The Best Films Directed by Martin Scorsese
Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz, Raging Bull, Goodfellas
The critical darling of the new American Cinema that first took shape in the 1970s, Scorsese has been heavily influenced by Italian neo-realism, German expressionism, and theories of Soviet montage. He is as much a visual stylist as an accomplished storyteller, and his best films are a striking combination of the two.
Mean Streets (1973)
The semi-autobiographical Mean Streets set the stage for much of Scorsese’s later work, both technically (long one-takes, hand-held cameras, rapid-fire editing, nostalgic pop music soundtrack, and brutally realistic performances) and thematically (religious guilt, the lure of organized crime, bloody violence, and macho posturing). While it isn’t a polished work, it signaled to the industry that a major talent had arrived on the scene. There are moments where it feels like Scorsese is showing off a bit (attention-grabbing jump cuts, Charlie’s drunken stumbling with a camera strapped to his chest), or perhaps it’s the experimentalism of a young director showing off his influences (Cassavetes, Fuller, and early Goddard to name a few). Either way, it was this film that launched him to the forefront of a new generation of American cinematic talent. It also marked the beginning of one of the great actor/director partnerships in modern film history: his association with Robert De Niro.
Taxi Driver (1976)
If Mean Streets marked Scorsese’s arrival on the scene, Taxi Driver cemented his status as a pioneer of the new American Cinema. Scorsese's dark tale of urban alienation was a hallmark of 1970s film. In Taxi Driver, he captures the frantic and frenetic side of New York City and uses it as a backdrop for the story of an alienated man descending into madness. Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a self-righteous, psychotic loner, who takes it upon himself to enforce his own brand of subjective morality. Through Travis’s eyes, Scorsese shows New York as an urban hell filled with drugs, pimps, weapons, and politicians (all equally evil in Travis’s mind). Steaming sewers, rain-soaked streets, and harsh neon lights, all contribute to the film’s vision of the urban landscape as hell on earth. How could anyone not go mad? Scorsese's direction combined with De Niro's performance makes Travis Bickle one of cinema’s most complex characters. Taxi Driver is a fevered, paranoid take on the perils of contemporary urban life. It is a squalid film that perfectly reflects its squalid subject matter: a nightmarish portrait of one man’s personal hell.
The Last Waltz (1978)
While at times it’s easy to forget, Scorsese was more than just organized crime and Catholic guilt. He surprised and annoyed many in the film industry when he secretly filmed what was to become an epic ‘rocumentary’ of The Band’s farewell concert in1976. Just as his fiction films always have a musical structure, The Last Waltz was constructed in the same manner as his narratives. Far more formal than most rock concert documentaries, the shooting was very deliberate and pre-planned. Every camera angle and movement was planned in advance to complement the song arrangements, and yet somehow, none of it feels contrived. Unlike Woodstock (which he helped edit several years earlier), the audience is never seen (with the exception of the occasional silhouettes of the first rows), making it a film truly about the music and the musicians. Each of the musical numbers is interspersed with Scorsese's interviews with the musicians, but these are never an interruption of the music, but rather, they act as a support to it. The Last Waltz is the result of a truly great collaboration between artists who are the best in their respective mediums.
Raging Bull (1980)
Flawed masculinity is at the heart of this savage portrayal of boxing legend Jake LaMotta. Like so many of Scorsese’s films, insecure men, violence, guilt, and redemption are at the forefront of this almost documentary style film. Raging Bull is something of an homage to everything Scorsese had learned about directing thus far, employing complex tracking shots, extensive slow motion, and extravagant distortion of perspective. Set in the 1940s and 50s, he succeeds in making the film feel genuinely old. It’s not just the obvious black and white: many of Jake's matches are depicted through series of scratchy stills, and Jake and his brother Joey move through life's milestones with 8mm family films, their colors seemingly long since faded. At times Raging Bull feels as though it’s pulled together from found material. The choices are perfect for the movie, giving Raging Bull a unique look in an era when a black-and-white approach was almost unheard of. Often referred to as the best film of the decade, it was helped greatly by Robert De Niro’s masterful performance as one of the most repugnant and unlikeable anti-heroes ever depicted on screen.
Goodfellas (1990)
There’s an electricity in a Scorsese film that can’t be matched, and nowhere is it more evident than in the 1990s gangster romp, Goodfellas. The gritty story of a small time hood hoping to move up the chain of command captures the breathless appeal of the illicit yet extravagant life of the wannabe made man. Scorsese imbues his film with the sights, sounds and emotions of what it’s like to be swept into a life of organized crime. But make no mistake: this ain’t The Godfather. Scorsese presents us with a picture of the sap at the bottom of the food chain, the guy whose job it is carry out the orders at street level, the guy who exists in a world where violence can erupt at any moment. Stylistically, the film features Scorsese’s trademark filming techniques such as freeze frames, tracking shots, jump cuts, hand-held cameras and point-of-view perspectives. They’re all used to maximum effect, as is the brilliant pop-music soundtrack. Goodfellas is the work of a master in his prime.
While his films haven’t always succeeded at the box office, Martin Scorsese is arguably one of the Hollywood’s greatest directors. His impressive body of work consists of some of the most innovative, occasionally controversial, and memorable films of all time.
Martin Scorsese
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