Tagarchief: Martin Scorsese

Double Bill #15: Taxi Driver & Bringing Out the Dead

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

In Scorsese’s oeuvre, this is the most obvious Double Bill together with Casino and GoodFellas. Taxi Driver and Bringing Out the Dead share a great deal in common. Both revolve around a driving protagonist who suffers from urban isolation in New York City while interacting with colleagues. Both were written by Paul Schrader, feature a dark atmosphere, and explore urban madness and crime. Visually, each film reflects the protagonist’s mental state within the cityscape – often through POV shots of grim street scenes. In both, the anti-hero is driven by a desire to save others, particularly women. Each also features a rapid-fire cameo by Scorsese himself (in Bringing Out the Dead, he’s the voice of the radio dispatcher). Both films include moments that likely exist only in the protagonist’s mind: Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) sees visions of ghosts and corpses on the streets, while Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) probably imagines the entire ending of Taxi Driver. Of the two movies, Taxi Driver is obviously the masterpiece. It captures the transformation of this complex main character perfectly. From oddball, to radical, to killer. De Niro’s performance is deeply unsettling; he truly becomes Travis, and it shows. His voice-over beautifully conveys his descent into psychological darkness, and the lines have a raw, poetic quality. Shot on a low budget in a documentary style, the film has a gritty authenticity. Add Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score and the outstanding supporting cast (Jodie Foster, Peter Boyle, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd), and you have a truly iconic classic on your hands. While Bringing Out the Dead never reaches that same status, it remains an underrated entry in Scorsese’s filmography. It vividly captures the stress and chaos of working as an ambulance driver, with striking imagery – like Frank literally lifting spirits in the city. Philosophically, it reflects on life and death in the modern metropolis and, unlike Taxi Driver, includes moments of humor (in Taxi Driver, the only joke is Travis taking his date to a porn movie). Viewed together, these films form a fascinating pair: after descending into the darkness of Taxi Driver, Bringing Out the Dead feels almost like a cathartic, even therapeutic, experience.

Mean Streets (1974)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld


‘You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets…’

Directed by:
Martin Scorsese

Written by:
Martin Scorsese
Mardik Martin

Cast:
Harvey Keitel (Charlie Cappa), Robert De Niro (John ‘Johnny Boy’ Civello), David Proval (Tony DeVienazo), Richard Romanus (Michael Longo), Amy Robinson (Teresa Ronchelli), Cesare Danova (Giovanni Cappa), Victor Argo (Mario), George Memmoli (Joey ‘Clams’ Scala), Lenny Scaletta (Jimmy), Jeannie Bell (Diane)

Mean Streets marks the first collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro and right out of the gate, it’s a masterpiece. Set in the tight-knit world of Little Italy, the film follows four small-time hustlers: the conflicted Charlie (Harvey Keitel), hot-tempered bar owner Tony (David Proval), dim-witted loan shark Michael (Richard Romanus), and the reckless wildcard Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro).

Although it isn’t technically Scorsese’s debut, it feels like it. This is the movie in which his voice fully emerges for the first time. It showcases early yet commanding performances by Keitel and De Niro, two actors who would become his most trusted collaborators. Many of the hallmarks of Scorsese’s later masterpieces are already present: the gritty New York setting, the soundtrack full of sixties pop classics, the collision of religion and crime. This isn’t exactly a gangster film – it’s about small-time crooks – but it plays like a prelude to GoodFellas, with dialogues and moral tensions that already sound familiar.

Scorsese immediately sets the tone with a Super 8 projection of Charlie wandering the streets, underscored by the Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’. From there, we trail Charlie through his daily routine: drinking in bars, running minor cons, wrestling with Catholic guilt in church visits, and trying to reconcile his moral compass with his ambition.

Charlie wants to rise in the underworld by aligning with his mob-connected uncle, but his loyalty to Johnny Boy – a man drowning in debt and chaos – pulls him down a dangerous path. That loyalty is both touching and toxic, and Scorsese makes it clear early on that violence is never far away. A brutal barroom shooting foreshadows the storm gathering around these characters.

