3) Raging Bull (1980)
In the midst of its gritty story-telling, I still find a crazed humor in the domestic scenes between Jake (Robert De Niro) and Joey (Joe Pesci). “If he’s in a good mood” Joey tells someone before he enters his brother’s apartment building – we have just witnessed Jake bickering with his wife about a steak and turning the table over. The squabbling continues when Joey arrives. A neighbour is calling them animals while his dog yap-yaps, “Your mother’s an animal.” Jake yells back out the window, “You’ll find your dog dead in the hallway.” Then the very next sequence were Jake asks him to punch him, is both hilarious and shocking in its innovative audacity. When the real Jake LaMotta saw Raging Bull for the first time with his ex wife Vicky he was stunned, ruffled. And when he asked her if he was really like that, she turned to him and said “You were worse.”.
Raging Bull was the portrayal of a tormented man, a brutal man, unforgiving and raw. Scorsese himself was on the back of his own personal life struggles, but also his last movie New York, New York hadn’t been successful. It was De Niro who came to him, urging him to make Raging Bull. And once Scorsese had a grasp of the material, the personal level to which he could relate to the plights of the story sprung him into acion. And thank God.
The distracting color of boxing gloves, the worries invloving film processing, as well as the Life magazine photographs from the 1940s set Scorsese’s creative wheels in full motion that he was to shoot Raging Bull in blak and white. Certainly a challenge for Michael Chapman, but one he delivered. And Thelma Schoonmakers editing remains today one of cinema’s finest achievements.
Of course, the long-time collobarator with Scorsese would win Best Film Editing at the Oscars, and De Niro would take the Best Actor prize. Whatever you feel about Ordinary People, how much you may like it, and regardless of how many Oscars Martin Scorsese wins hereafter, the defeat of Raging Bull at the Academy Awards was a mistep in history that cannot be rectified. I guess they just don’t go for the masterpiece.
2) Taxi Driver (1976)
Brian De Palma introduced Martin Scorsese to a certain Paul Schrader once upon a time. Schrader was in a dark place of his own at that time, struggling to hold down a place to live, was going through a break-up, and steadily drifting into isolation. His creative sparks threw him into a figurative taxi cab, which he felt was an aptly lonely place for such a soul. And so wrote a script. The rest his cinematic history.
Robert De Niro, who had just won an Academy Award for The Godfather Part II, built much of his method acting reputation on Taxi Driver, taking to cab driving, and recording New York accents, to help prepare for the role. De Niro would arrange to meet 12 year-old Jodie Foster at various diners to rehearse scenes, but esentially make her feel truly comfortable in the role. Harvey Keitel was offeed the part of the campaign worker, but as soon as he had read the script he told Scorsese he wanted to play the pimp. I mean, this was a phenomenal process towards a monumental film.
So memorable the cinematography of Michael Chapman, too, those rear mirror views, taxi interior and exterior shots. Even innovative camera movements, arcing full circle, or panning slowly away from the action. The great Bernard Herrmann, whose first reaction to scoring a cab driver movie was less than encouraging, was assured by Martin Scorsese that the film was a lot more than that – and so he read the script. We know the incredible results, Herrmann would sadly pass away soon after he completed the composition. He earned an Oscar nomination for Taxi Driver and Brian DePalma’s Obsession that same year. Scorsese and his wonderful collaborators captured both the dark ambience of New York and the inner turmoil of Travis.
And that finale is one you never forget. A friend of mine once said to me that Travis did the wrong thing for the right reason. Such a ferocious, madcap close to the film. Pioneered by some exceptional practical effects – fishing lines pulling off fake flesh, exploding fake hand, retracting blade knife, prosphetic injected with blood. The over-head tracking shot at the end of the massacre was months in the making. Taxi Driver is a film of deep, dark wonder, simmering the anguish of the human mind surrounded by a world gone mad. And we can ponder on the genius of it for many more decades.
1) Goodfellas (1990)
I have little doubts that Martin Scorsese grew up and always wanted to be a gangster. But he spent large parts of his childhood around these kind of people. Once he had read Nicholas Pileggi’s book, he tracked him down and said this was the story he had always been looking for. And Pileggi was also pretty thrilled to potentially have his book immortalized on celluloid by one of the greatest makers of film.
Scorsese liked how Goodfellas would show a romantic side of the crime world, without glorifying it. And the scary notion that you could easily grow to actually like Henry Hill. That’s the danger for us, the audience. The real life Hill, living his life like a regular schmuck, would get phone calls from Robert De Niro asking questions about his character Jimmy Conway.
Scorsese, ever the filmmaking professional, could envisage the motion picture long before they shot it. He knew what music he wanted in the film, and would jot down specific songs into the script at given scenes. Some of the music was played on the set to help create the mood, to show what he wanted. Scorsese knows how shiny your shoes are, what tie will make you look much more like a gangster. When he wanted to freeze the frame – and exactly why. He fought hard to keep the violence in the picture, and rightly so. But there is so much more to Goodfellas than the bloody events.
That largely improvised “Funny how?” scene for one. Storyboarded to be framed in medium shot, so you could see the other people around Tommy and Henry as the conversation got more heated by the second. The dread building in their faces and actions.
And what of one of the great acking shots of all time? Initially just a couple of lines in the book, Scorsese enhanced it into a bravura sequence. A piece of unique, glorious motion that acts as a kind of point of view for Karen, whom Scorsese had said was the movie star in the story, being swept into this illustrious world for the first time – just as we were.
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