New Wave Cinema 2.0: The Films of Martin Scorsese

Siebbi, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Geoff Carter

In The New Wave 2.0 series, The Pen in Hand Blog will be examining the work of today’s most provocative and influential filmmakers, artists whose filmic stylings and compelling narratives have stretched the boundaries of modern cinema. Referencing Francois Truffaut’s definition of an auteur, these pieces will be looking at writer/directors whose singular visions have transcended the art of filmmaking and expanded the boundaries of cinematic storytelling. This week, The Pen in Blog will be looking at the intensely personal yet socially informed films of Martin Scorsese.

Outside Looking In: The Films of Martin Scorsese

His body of work is as wide as it is long, comprised of nearly every filmic genre: period pieces, documentaries, gangster films, sports movies, musicals, comedies—and more. While each individual move is outstanding in its own way, they all bear the stamp of his distinctive cinematic style, and they are deeply and exquisitely branded into our collective memory. Who can forget the iconic scene from Taxi Driver when Travis Bickel (Robert DeNiro) is rehearsing his confrontational stances in front of a mirror? Or Tommy (Joe Pesci) asking his friend Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) if he thinks he’s funny? Or when Jake LaMotta enters the ring in Raging Bull? Or when Neil Young sings “Helpless” (with an assist from Joni Mitchell) during The Last Waltz?

These are all quintessential Martin Scorsese moments. While he is one of the most commercially successful filmmakers on the planet, his movies contain a quality of intimacy that gives the impression he is personally invested in the story’s characters—that he is, in a sense, telling his own story as he tells theirs. Mean Streets, Scorsese’s first critically acclaimed film, takes place in the same neighborhood where he grew up. The main character, Charlie Cappa (Harvey Keitel), is torn between his desire to work for the local mob and his commitment to his Catholic upbringing, both of which are conflicts Scorsese himself dealt with during his youth in Little Italy. It is, on every level, a personal story. While autobiographical pics (or films loosely based on experience) are as common than dandelions in May, Mean Streets brings the audience so deeply into the nuances of Charlie’s world that the audience understands his struggles completely. His problems with his crazy cousin “Johnny Boy” (Robert DeNiro), his neighborhood friends, and his own uncertainty about his own future resonate—even all the way from Little Italy—about the difficulties of finding one’s place in a complex world.

Little Italy is not far from the Bronx, where Jake LaMotta gained fame as a middleweight boxer. Raging Bull, based on LaMotta’s autobiography, not only chronicles the intense rise and slow-motion crash of the boxer’s career but also dives deeply into the tortured psychology of a man consumed with anger, violence, and self-loathing. Shot in beautiful black and white, Raging Bull follows Jake’s (Robert DeNiro) rise to the championship and his inevitable tragic descent into obscurity.

The film is alternately lyrical and graphically realistic. The fight scenes, shot from within the ring and not from the traditional camera setting of a spectator’s point-of-view, are a contradictory blend of violence and grace—which at times, particularly in Scorsese’s slow motion scenes, seem almost poetic. During the sequence of his final bout with Sugar Ray Leonard (Johnny Barnes), Ray is framed in a medium shot and backlit by the arena lights, appearing from Jake’s point-of-view in the ring. In that fight, Jake drops his hands and allows Robinson to pummel him mercilessly—a self-inflicted punishment for the way he has abused his wife and brother.

The shot of the approaching Sugar Ray from Jake’s point-of-view almost looks like an approaching angel of vengeance coming to wreak some well-deserved (in Jake’s own estimation) retribution. The sequence takes us into Jake’s mind and shows the audience his demons, up close and personal. In an earlier sequence, when Jake is wooing Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) at the neighborhood pool, a shot of her bare legs splashing slow motion in the pool provides a beautifully descriptive yet simple depiction of Jake’s desire.

In The Departed, one of Scorsese’s more recent efforts, the story follows a parallel narrative between two characters separately embedded as moles in their opposition’s camps. Trooper Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) has gone undercover to infiltrate Frank Costello’s (Jack Nicholson) Irish mob. Sargent Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is spying for Costello while working at the Boston police department gang unit. As their stories converge, Scorsese does a masterful job of exploring the conflicting motivations of loyalty, duty, morality, and betrayal. Beneath their undercover facades, Costigan and Sullivan strive to collect the data necessary to take care of Costello—one way or another—while staying alive themselves.

Scorsese’s use of the moving camera in the audience’s introduction to Frank Costello is a long tracking following the character in shadowy profile as he moves across the screen. It not only tags Costello as the bad guy but affirms that his character will be the catalyst that moves the story forward. In the following sequence, where Costello persuades young Sullivan to work for him, Scorsese uses the camera to slowly zoom into boy’s face, conveying his dawning realization that Costello is not only his mentor, but his boss. It is a masterful piece of film technique that simply and efficiently places the viewer inside the character.

Scorsese’s most popular work, including the quirky The King of Comedy, the creepy Cape Fear, the outrageous The Wolf of Wall Street, and, of course, the seminal Goodfellas, merely scratch the surface of Scorsese’s contribution to the art of cinema. Every element of the definition of a film auteur fits the work he has done. His style is eminently identifiable, his technique measured and meticulous, and his emotional resonance with the audience is undeniable.

Like Steven Spielberg, Scorsese has found a niche within the commercial film industry while still managing to maintain his own identifiable independent film sensibility. Goodfellas and Taxi Driver made money because they were gripping narratives full of relatable characters, but we remember them because they are films written and shot from a consistently empathic, compassionate, yet worldly point of view.

A Scorsese film presents its characters as bastions of their worlds but deliver them to the audience as victims of the ubiquitous human condition—in other words, Scorsese makes the exotic personal. At the end of Taxi Driver, the audience (somewhat frighteningly) understands Bickel. We understand—and even like—the kidnapper Rupert Pipkin in The King of Comedy. It’s not really a surprise that both these protagonists—after committing serious felonies—are hailed as heroes. That is perhaps what Scorsese had in mind all along—to bring all the outsiders in.