The film’s raw power lies in its atmosphere. Scorsese layers the story with a soundtrack of rock ’n’ roll classics – the Stones’ ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ among them – injecting energy and immediacy into every scene. His restless camera, the naturalistic dialogue laced with profanity, and the lived-in performances combine to create a world that feels authentic and alive.

De Niro is magnetic as Johnny Boy, unpredictable and dangerous yet oddly charming, while Keitel gives a deeply human performance as Charlie, a man torn between sin and salvation. Their chemistry is the film’s beating heart. Scene after scene burns into memory: a drunken spree, a hilariously chaotic bar fight, an explosive confrontation on the street. The pacing is electric, and the details are so rich you’ll want to revisit it just to soak up more of Scorsese’s vision.

The film still feels fresh today. It is utterly original, with no real comparison except some of Scorsese’s later work. Mean Streets doesn’t just hint at the brilliance to come; it announces the arrival of one of cinema’s great storytellers.

Rating:

Quote:
CHARLIE: “You know something? She is really good-lookin’. I gotta say that again. She is really good-lookin’. But she’s black. You can see that real plain, right? Look, there isn’t much of a difference anyway, is there. Well, is there?”

Trivia:
The opening words are actually spoken by Martin Scorsese, not Harvey Keitel as we are led to believe.

My Voyage to Italy

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

During the recent vacation to Italy with my family, I finally watched Scorsese’s four hour documentary on Italian cinema called Il mio viaggio in Italia, or My Voyage to Italy (1999).

In it, he describes how he fell in love with Italian cinema: “Because so many Italians lived in New York, one channel showed Italian movies on Friday night with subtitles.” Together with his family, he watched as many of them as he could.

When he was a child, Italy was just emerging from World War II, and the aftermath became the central theme of many films from that period. Movies that contained powerful images like nazi soldiers occupying Rome in Rome, Open City (1945, Roberto Rossellini). Despite the often bad quality of the prints, all the essential messages came through, Scorsese recalls.

“Some images were so powerful that they made my grandparents cry”, says Scorsese. “They saw the country they left behind and what became of it. They were feeling protected in the US, but guilty at the same time. These movies could have been about them.”

The first Italian film Scorsese saw was Paisan (1946, Roberto Rossellini). Rossellini’s follow-up to Rome Open City consists of six episodes set during the liberation of Italy. It follows the allied forces as they move through Italy, from Sicily to the northern Po Valley, to drive out the Nazi’s. What impressed him the most were the episodes about people who make the ultimate sacrifices to achieve freedom.

The third part of Rossellini’s post-war trilogy is Germany, Year Zero (1948, Roberto Rossellini). Sacrifice is again a major theme in this movie. “It seems that Rossellini begs the allied forces to look with compassion at their former enemies, so that they could go on together.”

My Voyage to Italy shows long movie fragments, accompanied by Scorsese’s comments. He really takes the time to dissect them, and after each discussion you almost have the feeling as if you have seen them. He covers two main ‘extremes’ of Italian cinema: the epic and the neorealist drama.

The first epic he encountered was Fabiola (1947, Alessandro Blasetti). Its monumental imagery inspired him so much that he drew storyboards for Roman epics of his own. Later, he discovered silent masterpieces such as Cabiria (1914, Giovanni Pastrone), which he describes as “like watching a journal from ancient Rome.”

After World War II, the Italian film industry lay in ruins. With minimal resources to express themselves, filmmakers created the neorealist movement. They depicted the struggles of their nation with stark honesty, relying on non-professional actors and real locations. “Illusion took a backseat to reality”, Scorsese explains.

Neorealism had tremendous influence over cinema that is still felt today in cinematic movements all over the world. It gives audiences raw, human experience – and shows us the heroes and heroines of everyday life.

