Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we're not
just looking at a filmmaker. I mean, we are,
but we're really diving into an entire cinematic
history, all embodied by one towering figure,
Martin Charles Scorsese. It's such an essential
deep dive, you know, especially when you look
at the sheer scope of the source material we
have here. We're talking about a six decade career.
Six decades. It's incredible. It really is. From
his humble roots in New York's Little Italy,
all the way through the explosion of New Hollywood
to, well, to what he is now. A global preservationist.
Yeah. One of the last true auteurs in American
cinema. Exactly. And that's our mission today,
right? To go far beyond just the greatest hits
real. I mean, everybody knows the tracking. shot
in goodfellas or that you talking to me of course
yeah but we want to understand the foundational
influences you know the sickness the religion
the european art house films that really build
his moral architecture and how all of those things
those um those core elements consistently inform
the techniques he uses to explore what you called
american myth and moral turmoil the output is
just It really does speak for itself. The critical
acclaim is staggering. It is. He's got that Academy
Award for Best Director for The Departed, which
was so long deserved. So long. But it's beyond
the hardware, you know, the BAFTAs, the Emmys,
the Golden Globes. It's the institutional recognition.
That's the key. I mean, he got the AFI Life Achievement
Award way back in 1997. And then the Kennedy
Center Honor in 2007, the BAFTA Fellowship in
2012. He's been an institution for decades. And
the cultural. impact is just, it's measurable.
You can actually point to it. Four of his films.
Four. It's amazing. Mean Streets, Taxi Driver,
Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. They're not just
beloved films. They've been officially inducted
into the National Film Registry. Which means
they are considered foundational. Culturally
significant works that have to be preserved forever.
Four pillars of modern American cinema, all from
one man. That kind of stature, I think, it demands
that we understand the soil he grew from. You
can't really get the moral landscape of his films
without the physical landscape of his youth.
Let's start there then, the immediate environment
that shaped his whole vision. Okay, so let's
unpack it. Martin Charles Scorsese, born in Queens,
1942. But his formative years, the ones that
really matter for his art, were spent in the
heart of Manhattan's Little Italy. And he was
the child of Sicilian -American parents. That
very tight, working class, Italian -American
experience. That's the world he would later put
on screen. It was his whole world. Vibrant, volatile,
immediate. And that family environment didn't
just give him the subject matter. It gave him
the talent. His parents, Charles and Catherine
Scorsese, they worked in the garment district.
Right. Charles was a clothes presser. Catherine,
a seamstress. But they were also actors. And
they became these frequent, wonderful collaborators
in his films. Which gives his early work this
incredible, immediate authenticity. It's that
real, unfiltered neighborhood voice. I think
that inclusion, you know, having his own parents
in the movies, it says everything about his approach.
It wasn't about hiring polished actors to portray
this life. No, it was about integrating his actual
world into his art. Exactly. And that grounding
gives his films a texture that you just you don't
see in the films that try to copy his style.
The authenticity is personal. It's not manufactured.
And you can trace that lineage back even further.
His grandparents were Sicilian immigrants from
Polizzi Generosa and Simena. And this is where
we find this fascinating little detail about
the name. Yes. The original family name was actually
Scudzessi. Which means Scotch or Scottish in
Italian. It was a transcription error, right?
When they arrived. Just a mistake. But it's such
a small but powerful detail. It illustrates that
kind of. foundational confusion, that shifting
identity that's so central to the immigrant experience.
And to his characters, who are always caught
between two worlds. But his primary education,
his real classroom, wasn't on the streets. The
single most crucial, defining fact of his childhood
wasn't community sports or street life. It was
isolation. He had severe chronic asthma as a
boy. And that illness is really the key to his
whole artistic sensibility. Because he couldn't
run around, he couldn't play sports, he couldn't
do the rough and tumble stuff with the other
kids. He was sidelined. He was forced to be an
observer. So his family, to keep him occupied,
they just took him to the movies. Constantly.
