It’s everybody’s favorite argument. The comparison between the works of Martin Scorsese and the ever-increasingly popular superhero/comic book genre (often just thought of in regard to the success of those adapted from Marvel comics and, particularly, those adapted by Marvel Studios) has given a great many people a great amount of irritation.
Part of this is due to just how inevitable this conflict was. Over the course of the past decade, mainstream Hollywood filmmaking has noticeably shifted even further away from mid-budget movies, that could combine authorial direction with studio-sized wads of cash, to something mostly more expensive and more studio-controlled. In that time, Marvel Studios’ so-called MCU has positioned itself as a leading example of success in the realm of high-budget crowdpleasers, while Scorsese has remained one of the few auteur directorial icons to emerge from the 1970s who still makes films as such. This conversation was always going to happen and it was always going to be unpleasant when it did.
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One good thing that can definitely be said about the discourse, however, is that it has opened up more people to Scorsese and his films. So, if you don’t know much about him and would like to know more, these eight very highly-rated films can provide a great jumping-off point for someone looking to know more about Scorsese and his impact on American filmmaking. (Each of these movies ranks higher in critical scores – by Metacritic’s calculations – than the highest-rated Marvel film on the site, which is Black Panther with a robust score of 88.)
Raging Bull (89)
This infamous biopic of boxer Jake LaMotta’s rise and fall earned Scorsese his first nomination for Best Director at the Oscars. (One of nine, to date.) What’s perhaps even more important to Scorsese’s career than that, however, is that it was also the director’s first collaboration with actor Joe Pesci, playing LaMotta’s brother in his second credited screen role ever.
Robert De Niro’s performance as LaMotta would gain him his second Oscar and first for Best Actor in a leading role, thanks in no small part to his verbal and physical sparring with Pesci, while Michael Chapman’s black and white cinematography continues to captivate audiences to this day. But Raging Bullwould, most notably, mark the moment when the world would first really take notice of the stunning work of Scorsese’s longest and most significant collaborator – editor Thelma Schoonmaker.
After Hours (90)
One of the director’s most critically acclaimed works but perhaps not the best film to start with if you’re unfamiliar with their back catalog. After Hours is mostly remembered as a dark comedy but, of all of Scorsese’s films, it resists the conventions of tone and genre the most. It’s also not an easy movie to fully appreciate unless you’re familiar with Scorsese as a real-life figure. If you haven’t seen a lot of footage of him speaking then you’re unlikely to notice just how much of the director is reflected in Griffin Dunne’s portrayal of the neurotic protagonist.
After Hours is a dreamlike journey through what is essentially a literal comedic nightmare, all set in the nighttime world of the director’s beloved New York City. The big brushstrokes of Tim Burton surrealism (Burton was originally attached to direct), existential dread and quintessential Scorsese psychosexual anxiety create a truly unique experience.
The Age of Innocence (90)
Scorsese’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name was an unceasingly sumptuous example of how he could tackle any subject with flawless mastery thanks to his devotion to depicting the universal power of human emotion.
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Scorsese, who came from a working-class family in Little Italy, had no experience in, or connection to, the microcosm of American royalty that Wharton’s characters inhabited. But there’s no stitch out of place in his recreation of the buttoned-up world of late-nineteenth-century New York. The decadence of the characters’ surroundings provides a perfect cover for one of Scorsese’s most unflinchingly restrained dramas and it leaves an uncanny impact.
Goodfellas (90)
After huge successes in a number of other collaborations, Goodfellas saw Scorsese, De Niro, Pesci and Schoonmaker hit a kind of stride that’s rarely seen in the pursuit of perfection within any discipline, not just filmmaking.
The true-crime story was far from lightning in a bottle and would have its magic recreated just as powerfully, if not more so, in collaborations that continue to this very day. But Goodfellas will always be remembered as the film that got there first. Like the discovery of a new element. The influence of Goodfellas can be seen and felt in numerous aspects of modern media and it remains one of the most significant entries in Scorsese’s – or anyone else’s – attempts to highlight the culture of Italian Americans. Its main rival for the top spot in that category being the next film on our list.
My Voyage to Italy (90)
Something that even longtime Scorsese fans don’t often know about the director is the breadth of his achievements in the medium of documentary. Across a vast range of fascinating and unique subjects, Scorsese has explored artistic movements and complex real-life characters. My Voyage to Italy was the second documentary in what will hopefully be a slowly ongoing series regarding the director’s personal relationship with the movies that informed their youth.
From Rossellini to Fellini, Scorsese breaks down the history of Italian neorealism as well as his own history with it. His informal approach to the typically stuffy deconstruction of classic film theory is a great example of how ahead of his time Scorsese was and still is.
The Irishman (94)
The director’s most recent movie, the press tour for which would spark the Scorsese/Marvel debate that we all know and love. The Irishman quashed any doubt, under the highest levels of scrutiny, that Scorsese is one of the most adept filmmakers to ever emerge out of the globally recognized Hollywood system that the director has grappled with for so many decades.
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The long-overdue reteaming of Scorsese, De Niro and Pesci was certainly a welcome blast from the past for fans but nothing ever feels even close to rehashed. In his late-70s, Scorsese clearly presents himself as a filmmaker who is still pushing boundaries and is unlikely to ever stop. The addition of Al Pacino to Scorsese’s mob world brings a distinctly Shakespearean aplomb to The Irishman and cements the film as something akin to Akira Kurosawa’s latter-day masterpiece Ran, and Scorsese as an American equivalent to Kurosawa himself.
Taxi Driver (94)
Perhaps still the most iconic entry in all of Scorsese’s extensive filmography, Taxi Driver created a character for the ages in the psychologically unhinged Travis Bickle. From De Niro’s lead performance to Bernard Herrmann’s score, Taxi Driver is a number of towering aspects connected together to form a powerful whole.
The influence of the film can be seen clearly in other immensely popular mainstream movies even today, with Todd Phillips’ heavily Oscar-nominated Jokerclearly alluding to both this and a later film where Scorsese and De Niro teamed up for another unforgettably disturbing character study, 1982’s The King of Comedy.
Mean Streets (96)
Though often mistakenly thought of as Scorsese’s first-ever feature film, Mean Streets was undeniably the director’s breakthrough. It was the film that finally united the powerhouse of Scorsese and De Niro, each seeming to bring out talents in the other that neither one knew that they had before.
The influence that Mean Streets has had on not just American filmmaking but filmmaking in general is a little less apparent than with a film like Goodfellas but it’s potentially far more important. Mean Streets was the moment when Scorsese first truly discovered how to parlay his European sensibilities, and themes of religious guilt, into what could be considered as mainstream American cinema. The number of low-budget indie crime dramas and slice-of-life films that it has since inspired is frankly incalculable.
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