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Martin Scorsese
Director / Producer / Screenwriter
1942 - 
Born November 17, Queens, New York, USA
Key Production Country: USA 
Key Genres: Drama, Crime, Period Film, Urban Drama, Gangster Film, Crime Drama, Documentary, Psychological Drama
Key Collaborators: Thelma Schoonmaker (Editor), Robert De Niro (Leading Player), Barbara De Fina (Producer), Michael Ballhaus (Cinematographer), Dante Ferretti (Production Designer), Harvey Keitel (Leading Player), Leonardo DiCaprio (Leading Player), Paul Schrader (Screenwriter), Mardik Martin (Screenwriter), Howard Shore (Composer)

Highly Recommended: Mean Streets (1973)*, Taxi Driver (1976)*, New York, New York (1977)*, Raging Bull (1980)*, The King of Comedy (1983)*, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)*, GoodFellas (1990)*, Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993)*, Casino (1995)*, Kundun (1997) 
Recommended: Who's That Knocking at My Door? (1968), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), The Last Waltz (1978), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), My Voyage to Italy (1999), The Aviator (2004)^, The Departed (2006)^
Worth a Look: The Big Shave (1967), Italianamerican (1974), After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986), Gangs of New York (2002)^, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan [TV] (2005), Shutter Island (2009)
Approach with Caution: Boxcar Bertha (1972), New York Stories (1989) [co-directed by Francis Ford Coppola & Woody Allen]
* Listed in TSPDT's 1,000 Greatest Films section; ^ Listed in TSPDT's 21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films section.

Links: [ Amazon ] [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide[ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Wikipedia ] [ Scorsese and His Films ] [ DGA Conversation with Steven Spielberg ] [ Lifetime Achievement Award ] [ BBC Interview ] [ BBC Audio Interviews (1992-1998 ] [ FilmForce Interview (2004) ] [ American Masters ] [ Close-Up Film Article (2006) ] [ Independent Article (2006) ] [ DIRECTV: The Scorsese Selection ] [ Ask Men Article (2008) ]
Books: [ Scorsese on Scorsese: Revised Edition ] [ Martin Scorsese: A Biography ] [ Scorsese by Ebert ] [ The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese ] [ Martin Scorsese's America ] [ The Collaborations of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro ] [ The Scorsese Connection ] [ Martin Scorsese: A Journey ] [ A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies ] [ Martin Scorsese: Interviews (Interviews with Filmmakers Series) ] [  Martin Scorsese (Pocket Essentials) ] [ The Cinema of Martin Scorsese  ] [ Martin Scorsese ]
 
Mean Streets (1973)Taxi Driver (1976)Raging Bull (1980)GoodFellas (1990)
 
     
  "Scorsese is an enthusiast. It comes through in the way he talks (hardly stopping to draw breath) and in the way he makes his movies - passionately, with one wary eye on the past...In purely filmic terms, Scorsese's real talent lies in his capacity to mould dialogue, movement and sound into one fluid, cinematic whole, and he achieves this effect most consistently with GoodFellas (1990)." - Mario Reading (The Movie Companion, 2006)  
     
  "Based in New York, he pursues his own path (with Hollywood money), continuously turning out films that are utterly personal and often deeply autobiographical...Bold, inventive, versatile, and uncompromising, Scorsese is one of the most intelligent and provocative filmmakers working in cinema today." - (The MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994)  
     
  "Scorsese, arguably the most cinematically eloquent American director of modern times, is best characterised as an expressionist and cinephile...His exhilaratingly long, complex camera movements, his often staccato editing, and his carefully controlled use of colour, props, decor and music are all designed not only to take us inside the minds of his often paranoid, volatile or disturbed protagonists, but to pay tribute, in passing, to movies he loves." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)  
     
  "New York City and New Yorkers have been characterized by Scorsese better than by any other director of his generation. In his young career, he has shown concern for violence in society and the seamier side of life." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
  "What does it take to be a filmmaker in Hollywood? Even today I still wonder what it takes to be a professional or even an artist in Hollywood. How do you survive the constant tug of war between personal expression and commercial imperatives? What is the price you pay to work in Hollywood? Do you end up with a split personality? Do you make one movie for them, one for yourself?" - Martin Scorsese (A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, 1997)  
     
  "Every year or so, I try to do something; it keeps me refreshed as to what's going on in front of the lens, and I understand what the actor is going through." - Martin Scorsese  
     
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"Scorsese’s work evidences a remarkable thematic consistency. His collaborations with the screenwriter Paul Schrader  on Mean Streets, Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999) only hint at this consistency. Whether he is directing a period adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel The Age of Innocence (1993), creating a Tibetan epic based on the early years of the Dalai Lama in Kundun (1997), or returning, as he so often has, to the formulas of the crime film in GoodFellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), or Casino (1995), Scorsese is fascinated by the story of the hero in revolt against a stifling culture whose norms he or she has internalized to a dangerous extent." - Thomas Leitch, Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

 
 
Top 200 Directors 
21st Century Top 50 
The 11th Most Influential Director of All Time (2002 MovieMaker Poll)
Survey of Filmmakers: Top 25 Directors (2005 poll by The Film Journal)
Ranked 2nd on The Guardian's 2004 List of the World's 40 Best Directors
501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers
 
See Also
Robert Aldrich
John Cassavetes
Francis Ford Coppola
Jonathan Demme
Brian De Palma
Elia Kazan
Barry Levinson
Anatole Litvak
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Roberto Rossellini
Robert Rossen
Paul Schrader
View video clips relating to this director at YouTube.com
 
         
         

 

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Last updated: 04/08/2010 03:09 PM.  Contact Us: bill@theyshootpictures.com.
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"A film is a petrified fountain of thought." - Jean Cocteau   "If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed." - Stanley Kubrick