So that's seclusion. It turned the cinema into
his social and emotional laboratory. Think about
that. He was learning about honor, violence,
love, betrayal. Not from doing it, but from watching
these heightened, stylized versions of life on
a screen. It completely shaped his art. If he'd
been out on the field, maybe he'd be making movies
about teamwork. Right. Or external conflict.
But because he was inside, watching. His films
were all about the interior life. guilt, paranoia,
the violence that brews inside a solitary man.
Characters like Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta,
they're these intense loners, even when they're
surrounded by people. That's the lens, the lens
of this sick kid who became a cinephile. And
that cinephilia wasn't just, you know, what was
playing down the street. His passion ignited
this ferocious appetite for all of film history,
global film history. And his influences are so
diverse, the tension between them, between high
art and low genre, that's what creates his style.
That's a great way to put it. So what were the
big ones? The cornerstone foreign works that
really shaped him in that theater? Well, he was
deeply, deeply affected by British cinema, particularly
the visual audacity of Powell and Pressburger.
Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. Especially
The Red Shoes. It was like a blueprint for how
you could use color and operatic melodrama to
express. what's going on inside someone's head.
He didn't just love them, he studied them. And
he was committed, even as a teenager. The source
material notes he would commute all the way to
the Bronx. Just to rent a reel. A single reel
of their even more obscure film, The Tales of
Hoffman. And here's where the story gets kind
of incredible. We know who the only other person
was who was regularly renting that exact same
rare reel. from that specific store. George A.
Romero. George A. Romero. It's unbelievable.
Two future legends, one defined by internal violence,
the other by external apocalypse, unknowingly
sharing this one specific influential piece of
art. Wow. That's a powerful origin story for
that whole new Hollywood generation. But he was
also absorbing the complete opposite end of the
spectrum. Exactly. World cinema that was all
about gritty, ground -level reality. You mean
Italian neorealism. Precisely. You see the deep
imprint of masters like Roberto Rossellini, his
films Rome, Open City, and Paisa. And Isika's
bicycle thieves. They showed him the power of
authenticity, of using non -professional actors,
shooting on location in the middle of all this
social decay. And that tension between the artificial
controlled expressionism of the Red Shoes and
the raw observational truth of Rome, Open City.
That's the whole Scorsese universe right there.
It is. His films are basically Italian near -realist
dramas. staged with the extreme lighting and
color of Powell and Pressburger. You could literally
see it. The documentary energy of mean streets
next to the distorted psychological boxing scenes
and raging bull. And he even made a documentary
about it, Il mio viaggio, in Italia, where he
traces that influence. He talks about watching
the Sicilian episode of Paisa on TV with his
family and how it felt like this direct connection
to his heritage. He also loved the American masters,
though. John Ford's westerns. Oh, yeah. The Quiet
Man and especially The Searchers. And you can't
talk about Taxi Driver without talking about
The Searchers. Absolutely not. Ford's vision
of the isolated man on a quest for redemption
or vengeance in a corrupt world. That's a theme
Scorsese comes back to over and over. And Alfred
Hitchcock, of course. Vertigo. Which he said
he responded to very strongly. It was a master
class in controlled paranoia and visual subjectivity.
So he's already operating like an academic here,
which explains his next step, even though he
had a very different plan at first. He did. He
wanted to be a priest, attended preparatory seminary.
But he failed out after the first year. It's
hard to imagine American cinema without that
one minor failure. The path to the pulpit closed
and the path to the director's chair opened up.
He went to NYU. Got a BA in English in 64 and
an MA in film in 68. And NYU gave him key mentors,
like Professor Haig P. Mnuchin. It also gave
him hands -on experience, even if he wasn't a
natural at everything. Right. He said he was
terrible at judging focus when he was an assistant
cameraman. But the learning was invaluable. He
even worked as an editor for CBS News for a while
before deciding to pursue his own vision. And
that vision finally came together with his feature
debut, Who's That Knocking at My Door, in 1967.
And this film is essential, not just for what
it is, but for who it introduced. Two of his
most indispensable collaborators, Harvey Keitel.
And most importantly, the editor, Thelma Schoonmaker.
