarded The Last Waltz, documenting the final concert by The Band. It was held at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, 1976, and featured one of the most extensive lineups of prominent guest performers at a single concert, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Paul Butterfield, Neil Diamond, Ronnie Wood and Eric Clapton. However, Scorsese's commitments to other projects delayed the release of the film until 1978. Another Scorsese-directed documentary, titled American Boy, also appeared in 1978, focusing on Steven Prince, the cocky gun salesman who appeared in Taxi Driver. A period of wild partying followed, damaging Scorsese's already fragile health.
By several accounts (Scorsese's included), De Niro saved Scorsese's life when he persuaded him to kick his cocaine addiction to make his highly regarded film Raging Bull. Mark Singer summarized Scorsese's condition: He (Scorsese) was more than mildly depressed. Drug abuse, and abuse of his body in general, culminated in a terrifying episode of internal bleeding. Robert De Niro came to see him in the hospital and asked, in so many words, whether he wanted to live or die. If you want to live, De Niro proposed, let's make this picture-referring to Raging Bull, an as-told-to book by Jake LaMotta, the former world middleweight boxing champion, that De Niro had given him to read years earlier.
Scorsese's film Raging Bull (1980), a biopic of boxer Jake LaMotta, is widely considered one of his masterpieces. Convinced that he would never make another movie, he poured his energies into making the violent biopic of middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta, calling it a kamikaze method of film-making. The film is widely viewed as a masterpiece and was voted the greatest film of the 1980s by Britain's Sight & Sound magazine. It received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for De Niro, Best Supporting Actress for Cathy Moriarty, Best Supporting Actor for Joe Pesci and Scorsese's first for Best Director. De Niro won, as did Thelma Schoonmaker for editing, but Best Director went to Robert Redford for Ordinary People. From this work onwards, Scorsese's films are always labeled as "A Martin Scorsese Picture" on promotional material. Although the screenplay for Raging Bull was credited to Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin (who earlier co-wrote Mean Streets), the finished script differed extensively from Schrader's original draft. It was rewritten several times by various writers including Jay Cocks. The final draft was largely written by Scorsese and De Niro. In 1997, the American Film Institute ranked Raging Bull as the twenty-fourth greatest American film of all time on their AFI's 100 Years … 100 Movies list. In 2007, they ranked Raging Bull as the fourth American greatest film on their AFI's 100 Years …
Scorsese's next project was his fifth collaboration with De Niro, The King of Comedy (1982). It is a satire on the world of media and celebrity, whose central character is a troubled loner who ironically becomes famous through a criminal act (kidnapping). The film was an obvious departure from the more emotionally committed films he had become associated with. Visually, it was far less kinetic than the style Scorsese had developed previously, often using a static camera and long takes. Here the expressionism of his previous work gave way to moments of almost total surrealism. It still bore many of Scorsese's trademarks, however. The King of Comedy failed at the box office, but has become increasingly well regarded by critics in the years since its release. German director Wim Wenders numbered it among his 15 favorite films.
In 1983, Scorsese made a brief cameo appearance in Anna Pavlova (also known as A Woman for All Time), originally intended to be directed by one of his heroes, Michael Powell. This led to a more significant acting appearance in Bertrand Tavernier's jazz film Round Midnight.
With After Hours (1985), for which he won a Best Director Award at Cannes, Scorsese made an esthetic shift back to a pared-down, almost "underground" film-making style. Filmed on an extremely low budget, on location, and at night in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, the film is a black comedy about one increasingly misfortunate night for a mild New York word processor (Griffin Dunne) and features cameos by such disparate actors as Teri Garr and Cheech & Chong. Along with the 1987 Michael Jackson music video "Bad", in 1986 Scorsese made The Color of Money, a sequel to Robert Rossen's The Hustler (1961) with Paul Newman, which co-starred Tom Cruise. Although adhering to Scorsese's established style, The Color of Money was Scorsese's first official foray into mainstream film-making.
