At last, thank God,
I’m accepted, Martin Scorsese must have thought as he finally won his Oscar for
Best Director. For a filmmaker so
preoccupied with the outsider, and with such clear virtuosity he was the last
guy who needed the stamp of approval. After all, Hitchcock missed out and for sheer technique Scorsese is his
heir. But to really step into his world
is to walk into a widescreen love affair with a tradition. There is a Hollywood royalty he has always
aspired to, he wants to take his place alongside George Stevens, Billy Wilder,
Nicholas Ray, John Ford, Frank Capra. All of his recent films have been an attempt to make a successful studio
picture. Although already the most
influential director of his generation, arguably the single most influential
ever, he has yet to make the film that stands as an unqualified success both
critically and commercially. His
insistence on using Leonardo DiCaprio like his new DeNiro is obviously inviting
comparisons with his far superior work. Leo may help him carry studio backing but he’s entirely lacking in
presence as a grand actor. You only
have to compare how much more effective Tony Leung was in the same role in Infernal Affairs , the original version
of The Departed.
Scorsese’s best films
all have a remarkable intimacy. The
camera-work is startling, but it works with the actors not against them. Often there is a languid quality, as though
stoned and a sense of reality, which is highly musical. There is the trademark
jukebox soundtrack. But more skilled is the sense of timing in connecting the song to the image. No matter how much Tarantino shows how much
good music he listens to he’ll never match the way Scorsese can choreograph a
scene to a song. For every time the
gangster is regarded as his metier you can also read musical. New York, New York, his only Musical may
have been a lesson in the drawbacks of excessive substance abuse but everything
he’s worked on since Woodstock is an attempt to show how profoundly drama is
music – after all, apparently he thinks he was a guitar player in another
life.
The opening of Alice
Doesn’t Live Here Anymore brilliantly conveys a sense of the new Hollywood
married with the old. The set design, the colour, the music all say, this is
Cinema, this is a world of magic. And yet this also brims with the kind of
non-Hollywood reality Scorsese admired so much in Cassavetes. It was made more
that 30 years before Departed and nothing he has done recently comes faintly
close. Although it’s supposed to be untypical, because its central character is
a woman, and never gets mentioned in the same breath as Mean Streets, this is a film that could only be by Martin
Scorsese. There is an intimacy to the
ensemble that only Altman can match. Ellen Burstyn deservedly won an Oscar. The story of a singer who finds herself
working in a dead-end diner, living in motels with her 11 year old son dreaming
of a better life in Monterey, has nothing to do with male angst or the street,
or being an American Italian, but it has soul.
The Last Waltz,
released between Taxi Driver and Raging Bull is another overlooked film. So
much more than a document of the last concert given by The Band at Winterland,
San Francisco in 1976, its full realisation arose out of a very extended post
concert session; Scorsese thought it should be elaborated to tell the story of
The Band. He had one of the greatest
rock concerts ready to be edited, and whilst making New York, New York in the
daytime he figured he could put The Last Waltz together at night and worry
about sleep later. It would end up
taking him two years but in that time he expanded on the music and produced a
masterpiece of a documentary on music. It is about drugs, about Rock n’roll, and performance. Levon Helm giving
Martin Scorsese a lecture about music is as captivating as anything in
Casino. The intensity on show here is
the build-up to Raging Bull.
Unlike anything else
released in the 80s it was still a film of the 70s that got stranded after the
decade finished and still in defiance to the track of lesser times King Of
Comedy in 1983 really is the last movie
of the 70s. It’s worth remembering that
none of these films enjoyed the kind of box office of the more recent
films. Another portrait of the extreme
subject, and another collaboration with De Niro, set in New York – obviously
- the story of a stalker who kidnaps
his comedy hero has a particular prescience for our celebrity obsessed times
and the kind of derangement that lies
behind a need for fame no matter what.
In 1986 he proved he
could cut it in mainstream Hollywood with The Color of Money, helping Paul
Newman get his own overdue Oscar. Looking back this really does fly. A revisiting of his role in The Hustler many critics saw it as the
lesser film when in fact it is much more complex formally. Robert Rossen’s 1961 film is absolutely a
first class sport film that knocks you out the first time you see it which
takes Pool very seriously whereas Scorsese isn’t so bothered with Pool. Textured
with ambivalence, it plays out as a game of a veteran actor who gets back in
the fray when he sees a young tyro who is all about success but still has a lot
to learn. Never has Tom Cruise being a
dick worked so well for a film (excepting Magnolia). This has to be his most underrated film and rewards repeated
viewings. The awful 80s cover can be disregarded. This is Scorsese moving with
the times but on his own terms. He
deliberately denies an 80s style denouement and keeps the soul of the film very
much in the 70s. One can only wonder why he hasn’t been able to repeat the
formula recently.
Charles Maclean
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