That film immediately signaled something was
happening. Roger Ebert, in his first review of
Scorsese, called it a great moment in American
movies. And he recognized that mix of American
sincerity with the raw freshness of the New York
underground, like John Cassavetes. And Cassavetes
was so important. He was a mentor who pushed
Scorsese to make personal projects, the films
he wanted to make. The irony, though, is that
it was a commercial B -movie gig that taught
him some crucial lessons. Roger Corman. Boxcar
Bertha in 1972. Corman's school of filmmaking
was simple. Make it entertaining, make it fast,
and make it cheap. And that discipline proved
invaluable later on. So he's got the European
art house, the new realist grit, the American
Western myth, the Catholic guilt and the Corman
efficiency. That explosive cocktail finally came
together in 1973. The official breakthrough.
That era starts definitively with Mean Streets.
And it wasn't just a win for Scorsese. It was
the breakthrough for him, for Keitel and for
Robert De Niro. Their first true collaboration.
It established everything. And this is where
the Scorsese style just hits you in the face.
The macho posturing, the raw language, the bursts
of violence. And that undeniable sense of Catholic
guilt just simmering under everything. It's so
funny, you know, the sources remind us that most
of it was actually shot in L .A. But it feels
so intensely New York. It's the editing and the
soundtrack that made it revolutionary, though.
Pauline Kael called it A triumph of personal
filmmaking. She said that if it had subtitles,
critics would be praising a new European or South
American talent. A new Buñol. She was pointing
out that this level of personal kinetic art was
usually only associated with foreign auteurs,
not some young American working in a genre film.
The rock and roll. It's not just background music.
It's like a third character. The slow motion
walk into the bar set to Be My Baby. It turns
a simple entrance into this moment of cinematic
ecstasy and preordained doom. That set the blueprint
for the next 50 years. But then he took a detour
with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Right.
A female -centric film that won Ellen Burstyn
an Oscar. It showed he had range. But his definitive
statement was next. Taxi Driver. 1976. The ultimate
expression of the isolated observer. Won the
Palme d 'Or at Cannes. This is where his other
crucial collaboration begins with the writer
Paul Schrader. And Schrader's script had this
layered origin. It drew from the diary of Arthur
Bremmer, the guy who shot George Wallace. And
significantly, John Ford's The Searchers. Yes.
The isolation of Travis Bickle driving through
this polluted city. It mirrors John Wayne's Ethan
Edwards, the obsessive outsider trying to save
a girl from a system he despises. That blend
of high art existentialism and low pulp vigilante
fantasy is what made it so electric. And tragically,
so controversial five years later. When John
Hinckley Jr., who was obsessed with the film,
tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan. It forced
a really uncomfortable conversation about cinematic
influence. And it's something Scorsese has always
taken seriously. But after that peak, he stumbled.
New York, New York in 1977. The big budget musical.
And its commercial failure was devastating for
him. On top of that, he was suffering from a
serious cocaine addiction, which led to depression
and internal bleeding. He was in the hospital.
He hit rock bottom. The story of him being in
the hospital convinced he was going to die. It's
legendary. And this is where the redemption narrative
starts. It really is. Robert De Niro essentially
saved his life. He came to him with the script
for Raging Bull. The violent biopic of boxer
Jake LaMotta. And he urged Scorsese to channel
all his physical and psychological despair into
this brutal character study. Scorsese called
it a kamikaze method of filmmaking. He thought
it might be his last movie. It turned out to
be anything but. Raging Bull is considered a
masterpiece. The greatest film of the 1980s.
According to Sight and Sound, it was the zenith
of his style. We have to talk about the technical
choices here because they're the emotional content.
Shooting in high contrast, black and white, that
wasn't just for show. No, it strips away the
glamour of boxing and forces you to confront
the ugliness of LaMotta's life. What's so amazing
is that right after the operatic chaos of Raging
Bull, he makes a film as static and restrained
as the king of comedy. Was that a deliberate
rejection of his own style? I think it was a
profound reaction. For the king of comedy, he
had deliberately shifted to a static camera.