The most famous example is probably Bicycle Thieves (1948, Vittorio De Sica) about an unemployed man who desperately needs work to support his wife Maria, his son Bruno and his small baby. When everything he tries fails, he steals a bicycle, which leads to dire consequences. It’s an extremely touching film, a specialism of its director Vittorio De Sica.

An earlier film De Sica made is also discussed. It is called Shoeshine (1946) and it triggers much of the same emotions as Bicycle Thieves. Two boys who shine shoes (does the famous GoodFellas line come from here?) end up in prison, which is depicted as hell on earth. Here they are eventually forced to betray each other. Like Bicycle Thieves it has very moving moments involving children. Orson Welles once said that he could never do what De Sica did with Shoeshine, which is making the camera disappear.

In 1952, De Sica made Umberto D., which Scorsese finds an even better film than Bicycle Thieves. This time the story follows an elderly man who, penniless, cares only for his beloved dog. It contains many heartbreaking moments. After seeing Umberto D., the Italian Minister of Culture wrote in an open letter that he hated neorealism, and he asked the filmmakers to be more optimistic.

Perhaps in response, De Sica’s next film, The Gold of Naples (1954), embraced a lighter tone. Though comedic in spirit, it still carried an undercurrent of tragedy. This seamless interplay between drama and comedy, Scorsese notes, is a defining quality of Italian cinema: “Actors can walk the razor-thin line between comedy and drama.”

In the third part of the documentary, Scorsese discussed a different kind of filmmaker: Luchino Visconti. Visconti came from a prominent, wealthy Italian family. But he was also a lifelong member of the communist party. He didn’t have to work, so he felt a little aimless. In the 1930’s he worked for French director Jean Renoir and this influenced him greatly. A hallmark of his films would be exploring the European aristocracy.

But his first film is not about that. Obsession (1943, Luchino Visconti) is seen as a forerunner of the neorealism movement. But, Scorsese says, it is a very stylized movie. “It’s a melodrama with a very earthy sensual feel to it. All Visconti’s gifts were already there: His eye for detail, his mastery of the camera and most of all his operatic sense for action and emotion.”

His follow up was The Earth Trembles (1948, Luchino Visconti) about a group of Sicilian fishermen who rebel against northern middlemen. Besides film, Visconti also started a theatre group that included a young Marcello Mastroianni. This experience is clearly put to good use for Visconti’s next film: Senso (1954). Set during the Italian-Austrian war of 1866, it vividly recreates the 19th century. “He really brought the era to life”, says Scorsese, “not just in how it looked, but in how it felt.”

Finally, Scorsese turns to Federico Fellini, often regarded as the Italian filmmaker. Fellini’s early film I Vitelloni (1953) is an autobiographical tale of five young men in Rimini, torn between staying home and pursuing their dreams. Scorsese deeply identified with them, drawing inspiration for his breakthrough film Mean Streets (1973).

Fellini’s international breakthrough came with La Dolce Vita (1960), a modern reflection on freedom and decadence in the shadow of the Cold War. To escape dread, people plunge into endless pleasures and distractions. This was Fellini’s first collaboration with Marcello Mastroianni, with whom he would make five films – an artistic partnership akin to Scorsese’s with Robert De Niro and later Leonardo DiCaprio.

His follow-up, 8½ (1963), became a personal touchstone for Scorsese. “La Dolce Vita was only the calm before the storm”, he says. “With 8½ he reinvented himself, and in doing so, reinvented cinema.”

The film boldly dramatizes Fellini’s own artistic crisis. Mastroianni plays Guido, a director unable to complete his next project, searching in vain for inspiration. The film becomes a tapestry of dreams, memories, and anxieties, unfolding as a stream of consciousness rather than a conventional plot. For Scorsese, “8½ is the purest expression of love for the cinema that I know.”

The documentary ends with this tribute, leaving us with great words of inspiration from one of the greatest living filmmakers.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

BBC documentary (2003) by Kenneth Bowser, based on the book by Peter Biskind. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood tells the story of Hollywood in the 1960s, a time when the studio system was in crisis. Their films had become increasingly irrelevant.

