One of America's most critically acclaimed filmmakers for more than 20 years, Scorsese has won worldwide plaudits with a body of work that is informed by his Italian-American Catholic upbringing. As a young man, Scorsese decided to enter the priesthood, but...
[more]One of America's most critically acclaimed filmmakers for more than 20 years, Scorsese has won worldwide plaudits with a body of work that is informed by his Italian-American Catholic upbringing. As a young man, Scorsese decided to enter the priesthood, but dropped out of seminary after his first year. He eventually landed at New York University's film school, where he made several prize-winning student shorts, including "It's Not Just You," "Murray" (his first gangster movie), and "Who's That Knocking at My Door," which starred a young Harvey Keitel.
With fellow Little Italy native Robert De Niro, Scorsese recreated the street life of their old neighborhood in the disturbing "Mean Streets" (1973), and inaugurated a series of nervy portraits that unrelentingly chart urban menace and underworld ethics. Scorsese's most terrifying study of urban alienation, "Taxi Driver" (1976), presaged his masterwork, "Raging Bull" (1980), in its psychological sketch of male violence. Filmed in edgy, kinetic black-and-white, "Raging Bull" features a harrowing performance by De Niro as boxing champion Jake La Motta.
Scorsese's gallery of deluded, violent, tormented characters shares the searing anxieties of contemporary society. His interpretation of Nikos Kazantzakis's controversial "The Last Temptation of Christ" was labeled everything from satanic to blasphemous by religious groups and many protested it, oblivious to the ardent sincerity of Scorsese's attempt to explore the emotional life of the Messiah. The Oscar-winning "GoodFellas," a brilliant, bloodstained study of the Italian mafia, marked a return to classic Scorsese. He followed with the spotty "Cape Fear," the beauteous but brittle "Age of Innocence," and the ruthless, emotionally volatile "Casino." 1997's "Kundun," an exquisite film about the life of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, so outraged the Chinese government that the studio hired Henry Kissinger to kid-glove its delicate dealings with officials.
Scorsese's style, distinguished by its disturbing variations on classic scenarios, emotionally intense performances, and sweeping, unpredictable camerawork, was influenced largely by French New Wave and American films of the 1940s and 1950s. Challenging the norms of Hollywood genres, Scorsese charges the front lines of American culture by provocatively and intelligently mirroring his own demons of sexuality, guilt, violence, fear, and doubt, making for a uniquely visceral, confessional cinema of the highest order.
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