Martin Scorsese – Still the Outsider

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

Comments

[jamster]

Yes we're trying to encourage more contributions from employees, ex and present. Or anyone for that matter, so if you're up to it - everyone's welcome to have a go!
As for the downloads, we'll be giving an update soon on the whole issue as there's been lots going on...

[jennings]

so can we now expect some more Director profiles... nice idea, when can I DOWNLOAD all these films?