Long takes. It was perfect for the subject. Rupert
Pupkin is trapped in the static frame of celebrity
media. He's literally incapable of moving beyond
the fantasy of fame. And Scorsese himself says
De Niro's performance as Pupkin is the best work
they ever did together. High praise. And it was
after Raging Bull that his film started getting
labeled a Martin Scorsese picture. It became
a brand. After the commercial disappointment
of King of Comedy, he took on a few other projects.
After Hours, which won him Best Director at Cannes,
and The Color of Money with Paul Newman. Which
was a clear commercial play to finance his real
passion project. The Last Temptation of Christ
in 1988. He had tried to make it for years, but
Paramount pulled the plug because of pressure
from religious groups. So Universal made a deal
with him? They'd finance it, but only if he agreed
to direct the more mainstream thriller Cape Fear
for them later. And the resulting film was hugely
controversial, with protests and bomb threats.
It really showed he was willing to risk his career
for a deeply personal theological exploration.
It was a necessary step on the road to his later
masterpiece, Silence. Which brings us right into
the core of his work, the themes that bind all
these films together. Let's start with Religious
Guilt. It's probably the single most prominent
theme in his work. It flows right from his Catholic
upbringing and his failure to become a priest.
It's not just Catholic imagery either. It's an
explicit examination of how Catholicism creates
and deals with this deep, crippling sense of
sin. It's everywhere, from Charlie in Mean Streets
burning his fingers to Atone for His Cousin's
Debts to the internal struggles in nearly every
film. It's a cinema of confession and penance.
And that theme really comes to a head with his
later work, confirming that his relationship
with his faith has only gotten deeper. Absolutely.
Silence, which came out in 2016, was a passion
project he'd been developing for over 26 years.
It deals directly with a crisis of faith, apostasy,
the silence of God in the face of suffering.
And in discussing that film, Scorsese explicitly
said, I am most comfortable as a Catholic. A
big shift from his earlier identity as a lapsed
Catholic. So you have the internal battle of
sin and grace. But the external world in his
films is just as morally compromised. It's systemic
rot. It's not just a few bad apples. His films
are full of corrupt police, politicians, business
leaders. His early films focused on the individual
gangster. But as he moved into films like Goodfellas
and Casino, the critique became much more sociological.
And then with The Irishman, Richard Brody called
it a sociopolitical horror story. Wow. Because
it showed every level of society poisoned by
graft and impunity. The mobsters aren't outside
the system. They are the system. They influence
elections, control unions. The horror isn't the
violence. It's the spiritual void created by
society where sin is just another word for power.
Exactly. And in that system, there's no redemption
because the entire structure is corrupt. OK,
let's get into the mechanics. The visual fingerprints
that make a Scorsese picture instantly recognizable.
First, you have the pacing devices, extensive
use of slow motion, freeze frames and voiceover
narration. Let's talk about the freeze frame.
It's so specific to his crime epics. It is. You
see it in Goodfellas, Casino, The Irishman. And
what it does is it strips agency from the character
and documents their fate. It's like the film
is saying, stop. This moment right here, this
is where it all went wrong. It's a godlike perspective
documenting the fall from grace. When Jimmy Conway
is frozen at the end of Goodfellas, his fate
is sealed. It's a historical record of failure.
And then there's the specific visual trope of
the angelic wand. Yes, the angelic wand. It's
a visual signature, a subtle nod to Hitchcock,
maybe. His blonde leading ladies are always introduced
as angelic and ethereal. Usually wearing white,
usually in slow motion. Exactly. Think of Kathy
Moriarty in her white bikini in Raging Bull.
A vision of impossible purity in a brutal black
and white world. Or Sharon Stone in her white
mena dress in Casino. They represent this potential
for escape that the self -destructive male protagonist
always ends up corrupting or ruining. They're
more symbol than character. But maybe his most
famous device is the aggressive camera movement,
the long tracking shot set to popular music.
The Copacabana entrance in Goodfellas is the
classic example, but he uses it to convey this
rush of power and euphoria in so many films.
