'but he just makes gangster films'

I'm often asked by younger filmmakers  why do I need to look at old movies? I've made a number of pictures in the past 20  years, and the response I find that I have to give them is that I still consider myself a  student. The more pictures I made in the past 20 years the more I realize I really don't  know, and I'm always looking for something, something or someone that I could that  I could learn from. Enrich your pallet, expand the canvas. There's  always so much more to learn. Hi, I'm Lawren

ce and welcome to Archer Green. Today we're going to talk about one of  the greatest filmmakers of all time. Martin Scorsese. When you think Scorsese, what comes to mind? It could be his slower, more  intimate films like Taxi Driver. Or it could be his more extravagant, larger scale, rise and fall narratives of Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street or Casino. But what all of these films have in common,  what can be found in almost every Scorsese film. What has become synonymous with  his name amon

g general audiences. Crime. If there's one thing Martin  Scorsese loves, it's crime films. - The gangster film, organised  crime, gangster genre. - We can see it in his first film  Who's That Knocking at my Door. And his most recent, The Irishman. Throughout his whole career, Scorsese  has been fascinated by the mafia, by gangsters by breaking the law, by crime. - As far back as I could remember  I always wanted to be a gangster. - But this is only one side of his filmography, he also has films

like this. - 1633. Pax Christi. Praised be God. Although for us, there is  little peace in this land now. - Every now and again Scorsese will make a slower paced, more spiritual film. He turns everything he's known for on his head. There's little in common between this. - For all beings desire happiness,  all wish to find their purest selves. - And this. Begging the question, what  is Martin Scorsese's style? Every filmmaker has one, Tarantino has his  signature conversational dialogue and it ca

n be found in a Western, a World War Two movie, and a Kung Fu movie. Fincher's iconic colour palette is evident  in a dark and gritty murder mystery, and also a movie about Facebook. - That's what you said? - Nolan has his manipulation of time. Edgar Wright has his signature style of editing, and you can spot a Wes Anderson film a mile away. - Truly. - But what about Scorsese, what is his style? What specific things does he  do in every movie he directs? Narratively, some of his  films share com

mon elements. But there's little you can find in both  the Wolf of Wall Street, and Silence. - Maybe this is not a story for a celibate priest. - What about voiceovers? Well there's no narration in the King  of Comedy, Hugo, or Shutter Island. - Oh I don't know doctor you tell us. - Long tracking shots? It's certainly a tool under his belt, but  there's only one proper one in Silence, and it's almost non-existent in Taxi Driver. But let's pause for a moment. In order to understand Scorsese's cin

ematic style, We need to understand that Scorsese has  a deep love and understanding of cinema. - Scorsese is so much film, and love of film, I might be a better director if I just had dinner  at his house every week and we just talked. - It's been a part of his life  ever since he was a child. - He always talks about him as this young man  with asthma with his father watching film, after film, after film, in a contained  environment of the theater and the drive to try to do something as great a

s all  these people that he's admired for for decades and decades and he looks at  this as the great modern art form. - And when it comes to film,  he definitely knows his stuff. - Akria Kurosawa. John Ford. Kubrick. The great Italian director, Sergio Leone. - You get the sense that he's absorbed  every effective technique he's seen from a huge range of filmmakers. But most  importantly, he understands WHY they work. - So how do you point the audience's  eye to look where you want them to look?

And to get the point, the emotional psychological  point, that you want to get across to them? - Scorsese didn't invent the long take, we can  see it here in Touch of Evil from Orson Welles. In staying on this one shot Welles, ensures  that we always know which car the bomb is in. So we relate everything that follows back to  this sense of danger. Yet in Goodfellas scorsese uses the long take for a  completely different reason. Goodfellas is a story about a man  who always wanted to be a gangste

r. Nowhere is the seduction of this life  more apparent than in this one shot. For Henry life is smooth, fluid, and easy, and  this long take is a perfect way to show that. Just like Karen, we're thrilled to be led down  a back Corridor into the life of a wise guy, and Scorsese wouldn't have it any other way. - I decided to do it in one take. At maybe 10  hours to do, but we got it done. The shot that starts out in the street, and goes through the  entire place, goes downstairs, goes through the

entire basement, goes through the halls, goes  through the kitchen. All of this sort of thing. Then finally to the front, right to  the front, right down to the dance floor right there and then he sent over  a bottle of champagne from Mr Tony and so all of a sudden there's a drum roll  and who does it end on? Henny Youngman. - How are you all I'm glad to  be here, take my wife please! - Here in Raging Bull we can see Scorsese  use the dolly zoom. One of the first uses of this technique was done

by Alfred  Hitchcock in Vertigo. Hitchcock uses it to symbolize the main character's  anxiety and fear of heights as he looks down from a tall building. In this case,  Scorsese uses it for a similar purpose, showing main character Jake LaMotta's  anxiety and confusion within the boxing ring. - Well Vertigo is partially, it's in  my DNA at this point I just simply, it's a film that is part of my Consciousness. - Okay, so what about voiceovers? Where did Scorsese get that technique? - The voice o

f the narrator,  particularly in British films, particularly, top example is  Kind Hearts and Corontets. - Henry took photograph, after photograph, but seemed to have no urge whatever to follow it up the visit to the dark room. - It kind of clashed with narration  in Italian and French New Wave films. And right around that time I  started to make my own films. It clashed but it seemed to  it seemed to fall in place. - I found myself like always being drawn to it. Of course I thought nothing of i

