Martin Scorsese’s 10 greatest gifts to cinema

Goodfellas - arguably Martin Scorsese's greatest achievement. Photo / Supplied

As the director, film historian and all-round guru Martin Scorsese celebrates his 80th birthday, it’s easy to think of him as a fixture in cinema. From his 1967 debut Who’s That Knocking At My Door to his most recent picture, 2019′s The Irishman, he has been one of the most respected and influential filmmakers of the past half-century.

Actors queue up to work with him, and are often nominated for or receive major awards for doing so; countless contemporary directors, from Edgar Wright to Luca Guadagnino, cite him as an influence on their own work. Even his much-reported remarks likening Marvel films to theme park experiences saw his partisan defenders take his side against outraged comic-book fans: but then they were hardly the obvious audience for Scorsese’s elegant, rich pictures in the first place.

Yet Scorsese’s legacy is not that of a provocateur, but that of a visionary. He has changed cinema, and our expectations of what filmmaking can be, in countless fashions. Here are 10 of the things that Martin Scorsese’s brilliant pictures have given us, for which we should be forever grateful.

1. The gangster film as we know it

For better or for worse, the genre that Martin Scorsese is most closely associated with is that of the gangster film. From 1973′s Mean Streets right up to The Irishman, he has specialised in exploring men immersed in the criminal underworld, living existences bound by a certain set of rules, and with horrible punishments awaiting anyone who transgresses against the codes that they are expected to follow. Some of Scorsese’s most phenomenally successful pictures fall into this category, from Goodfellas – which may still be his single greatest achievement, 30 years on – to The Departed and Casino, to say nothing of his odd, flawed but underrated passion project Gangs of New York.

Joe Pesci, right, in Casino. Photo / Supplied

What remains so fascinating about these films is that they’re the opposite of the operatic elegance of The Godfather or the baroque insanity of Scarface. The worlds portrayed within them are harsh, arbitrary and cruel, where the surface glamour cannot hide the ugliness that lies underneath. Scorsese has always been the most moral of directors, and few could watch his films and genuinely think, à la Goodfellas’ Henry Hill: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”

2. Robert De Niro’s career

No matter how many rubbish films Robert De Niro makes – and there have been many over the decades – his collaborations with Scorsese have seen both men at their considerable best. From De Niro’s first appearance in Mean Streets as the chaotic small-time hood Johnny Boy to his most recent collaboration with the director – his eighth – in The Irishman, there is no doubt that the two have an alchemy together that sees the actor go to considerable lengths to give his friend and colleague his finest performances.

From his terrifying Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver to the ultimate fame-obsessed schmuck Rupert Pupkin in the still overlooked The King of Comedy, there is something chameleonic about the way in which De Niro abandons the tics and mannerisms that can be so wearying in his other pictures, and embodies a whole variety of characters – from the pathetic to the frightening – in the most fascinating and hypnotic of ways.

3. Leonardo DiCaprio’s second act

When Scorsese cast Leonardo DiCaprio in Gangs of New York, there was general disbelief: he was regarded, post-Titanic, as a pretty-boy actor who was more famous for appearing in gossip columns than his performances. When the film came out, it was Daniel Day-Lewis who attracted the praise (and the awards), and DiCaprio was seen as the also-ran.

Nonetheless, Scorsese continued to act as a mentor to the younger actor, and his brilliant, Oscar-nominated performance in 2004′s The Aviator, as the hypochondriac megalomaniac Howard Hughes, showed what he was capable of. Since then, the two men have made a further three films together, with next year’s Killers of the Flower Moon marking their sixth collaboration.

DiCaprio has shown inordinate range in his work with Scorsese – from his doomed undercover cop in The Departed to the debauched banker Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. He reflected of Scorsese: “No one is more knowledgeable, more committed, or draws more inspiration from the film art.” It is hard to disagree.

4. Violence as high art

With a few exceptions, such as 2011′s Hugo, a charming children’s film about the birth of cinema, 1993′s Edith Wharton adaptation The Age of Innocence and 1997′s Kundun, about the young Dalai Lama, Scorsese’s films are astonishingly violent. There are unforgettable set-piece moments of pure horror throughout his oeuvre – a head being placed in a vice in Casino; a woman having her cheek bitten off in Cape Fear; Travis Bickle’s final rampage in Taxi Driver – and even his less extreme pictures feature shootings, stabbings and bludgeonings by the score.

For such a mild-mannered man, Scorsese’s pictures seem to take a kind of relish in graphic unpleasantness. Yet he would disagree with this, and has said in the past that: “Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.”

And it’s telling that, when asked which he believed his most violent picture was, Scorsese replied The Age of Innocence. Its depiction of the unforgiving salons of 1870s New York is every bit as brutal, beneath the surface politeness, as the ganglands of Brooklyn and Boston.

