Let’s get on with the Scorsese business in hand. The votes are in, the poll is now closed. Here we will now run down the 20 highest ranked films of Martin Scorsese as chosen by all of you. Before we kick into that spectacular 20, we have to shout out to those that did not quite make it. I guess many of you have not even seen Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967) or Boxcar Bertha (1972), which you should rectify as soon as you get the chance. Both are available to stream online. Also not making the cut was New York, New York (1977), and Kundun (1997) – the latter I am personally disappointed with its placing, although appreciate it is not one of Scorsese’s best, it does feature a masterly canvas of photography from Roger Deakins. Have a look before you head up the ranks:
20) Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
There’s so much anxious and repressed rage inside the character of Frank Pierce, which Cage masterfully demonstrates by his deadpan expressions and constantly blinking eyes, we can practically see the internal struggle that he is experiencing to suppress his emotions. And when he’s not blinking, he’s staring intently into the distance, being haunted by ghosts that only he can see. It’s a performance that echoes the German Expressionism movement of the early 1920s, which of course took its inspiration from the shell shocked soldiers returning from the trenches, and Cage certainly appears to be channeling some form of post-traumatic stress disorder here for his performance.
19) The Color of Money (1986)
Although Paul Newman was pretty great in The Color of Money, his Best Actor Oscar win felt a little career accumalative too. That said, his return as Eddie Felson is a snappy, slick affair, as Scorsese steers away from organized crime and delves into pool hustling. Featuring many of the Scorsese technical traits a la nifty camerawork, rapid editing, and pretty brilliant soundtrack, The Color of Money compelling carries the filmmakers trademark, even if somewhat outside of his usual remit.
18) Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)
To call Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore a “woman’s picture” is naive and rather insulting, because it’s a story which many can identify with regardless of their gender, and even Scorsese has declared that the film is more than just a picture for women. “Some people have said that Alice is a movie about women’s liberation, but I think that’s the wrong emphasis. It’s about human liberation.” The film’s inception from page to screen is an interesting story, originally the role of Alice was offered to Shirley MacLaine who turned it down, and the script fell into the hands of Ellen Burstyn who was still filming The Exorcist. The story interested Burstyn as she was keen to do a film “from a woman’s point of view, but a woman that I recognized, that I knew.” The actress sent the script on to Warner Brothers who agreed to do it and they also asked who Burstyn wanted to direct it. She was keen to have a director who was new and young and exciting.
17) Cape Fear (1991)
This 1991 film is a remake of the classic 1964 crime thriller of the same name. When attorney Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) knowingly withholds evidence that would acquit violent sex offender Max Cady (Robert De Niro) of rape charges, Max spends 14 years in prison. Bowden gets on with his life, but his world is turned upside down when Max is released from prison. Max devotes his life to stalking and destroying the Bowden family, hellbent and driven by rage. In the days that follow, their dog is poisoned, they are stalked, and Bowden’s lover (Illeana Douglas) is horrifically attacked by the hands of Cady. When practical attempts to stop Max fail, Sam realizes that he must act outside the law to protect his wife (Jessica Lange) and daughter (Juliette Lewis). Driven from their house, the family flee to their houseboat, which is docked upstate along Cape Fear, but Cady isn’t far behind and will stop at nothing to get his revenge.
Cape Fear marks the seventh collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro, as well as other Scorsese regular, the editor Thelma Schoonmaker being onboard. This is the thriller that Hitchcock wished he could have made, dark, violent and disturbing.
16) After Hours (1985)
Martin Scorsese’s 1985 film After Hours is one of the great Director’s lesser known films. But having just seen it for the first time, I can understand it’s impact among fans of the movie being a profound viewing experience and leaves a thrilling legacy. Paul (Griffin Dunne) is a bored word processor who seeks out some adventure in the night life scene of Manhattan and gets a night from hell he’ll never forget. This is Scorsese’s Odyssey, with Paul facing every worst case scenario with each person he comes across and meets. He is simply just trying to find his way home, and the entire film is sustained by the sure hand of Martin Scorsese who was really trying something new and fascinating with After Hours.
New York being the central character again in a Scorsese film, but this time there is a level of dark paranoia following Paul all the way through his perilous journey. It’s almost as if the city itself is trying to trip him up, wanting to see him fail and succumb to it’s nefarious corners and deep sewer drains. After Hours is a wild ride on the dark underbelly of society. It tells Paul to stick to the life he knows and be satisfied with his boredom.
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15) Gangs of New York (2002)
Of course Martin Scorsese was fascinated by this chunk of American history. And to know the demographics of the area, where the Dutch, Gemrans, Irish would live. Why they immigrated to New York. That violence was a way of life, as was corruption and politics. The birth of America in the mean streets of New York back in the nineteenth century was the premise for Scorsese’s 2002 origin epic.
My review of the film itself would be far less favorable than the praise I would bestow on the technical brilliance. Set designer Dante Ferretti made a ton of drawings to show his director prior to building. One of the largest sets of modern cinema, the construction of Paradise Square, and the interiors, huge parts of the harbor,the ships, of course the Five Points. It was like shooting on location.