t, but like my eyes always met it. - But these aren't the only  cinematic techniques he relies on. What about the fast-paced, energetic  style of editing he's developed over decades with editor Thelma Schoonmaker? It's in quite a few of his films,  but by no means all of them. I would hardly describe  this sequence as energetic, yet it contains just as much violence  as a previous sequence from Goodfellas. - But I do come from a working class  family that had no books in the house. And there was

no reading done, and so my my learning of language was not  literature rather it was visual. It was through movies and films on television and  television, the early days of television, 1948. The impact the Italian films, the neorealist films had on me when I  was five or six years old never left me. - Scorsese's roots as an Italian American  are present throughout his filmography. - Take a few spoonfuls of tomato, throw them in  here because your meatballs remain very soft. - Paulie did the pr

ep work, and he had  this wonderful system for doing the garlic. He used a razor and used to slice it so thin that it used to liquefy in the  pan with just a little oil. - His upbringing is best reflected in  one of his first films, Mean Streets. It combines Italian  Americans, crime and Christianity, to paint a portrait of New York that was  undoubtedly familiar to the one he grew up in. Many of his films going forward  would share similar elements. - Suck on this. - But after Goodfellas he bra

nched out. He  cemented his reputation in Hollywood and he changed from a simple 'New York Filmmaker' into  a much more established name in the industry. - Martin Scorsese is one of the movie  world's really distinctive directors. - His budgets got larger, and he became  an advocate for film conservation. - When we have to treat every last moving image as reverently and respectfully as the  oldest book in the Library of Congress. - He also left New York and branched out into more worldly topics.

Can you really imagine the Martin  Scorsese from 1976 making Kundun? - Your Holiness. Shutter Island and Cape Fair attributes to  classical Hollywood, Hitchcock in particular. It's clear he's moving away  from his New York roots, Hugo doesn't have much to do with his  life experiences, other than his love for movies. - We now have over 80 films by Georges Méliès. - Another big thing that impacts Scorsese's style is who he works with. Taxi Driver and  raging ball are written by Paul Schrader, an

d they're both character studies of a troubled  man with ultimately self-destructive behaviour. And feature heavy violence  shot in a handheld style. His collaborations with cinematographer Robert Richardson are the most  colourful and extravagant, and his films shot by Michael Ballhaus  feature more realistic lighting and colours. His early work with Michael Chapman  has some of his most gritty visuals, and his recent work with Rodrigo Prieto is  somewhere in the middle. Like any good director

he Like any good director, he understands the  visuals need to fit the story being told. - And the grammar is panning left and right,  tracking in or out, you know booming up and down. - The lavish lifestyle in casino is reflected  by the excessive lighting and vivid colours. The Departed and Taxi Driver gritty crime films  so the visuals match that with more muted colours, and of course, his religious films  have the most subtle visuals. Rodrigo Petro himself admits it Scorsese he wanted  to be

a lot more restrained when filming Silence. - When we first started talking  about it Scorsese shared with me that he wasn't quite sure  how to approach it visually, he felt that it needed a certain restraint. -Restraint. Scorsese is so  rarely a director of restraint, but for Silence, and indeed most of his other  religious films, there's certainly a calmer tone. The pacing slows down and the violence  is betrayed in a much less Dynamic way. It's easy to Relish in the shootouts  of Scorsese's

gangster work. But it's hard not to wince at the crucifixion  scene in The Last Temptation Of Christ. Jesus' approach is shot in  slow motion to accentuate this pain rather than glamorizing the violence. Scorsese has deep Catholic roots, he initially  planned to become a priest before he got into filmmaking, and like his Italian American  Heritage this is prominent throughout his work - What they believe in was that at 12:00 at night they went to church, they celebrated mass, and after that they

came home. - Not only in his overtly religious films, but there's elements to it in  almost all of his features. - Put a little piece. - It's why Raging Bull, with no religious  imagery, ends with some on screen scripture. These Catholic roots manifest in a number of ways; Taxi Driver Mean Streets, and Goodfellas  deals with themes of redemption, while Silence, Kundun, and The  Last Temptation Of Christ portrays characters who affirm their faith in  a world increasingly hostile to it. Almost ev

ery Scorsese character ultimately faces judgment or seeks redemptions  for their actions or beliefs. - I did I thought for years about  other ways other ways of thinking, but my roots are here. I hope that there was a  place that I could explore those roots and those feelings, I mean those roots and those thoughts  and those contradictions, in an intelligent way that's still within the Christian faith. - Scorsese is a film fan first and foremost, part of why style is so hard to pin down is  beca

use it's so eclectic. His influences are seemingly unending, and he utilizes and learns  from every cinematic technique he's seen from a huge range of films he's been watching since  he was a child. So to answer the question what is Scorsese's style? We can look to a combination  of his Italian American and Christian roots that inform not only the moral fibre of his films, but also the imagery and stories he likes to tell and then he picks projects he feels connected to, and draws upon his exten

sive cinematic knowledge and film making expertise to craft the story  in the most effective way possible. Be this through the visuals editing or sound design, Scorsese uses all aspects of the film form to elevate his work to a higher standard. But what  underpins all of this, what has been a constant throughout his whole career  and goes back to his childhood, is his deep love and understanding of cinema. - I think what makes Cinema to me, I think  ultimately it's something that, for some reaso

n, stays with you, so that a few years  later you could watch it again, or 10 years later you watch  it again and it's different. In other words there's more to  learn about yourself, or about life.