It violently immerses you in the character's
headspace during a moment of supreme confidence.
You're dragged along, sharing their adrenaline
rush, and the music choice is so crucial. Often
it's the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter. He uses
it in Goodfellas Casino and The Departed. It's
a leitmotif for impending chaos. It instantly
signals that the glamour is about to collide
violently with reality. And for the real Sinfophiles...
You can't overlook his constant visual homages
to film history. The iris transition, that black
circle closing in on the screen. That's a direct
homage to 1920s silent films. He uses it strategically
in Casino and Hugo. It's a formal nod that reminds
you this film is part of a much longer conversation.
He's reminding you that the language you're watching
has a century vocabulary behind it. And that's
why his collaborations are so critical. He needs
a team that speaks his language. You have two
major actor dynasties. First, the iconic partnership
with Robert De Niro. Ten feature films. De Niro's
characters for Scorsese are generally... Volatile,
self -destructive, driven by this internal madness.
Jake LaMotta, Kravis Pickle, Jimmy Conway. And
then you have the new muse for the 21st century,
Leonardo DiCaprio. Six feature films so far.
It's an interesting contrast. It is. While De
Niro often played the raw, street -level guy,
DiCaprio often plays the character who is constrained
by the system. The detective in The Departed.
The financial manipulator in The Wolf of Wall
Street. DiCaprio's characters are ambitious figures
trying to fit into or break a powerful institution,
whereas De Niro's were often outside of them
completely. Which suggests a shift in Scorsese's
own focus, maybe from the lone madman to systemic
corruption. And beyond the actors, the crew is
irreplaceable. Thelma Schoonmaker, his editor.
She's arguably his most essential collaborator.
Three Oscars for his films. She's the rhythm
and the violence of his movies. Without her editing,
the Scorsese... style just doesn't exist. And
the cinematographers are just as important. Michael
Ballhouse, Robert Richardson, Rodrigo Prieto.
These are the artists who translated his Catholic
guilt into high contrast imagery. And you have
to mention Saul and Elaine Bass, who did the
title design for Hitchcock. They brought that
graphic genius to Goodfellas, Casino, Cape Fear.
We also often see the director himself, right?
He frequently makes cameos or provides narration.
He's always in there somewhere. He's the off
-screen ambulance dispatcher in Bringing Out
the Dead. Yeah. A non -speaking photographer
in The Age of Innocence. And his voice opens
mean streets and guides the color of money. And,
of course, the cameos from his parents, which
further blurs that line between his life and
his art. Moving into his later career, we see
him applying these themes to more mainstream
projects, which leads to massive success and,
finally, that Oscar. It all started with The
Departed in 2006, an adaptation of the Hong Kong
thriller Infernal Affairs, but set in Boston.
It became his highest -grossing film at the time,
and, crucially, it finally got him the Best Director
Oscar. What's fascinating about this later era,
though, is his willingness to experiment. In
2011, he directs Hugo, a family adventure film,
in 3D, a huge departure. But the 3D was intentional.
It's a film about the magic of cinema, about
George Melies. He used the technology to create
a sense of wonder. It got 11 Oscar nominations.
He followed that up with two massive collaborations
with DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street in 2013.
And then The Reunion of Titans, The Irishman
in 2019. Which brought back De Niro, Pesci and
Al Pacino for this. sprawling reflective epic.
And it used another technological leap, de -aging
technology, to explore memory, regret, and the
slow decay of old age. Ten Oscar nominations
for that one. And most recently, Killers of the
Flower Moon in 2023. This later period just proves
he's still restless. Still urgent. And beyond
the narrative features, his documentary work
is formidable, especially with music. His work
with music is so key. He directed The Last Waltz,
the film about the band's final concert. And
No Direction Home about Bob Dylan, which won
him a Grammy. He treats rock musicians with the
same deep respect he gives gangsters and priests.