Costume designer Sandy Powell also did intense research. Studying the period, including paintings and photographs. Powell would embelish slightly the original designs, and create a fascinating sartorial wardrobe, with well over 3,000 different costumes made from scratch.
14) Hugo (2011)
This fantasy drama follows the adventures of orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) who lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris living with his resentful, alcoholic uncle Claude (Ray Winstone). It is Hugo’s job is to oil and maintain the station’s clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father (Jude Law). Accompanied by the goddaughter (Chloë Grace Moretz, who plays Isabelle) of a bitter toy merchant (Ben Kingsley), Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton whilst trying to outsmart the station’s inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) who is determined to send Hugo to an orphanage. As Hugo grows closer to Isabelle, he discovers that her godfather is actually silent film pioneer Georges Méliès
This is Scorsese’s first 3D film and is based on the 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The backstory and primary features of Georges Méliès’ life as depicted in the film are largely accurate, he was a toymaker an a magician, and he experimented with automata. And more tragically Méliès’ was forced into bankruptcy and he became a toy salesman at the Montparnasse station. This is Scorsese’s love letter to early cinema and is a delight for children and adults alike.
13) Shutter Island (2010)
Through many viewings there are apparent clues that Scorsese gives us, whether it’s missing objects, character tics, or blatant hallucinations. We are following someone who is under mass delusion that he’s a U.S. Marshall investigating a missing persons case, and everyone must play along. It occurred to me when watching Shutter Island that it’s really Scorsese’s first genre piece. It’s something that pays homage to Hitchcock and feels like maybe something he would have done if he had been part of a younger generation. It lays on the atmosphere, mood, and tone of a psychological thriller very thick, I love Scorsese’s commitment to telling a narrative story.
It’s stylistically put together with impeccable spacing and placement of environmental objects. The dangling chains in the prison, the caged walls from the floor to the ceiling, the spiral black narrow staircase leading to the very top of the lighthouse. The Prison is housed in a Civil War era fort and its structure adds to the imposing tone of the prison; it’s walls and facilities. Despite being a genre film, Shutter Island has a real commitment to the theme of Identity.
12) The Aviator (2004)
Experimenting with color palettes and saturation, Scorsese and his team designed a kind of color timeline to somehow mimic the early American Technicolor dye-transfer process. Replicating the vintage look of the period, and the films made back then. Styles of processing we perhaps take for granted today. And know very little about. Scorsese, of course, is an ambassador when it comes to the revitalization of film disrepair. And the Digital Intermediate phase of the production, utilized given our modern methods, was a first for Scorsese. A filmmaker who had nothing to prove to us, but still bagfuls of raw passion to show.
The Aviator was five years in the making. John Logan must have written in the region of fifteen drafts of the screenplay. Leonardo DiCaprio threw himself into the role of Howard Hughes – he was already an inquisitive fan of the filmmaker. Likely the finest turn of his acting career. Gwen Stefani had the once in a lifetime opportunity to portray her idol, Jean Harlow. Scorsese did not want to recreate movie stars with prosthetics. Rather, he present the essence of those characters, through top-notch, well-researched make up and hair-styling.
11) The Age of Innocence (1993)
Scorsese took a huge risk in following up his Oscar-winning Goodfellas and Oscar-nominated Cape Fear with the on-the-surface gentility of The Age of Innocence. Those earlier films heavily trafficked in high tension and graphic violence, so it was a major departure for Scorsese to take on a costume drama more suited to the likes of Merchant Ivory. But if audiences were to look closer at the material, the themes and patterns so prevalent in other Scorsese films are boldly on display here in what I would argue as a more mature and accomplished manner.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Edith Wharton, the film stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Newland Archer, a young lawyer in late 19th century New York. His well-established world of opera, manners, customs, and pending engagement to the proper May Welland (Winona Ryder, sadly the only Oscar nominee in the whole bunch) is shattered by the vibrance and social customs-eschewing Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). Ellen fled her potentially abusive European husband for the supposed safety and comfort of her New York-based family, but she catches the eye of Newland who, over the course of the film, is prepared to abandon everything to fulfill his love for her.
10) The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Peter Gabriel, who was in charge of the score, gathered a who’s who of world music composers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to contribute to what would become one of the most successful films scores ever produced. It’s beauty and simplicity added an aura of authenticity to the film that could never have been achieved by the clichéd orchestral scores that boomed away in the background of previous Bible epics.
Scorsese’s piece de resistance was the dream/hallucination sequence that graced the last third of the film – Satan’s temptation. As Jesus hangs from the cross in agony, fulfilling his duty, a child appears to temporarily remove his spirit and guide him through “what could be”, should he decide to forsake his destiny. What he presents to Jesus is a logical and simple argument, a promise of a normal, long-lived life filled with love, children and, most appealing, normalcy. It’s a fantastic, life-affirming sequence and, unfortunately, one that drove the Christian purists absolutely nuts.