Thematic Exploration of Faith
Scorsese's Roman Catholic upbringing has significantly influenced his filmmaking, with themes of faith, guilt, and redemption recurring throughout his work. His films often explore the complexities of religious belief and the struggles of individuals grappling with moral dilemmas.
Several of his films, however, explicitly engage the life of faith - particularly The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Silence (2016). In 1988, Scorsese drew significant attention for The Last Temptation of Christ, particularly in the way that he reimagines both the divinity and humanity of Jesus outside the canonical narrative accounts from the Christian Gospels. Despite the controversy surrounding the film, he pays homage to the unexplored intention of Kazantzakis’s novel, which continues to spark discourse by wrestling with complex questions of faith.
New York Times Film Critic Alissa Wilkinson thoughtfully reflects on Scorsese’s theological contribution to film: “Scorsese’s ending is purposely ambiguous and haunting, fitting for a movie about a man haunted by his divine nature. The Jesus of ‘Last Temptation’ is in some ways the ahistorical Jesus of most cinematic adaptations - light-haired, blue-eyed - but he’s not an otherworldly wise being who seems certain and confident of his calling. Instead, he is most definitely a man, one with hungers and headaches and lusts and, above all, fears. He’s still the son of God; he can perform miracles. But he seems scared of the miracles, too. The dual natures within him are tearing him apart. He aches to die and be put out of his misery, or to simply be able to give in to one side of his nature. Jesus’s ‘last temptation’ isn’t to have sex, as some of the film’s detractors claimed; it’s to give in to his desire to lead the life of a man, sapped of the sacred. To lead, in the less explosive sense of the word, a profane life.”
Not intended to be considered an authentic historical documentary, Scorsese defended his intentions in a public statement, underscoring that he made the film wanting to know Jesus better: “It is more than just another film project for me, it was made with conviction and love and so I believe it is an affirmation of faith, not denial.
Scorcese continues exploring the complexities within Christianity in his film adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s Silence (1966). Set during the 17th century, the novel follows the lives of two Portuguese Jesuits priests in Japan. Cinematographically nodding to both Japanese director Akira Kirosawa and Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, both through his formalistic structure and chamber-narrative driven plot line, Silence probes the psychological depths of the human soul, questioning the authentic experience of faith in the context of-and-apart-from ritualistic practices.
In an interview for “America: The Jesuit Review,” Fr. James Martin, S.J., asks Scorsese to describe “the heart of the novel” which his film exudes: “Well I think it’s the depth of faith,” remarks Scorsese,” It’s the struggle for the very essence of faith. Stripping away everything else around it. The vehicle that one takes toward faith can be very helpful. So, the church-the institution of the church, the sacraments-this all can be very helpful. But ultimately it has to be yourself, you have to find it.
Making this film, for Scorsese, was a form of personal pilgrimage - one he describes as being unfinished. In early 2023, he attended Pope Francis’s gathering for artists (“The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination”) and in a private audience with Pope Francis shared that he is currently responding to the papal appeal by making another film about Jesus.
Legacy: A Lasting Impact on Cinema
Martin Scorsese's contributions to cinema have been widely recognized and celebrated. He is considered one of the most influential and important filmmakers of his generation, and his films have had a lasting impact on the art of filmmaking.
Scorsese's influence can be seen in the work of countless filmmakers who have been inspired by his innovative techniques, his unflinching portrayal of violence, and his exploration of complex moral issues. His films have also helped to shape our understanding of American culture and history, particularly the experiences of Italian-Americans and the dark side of urban life.
Director, producer, editor, writer, actor, historian, movie buff, film preservationist and champion of artists’ rights, Martin Scorsese has left his mark on virtually every aspect of the motion picture. He has received numerous awards and honors, including an Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), as well as lifetime achievement awards from the American Film Institute, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the Directors Guild of America.
Scorsese's legacy extends beyond his own films. He has also been a tireless advocate for film preservation, working to restore and preserve classic films for future generations. His passion for film history and his commitment to preserving our cinematic heritage have made him a true champion of the art of cinema.
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