The Rolling Stones drummer said Marty did an
amazing job of making us look great in Shine
a Light. And he brought that aesthetic to TV,
too. Won an Emmy for directing the pilot of Boardwalk
Empire. Plus the acclaimed documentaries about
Fran Lebowitz, Public Speaking and Pretend It's
a City. But maybe his most profound legacy, the
one that affects all of film history, is his
relentless advocacy for film preservation. This
is monumental. And it ties right back to him
as that isolated kid who revered the Red Shoes.
In 1990, he co -founded the Film Foundation with
Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, all the big names.
And what are the results of that? As of 2020,
the foundation has helped restore well over 850
films worldwide. Without this work, massive portions
of global film history would just vanish. He
spearheaded the restoration of the Red Shoes
himself, didn't he? He did, painstakingly restoring
the Technicolor palette. He was saving a key
part of his own history and cinema's history
at the same time. Then he expanded that mission
globally in 2007 with the World Cinema Project.
Which specifically targets marginalized films
from regions that don't have the money or technology
to preserve their own history. It's about making
sure global voices aren't erased. The impact
here is so tangible. They've restored masterpieces
like Ousmane Simbin's Black Girl from Senegal.
They've fundamentally rewritten the canon of
global film history. And then in 2017, the African
Film Heritage Project, a joint initiative with
UNESCO dedicated to locating and preserving 50
classic African films. This elevates him from
a great director to an essential cultural archivist.
And the industry knows it. Sam Mendes at the
Golden Globes said there's not one director in
this room that is not in the shadow of Martin
Scorsese. And Bong Joon -ho. When he won his
Oscar for Parasite, quoted Scorsese, the most
personal is the most creative. And the whole
room gave Scorsese a standing ovation. It was
this recognition that his personal vision legitimized
deeply felt non -commercial filmmaking for everyone.
Before we wrap up, we have to mention the sense
of urgency he feels right now. He said it in
an interview. I'm old. I want to tell stories
and there's no more time. And that urgency is
fueling a huge pipeline of projects. A Grateful
Dead biopic. a reunion with DiCaprio for The
Wager. And, most sellingly, a new film about
Jesus based on another book by Shusaku Endu,
the author of Silence. He's returning to the
theological questions that have haunted his whole
career. It's an exhausting slate for a filmmaker
who feels time is slipping away, but it speaks
to his relentless drive. Let's briefly touch
on some of the personal details. He's been married
five times currently to Helen Schermerhorn Morris
since 1999. Three children. And two of his daughters,
Domenica and Francesca, are involved in film.
Francesca has appeared in The Departed and Hugo.
It keeps that family connection going. We also
tracked his evolving religious identity from
lapsed Catholic to declaring in 2016, I am most
comfortable as a Catholic. And in terms of politics,
he has been public with his opinions. He opposed
the Iraq war. In 2025, he criticized the Trump
administration for what he saw as a lack of compassion.
We just report that as fact. We also have to
note he recently settled a 2024 lawsuit brought
by a screenwriter over a World War II project
that he didn't follow through on. A reminder
that even legends navigate the murky waters of
Hollywood financing. So we've traced this journey
from an isolated boy watching shadows on a screen
to an architect of American myth and a global
preservationist. That preservation work is so
crucial, especially the World Cinema Project,
rescuing films from the Philippines, Senegal,
Turkey. Voices that would otherwise be lost.
And that leads us directly to the final thought
we want to leave you with. Given Scorsese's career
-long dedication to restoration, from saving
his favorite film, The Red Shoes, to his global
mission to find and rescue neglected films. We
have to ask ourselves, beyond the classics he's
selecting, what contemporary, marginalized films
being made right now are we not protecting? When
a future viewer tries to understand our culture,
what are the next Black Girl? or tukibuki that
are being ignored by archives and festivals today.
Films that speak essential truths about our world,
but lack the studio backing to guarantee their
survival. The question isn't just about what
Scorsese is saving. It's about what films we,
as a culture, are overlooking right now. Who
is documenting our present? And who will be the
Scorsese of the future, saving the cinematic
treasures we are currently ignoring? Something
to mull over. Thank you for joining us for this
deep dive.