5. Epic running times

Martin Scorsese’s films are long. The Irishman comes in at three and a half hours; The Wolf of Wall Street and Casino are both three-hour behemoths; and the last picture of his to run at under two hours was 1985′s After Hours, a jet-black comedy that clocks in at a relatively snug 97 minutes. Even at a time when films are generally getting longer, there is no doubt that to settle in for a Scorsese picture at the cinema – and the cinema is undeniably their natural home – is to put aside an entire evening for it.

It’s telling that the only Scorsese film over which he did not have true final cut – Gangs of New York – feels truncated and fragmentary, even at 167 minutes, because his films have their own rhythm and flow that cannot be subsumed to the demands of an angst-ridden studio. It’s rare to walk out of a Scorsese film and feel that time could have been better spent: to watch the master’s work is to lose oneself in his world entirely. Three or so hours spent in his company is never close to being a hardship.

Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More.

6. Brilliant, complex female characters

Scorsese might be associated most closely with machismo and all-male attitudes, but this overlooks the fact that he has consistently created some of the richest and most interesting roles in his films for women. It’s no coincidence that the first actor to win an Oscar for their performance in a Scorsese picture was Ellen Burstyn, for her lead in 1974′s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More.

From Lorraine Bracco’s brilliantly multifaceted Karen Hill in Goodfellas – the definitive deconstruction of a gangster’s moll – to Cate Blanchett’s superb recreation of Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator, Scorsese’s films are full of vibrant, brilliant female characters who are every bit the equal of their male counterparts. Scorsese has often described his mother Catherine – who appeared in several of his pictures – as his greatest influence and inspiration, and his dedication to creating strong and unforgettable roles for women has been a consistent feature throughout his career.

7. Freeze frames

You will know the internet meme of a freeze frame, the sound of a record scratching against vinyl and a character saying in voiceover “Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation.” It is now so commonplace in cinema as to be an almost pernicious cliché, and yet the man who popularised the use of freeze frames throughout his pictures did so in a sufficiently fresh and original way for them to be essential, rather than tired.

Whether it’s the introduction of iconic characters, from Henry Hill in Goodfellas to Casino’s Ginger McKenna, or the way in which Scorsese transforms Jake LaMotta’s brutal fights in Raging Bull into balletic exercises in weightlessness and beauty, there is no doubt that the director uses them in the most original and essential way that any contemporary filmmaker has done.

8. Thelma Schoonmaker

It’s possible that Thelma Schoonmaker is the greatest editor working in cinema today. Her work with Scorsese, which began on Who’s That Knocking On My Door, resumed with Raging Bull and has continued until the present day, has deservedly won her three Oscars – for The Departed, The Aviator and Raging Bull – and a further five nominations. Her editing seldom draws attention to itself, but remains an integral part of any of Scorsese’s films, from Henry Hill’s frantic, coke-addled final descent into paranoia in Goodfellas to the stately (but never remotely boring) pacing of his more spiritual pictures, such as Silence, Kundun and the ever-controversial The Last Temptation of Christ.

Although Schoonmaker has occasionally worked on other projects – usually by Scorsese protegees, such as Allison Anders’s Grace Of My Heart – she remains the director’s most consistent collaborator, and integral to his work. She’s also quick with a snappy one-liner, too. When asked, patronisingly, how a woman as nice as her could bear to work on such violent pictures, Schoonmaker replied: “Ah, but they aren’t violent until I’ve edited them!”

Martin Scorsese in 2020.

9. Needle drops

Scorsese loves music. He’s made concert films and documentaries on bands and singers from George Harrison to the Rolling Stones, and has worked with The Band’s Robbie Robertson on the iconic soundtracks to many of his films, from Raging Bull to Shutter Island. The latter of which features the most unsettling selection of 20th century classical music since The Shining, indicating that Scorsese’s interests include far more than just pop music.

But from Goodfellas’ never-to-be-forgotten use of Eric Clapton’s Layla and the Ronettes’ Be My Baby to the absolute desolation evoked by the Stones’ Gimme Shelter in both Casino and The Departed – or even the beautifully incongruous appearance of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana in the fight scenes in Raging Bull – there’s never any doubt that Scorsese is dedicated to creating the perfect partnership of sound and vision.

10. All things ‘Scorsesian’

Without Scorsese, we’d never have had The Sopranos, The Wire, Joker, Analyse This – or Analyse That – American Hustle, Boogie Nights, Heat and countless other films or TV series. To refer to a piece of filmmaking as being “Scorsesian” – and if that isn’t an adjective, it should be – is to praise it for being tight (whatever its length), witty, intelligent and blessed with great performances, a killer soundtrack and the sort of iconic, unforgettable set-pieces that demand to be rewatched again the second that they’re over. Martin Scorsese simply is the godfather of contemporary cinema. Long may he reign over his empire.