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9) Mean Streets (1973)
Martin Scorsese was told by John Cassavetes that Who’s That Knocking on My Door was a good film, and that he should make something like that again. Scorsese was encouraged by such advice, as it was a path he was eager to explore further. And being a huge fan of Cassavetes and his work was a sweet bonus. Scorsese was on the back of directing Boxcar Bertha for Roger Corman, where he developed a certain disciline as a filmmaker.
He wanted to depict a street life not dissimilar to the one he grew up with, as well as taking another step into his own filmmaking journey. Mean Streets promises much of what was to come from Scorsese. And in Robert De Niro, too, a star was born. His Johnny Boy is a live-wire, and the actor portrays him with a certain amateurish venom, as well as a raw emotion.
8) Casino (1995)
Now, despite these familiar themes regarding crime and consequence, Casino is not a carbon-copy of what Scorsese did with Goodfellas. In fact, there are a few elements that distinctly separate one film from the other. The first being empathy for it’s main character. The point of Goodfellas wasn’t to romanticize the gangster lifestyle, but to condemn men like Henry Hill, James “Jimmy the Gent” Conway, Tommy DeVito and Paul Cicero, and label them as the scumbags that they are. And while Scorsese didn’t shed any sympathy for Pesci’s Nicky when he sees his own brutal end, Marty shows a significant amount of empathy toward Rothstein. Yes, he was a part of the Mafia, but you could see his passion for his craft.
You could tell he loved being in charge of the Tangier: running the floor, keeping guests entertained and throwing away their money, making sure that there was an equal amount of blueberries placed in a muffin, and you can see how much it killed him when the Nevada state legislature screwed him out of gaining his gaming license to continue running the place, and when he was resorted to doing tricks on TV in order to stay on the hotel floor. In short: running the casino was his identity.
7) Silence (2016)
Set in 1667, two Portuguese missionaries, Father Sebastian Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), embark on a perilous journey to Japan to find their missing mentor (Liam Neeson) who it is rumoured has denounced the Catholic religion and is now living life as Japanese civilian after witnessing the torture and death of many of his fellow missionaries. The two men’s guide is a Japanese man named Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka) who has become a drunk after being forced to renounce his religion. While there, the two men minister to the Christian villagers who worship in secret. If caught by feudal lords or ruling samurai, they must renounce their faith or face a prolonged and agonizing death at the hands of the Inquisitor named Inoue (Issei Ogata).
Eventually Rodrigues and Garupe separate, and we follow Rodrigues as he tries to continue his task, all the while finding that his faith is being tested. The film is written by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō. The film is inspired by true historical events, being set in the time when it was common for Christians to hide from persecution following the suppression of Japanese Roman Catholics during the Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638), the end result is a moving drama which is visually breathtaking.
6) The King of Comedy (1982)
The King of Comedy does a wonderful job showcasing the cult of celebrity, the machinations of the media, and how the deranged and delusional drive to be someone can make all the difference. We spend the better part of two hours with a desperate dreamer who can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.
He has nothing but that impossible dream pushing him from place to place, chasing down every possibility and being foolish in the process. Rupert manages to successfully kidnap Jerry and negotiates with the FBI to allow him to host the Late Night show in return for releasing him once the show airs. Through the kidnapping it sinks in that we’re not only dealing with a delusional individual but a dangerous one as well. Someone that is willing to go to these lengths to obtain fame and notoriety is frankly capable of just about anything.
5) The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Martin Scorsese has perfected the stylish crime and gangster pictures with music, editing, creative and intuitive composition and framing and a fundamental understanding of cinema. So as I sat down to watch The Wolf of Wall Street again, it occurred to me that it was structured almost entirely like Goodfellas.
There is one voice who tells the whole story just like in Goodfellas. There are multiple digressions piecing together the whole narrative and all the players, put together much like a movie trailer. The same type of stylistic storytelling that Scorsese is known for with some breaking the fourth wall by DiCaprio, intimating how illegal what he and his company were doing. It shows the rise and downfall of a prominent criminal albeit a white collar criminal. That’s really the difference between these two movies, the class difference of Wall Street crooks like Belfort and the lower class ones like Henry Hill.
4) The Departed (2006)
It’s an amazing journey the film takes us on with DiCaprio’s Costigan going through a rollercoaster ride of close calls and near deadly experiences. There are open questions that aren’t answered and the film only offers possibilities.
Like Delahunt who worked as muscle for the Costello gang, who died of a gunshot wound after a gun fight with the Cops after the death of Captain Queenan. He calls Billy over and reveals to him that he knows he’s the informer amongst them, and to ask him why he didn’t tell anybody. It’s a haunting moment and just a second later he succumbs to the gunshot wound and dies. It’s reported the next day after the Police find his body that Timothy Delahunt was an undercover Police Officer with the city of Boston. Costello offers up that the news is simply reporting this so that he won’t look for the informer among them. We never know whether Delahunt was an undercover cop, it would explain why he didn’t say anything but the fact that we don’t know is haunting.
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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.