The problem was that movies were run by studios rather than directors, and the studios had lost touch with what audiences wanted to see. Then a new generation of filmmakers emerged who reconnected with viewers. Directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, Sam Peckinpah, Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty, Robert Altman, Jack Nicholson, and Peter Bogdanovich.

“In 1963 the studio system collapsed”, says Bogdanovich. “It was over.” After the disaster of Cleopatra (1963, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Rouben Mamoulian), the Fox lot was shut down. It became a ghost town. Television took over. The old moviegoers died off, and American films grew more and more meaningless.

Meanwhile, art theaters screening foreign films were doing very well. Many of the new generation of filmmakers learned the language of cinema from auteurs like Fellini, Godard, and Truffaut.

Outside the studio system, Roger Corman played a pivotal role in training young filmmakers to make low-budget B-movies that performed well at the box office. Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, and Francis Ford Coppola all started under Corman. They succeeded by targeting the youth who flocked to the thousands of drive-in theaters across the country, audiences that loved horror and action. Corman also had a knack for choosing hot topics: Hells Angels were in the news, so he made The Wild Angels (1966, Roger Corman). LSD was trendy, so he made The Trip (1967, Roger Corman) based on a screenplay by Jack Nicholson.

In Hollywood, directors proved just how out of touch the studios were. Executives hated Bonnie and Clyde, but young people loved it. Studios had to adapt. Paramount, in deep trouble, was taken over by Gulf & Western, led by the eccentric Austrian Charlie Bluhdorn. He brought in the now-legendary Bob Evans as a producer, who helped turn the studio around. How? By giving directors more creative control. Like he did with Polanski, who made Rosemary’s Baby in 1968.

At Columbia, Bert Schneider also trusted and empowered directors, resulting in massive hits, most notably Easy Rider, released in 1969. The drug-fueled chaos of director Dennis Hopper and his team is visible on screen. It was a great film, and audiences loved it. It was the kind of movie that never would have been made under the old studio system. The same goes for Midnight Cowboy by John Schlesinger, also released in 1969 – an outstanding film. That same year saw The Wild Bunch by Sam Peckinpah, which pushed violent realism to a whole new level.

The 1970s began, and the director’s era was in full swing. Peter Bogdanovich released The Last Picture Show in 1971, a film rich in emotional depth and sexual content, more than audiences were used to at the time. Dennis Hopper tried to follow up on Easy Rider with The Last Movie, but botched the edit due to his drug use and constant partying. “I had final cut, but I cut my own throat,” he says in the documentary.

In 1972, Paramount released The Godfather in 4,000 theaters simultaneously, a massively successful strategy. The history of that production was recently chronicled in the excellent miniseries The Offer. Coppola had now become one of the greats. He used his influence to bring George Lucas back to Hollywood, where he made the wildly successful American Graffiti in 1973 – a film studios didn’t understand, but youth audiences loved. That same year marked the rise of another major talent: Martin Scorsese, whose Mean Streets won over critics and audiences alike with its originality and authenticity.

But 1973 belonged to Warner Bros., which released The Exorcist by William Friedkin. Using the same wide-release strategy as The Godfather, it became a huge box office hit. It was Friedkin’s second success after The French Connection, cementing his status as one of the untouchable directors of the time.

By now, the auteurs had taken over Hollywood. This led to artistic triumphs like Chinatown (1974). But the young directors hadn’t forgotten Corman’s trick of attracting young audiences. In 1975, Spielberg released Jaws, a film that redefined what success looked like in Hollywood. Corman said: “When I saw Jaws I thought: these guys know what I’m doing, and they have the money and talent and skills to do it better.” George Lucas took it even further with Star Wars in 1977. The age of the blockbuster had arrived.

It had taken a decade, but Hollywood was back on its feet. Expensive B-movies like Alien, Superman, and their sequels became the new studio model. For about ten years, directors ruled. That era came to an end in the late ’70s, but it was a glorious decade that produced countless classics – films still regarded today as some of the greatest ever made.