Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese (born November 17, 1942, Queens, New York, U.S.) is an American filmmaker known for his harsh, often violent depictions of American culture. From the 1970s Scorsese created a body of work that was ambitious, bold, and brilliant. But even his most acclaimed films are demanding, sometimes unpleasantly intense dramas that have enjoyed relatively little commercial success. Thus, Scorsese bears the not totally undeserved reputation as a cult director who works with big budgets and Hollywood’s most desirable stars. In terms of artistry, he is perhaps the most significant American director of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

Early life and work

Scorsese was a frail asthmatic child who grew up in the Italian American neighborhood of Little Italy on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His early interest in film returned after he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood, and he went on to earn undergraduate (1964) and graduate (1966) degrees in film from New York University, where he subsequently taught. His student films showed a wide range of influences, from foreign classics to Hollywood musicals. Among them were shorts such as What’s a Nice Girl like You Doing in a Place like This? (1963) and It’s Not Just You, Murray! (1964).

Scorsese’s first theatrical film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967), was an intimate portrayal of life in the streets of Little Italy. Harvey Keitel (who went on to do several more films with Scorsese throughout his career) starred as Scorsese’s alter ego, a streetwise but sensitive Italian American Catholic plagued by the knowledge that his girlfriend (Zina Bethune) had been raped. The film earned Scorsese encouraging reviews, and he was offered the position of assistant director and supervising editor on Woodstock (1970), which translated into converting the more than 100 hours of raw footage of the 1969 rock concert into a 3-hour movie that won an Academy Award for best documentary.

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Films of the 1970s: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and New York, New York

Scorsese directed a less widely seen documentary about protests against the Vietnam War, Street Scenes (1970), and he then worked as an editor on the concert films Medicine Ball Caravan (1971) and Elvis on Tour (1972). Producer Roger Corman invited him to direct Boxcar Bertha (1972). Scorsese made the most of the opportunity with an exciting if ultimately empty yarn about train robbers (Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, and Bernie Casey) wreaking havoc in the Depression-era South.

Far more significant was the boundary-breaking Mean Streets (1973), Scorsese’s reworking of the themes introduced in Who’s That Knocking at My Door. Filled with violent sequences, rapid-fire dialogue, and blaring rock music, the film was typical of his early work in its realistic detail and its naturalistic performances. Keitel starred as a small-time collector for the mob in Little Italy, stricken with guilt over his affair with his girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson), who has epilepsy, and frustrated by his inability to control his dangerously unhinged friend (and Teresa’s cousin) Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro, who did 10 films with Scorsese between 1973 and 2023). The moving, often hilarious performances of Keitel and De Niro were as much responsible for igniting this low-budget masterpiece as Scorsese’s atmospheric locations, shockingly frank language, explosive violence, and showy camera technique.

After making the documentary Italianamerican (1974) about his parents, Scorsese went to work on his first mainstream studio picture, the tamer Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), which had little of the pyrotechnic invention of Mean Streets. But in its own subdued way, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was an effective drama about a widow, Alice (Ellen Burstyn), who strikes out from New Mexico to California after the death of her abusive husband to make a new life for herself and her adolescent son (Alfred Lutter). Burstyn’s Oscar for best actress helped convince the Hollywood establishment that Scorsese could discipline his maverick talent.

Having proved that he could make a fairly conventional movie, Scorsese then shocked filmgoers with the neo-noir classic Taxi Driver (1976), a hellish tour of a disturbed Vietnam War veteran’s peculiar madness. Brilliantly written by Paul Schrader, photographed by Michael Chapman, and scored by Bernard Herrmann (his final film), this unsettling work is as fascinating as it is horrifying. De Niro gave what is regarded as his definitive performance as the pathetically alienated but dangerously unhinged Travis Bickle, and Keitel exuded menace in the small but key role of the seductive pimp Sport, who keeps the 12-year-old Iris (Jodie Foster) in thrall. Perhaps the most controversial, and the most disturbing, Oscar nominee for best picture to date, Taxi Driver also earned Oscar nominations for De Niro, Foster, and Herrmann. Scorsese cast himself in a small but telling cameo as a murderously jealous husband, and the film was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. Many rank it as Scorsese’s best work.

Scorsese’s artistic risk-taking had been vindicated, but his status as Hollywood’s newest enfant terrible lasted only until the release of New York, New York (1977), a rethinking of the 1950s Hollywood musical, marked by nonnaturalistic lighting and elaborate sets. Deliberately stylized to evoke past screen triumphs by Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor, it featured De Niro as the cocky Jimmy Doyle, a novice saxophone player who works in a big band behind talented singer Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli). Their torrid love affair proves impossible to sustain, and the vain, self-destructive Jimmy drifts away from domestic bliss with the pregnant Francine. De Niro was compelling in an unsympathetic part, and Minnelli evoked her mother (Judy Garland) with frightening authority. While critical opinion was mixed, it was a commercial flop. However, the film later developed a cult following largely because of its obvious affection for old Hollywood.

Stung by this rejection, Scorsese edited his footage of The Band’s November 1976 farewell concert into the well-received rockumentary The Last Waltz (1978), with unparalleled performance footage of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and other musical luminaries. Next came American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (1978), in which Prince, a friend of Scorsese who memorably played the gun salesman in Taxi Driver, recounted stories from his life as a road manager for singer Neil Diamond and his personal experience with heroin addiction.