Best Martin Scorsese movie

Excellent interview about The Age of Innocence.

Edith Wharton published the book in 1920, recalling a society that no longer existed after the war. Did you feel that you were showing Americans a period which most of them did not know existed?

Of course. And it was even more sumptuous than we show. I felt the film had to show a modern audience the blocks they put around Newland and people like him. But there’s also an irony and a sarcasm in the presentation of that lifestyle – both in the way I tried to do it and in the way Wharton did it in the book. The decor had to become a character for me.

Jay Cocks showed the film to an audience of Wharton specialists which included R. E. B. Lewis, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography. And he told me that their reaction was extraordinary, because every time a dinner service was shown or when Mrs Mingott selected the silver plate, they laughed. They knew what the presentation of that particular piece meant. So when the Van der Luydens create a dinner for Countess Olenska, they are making a statement and daring people to go against them.

In the book there’s a fantastic build-up to that dinner that tells you just how important the Van der Luydens are and how everyone in New York society acknowledges their status.

I tried to convey that by the attention given to the dinner itself – the centrepiece, the Roman punch – which is like having a triple high mass for a funeral rather than a regular low mass. They are saying, “Not only will we defend you, but we are going to do so on the highest level. If anyone has a problem with that, they are going to have to answer to us.”

Just like in GoodFellas…

Exactly. It’s a matter of “You have a problem with that? Then you have a problem with me and let’s settle it right now.” Or in this case, “Oh very well. We’re going to have to bring out the Crown Derby, aren’t we?” I remember in The Razor’s Edge, when Gene Tierney throws a plate at Herbert Marshall, he says, “My goodness, the Crown Derby.”

Happy 80th to Marty

after hours

Happy 80th. Dude's a treasure.

I may not love many of his recent movies, but I love his opinion on what aren't movies

Dumb poll result, Casino is so much better than GoodFellas

and The Age of Innocence not earning any points is a rank embarrassment.

Casino rules, it’s true. These days it’s top 5 of his for me (so is Goodfellas tho.)

xp ditto The Last Temptation of Christ and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and New York, New York, all of which I prefer to f'n The Aviator

and The Age of Innocence not earning any points is a rank embarrassment.

I could see complaining about a really low finish for Age of Innocence in a ranked poll--I wouldn't, but I can see where someone might--but this is #1-or-nothing poll. There are maybe six or seven #1 votes that make sense to me for Scorsese, and that isn't one of them. (Nor are four or five of the films that did get votes.)

noticed hbo max has scorsese's early shorts & italianamerican up

Cape Fear earns its scares. That 12-minute De Niro-Lewis scene, which I was old enough to make the theater audience gasp at the time, is a masterpiece of tone, pacing, performing. De Niro is often awful and good, sometimes in the same scene (I wish Robert Mitchum had been young enough to play him). The camerawork and editing are "stylish" in the cool ways and the garish ways. It's helpful comparing it to The Silence of the Lambs, a movie that's all of a piece but more restrained about its erotics.

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) (TV)

This is on MUBI. It's over three hours long, half an hour and I am loving it.

Yeah it's great! It'd be overstating it to say it was my "introduction" to classic Hollywood, I was already a budding enthusiast, but it hipped me to dozens and dozens of great films and directors.

It is awesome. Taught me a lot. As did his Italian gilm documentary.

His experience of movies through a book is slightly similar to mine. There was a film section at my local library where there were all of these books about different directors and you saw the photographs fascinated as to what they would've been like. For me it was Godard, Visconti, Resnais and on and on.

xp - yes w/this I know the directors but I haven't actually seen a King Vidor film. Lots of gaps in my knowledge of classic Hollywood. I'll get a list that will keep me busy for a while.

Thought the revive would be about Killers of the Flower Moon:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/20/killers-of-the-flower-moon-review-martin-scorsese-leonardo-dicaprio

xp was to Daniel.

xp I liked the Italian one but iirc I think I had seen most of it by the time I watched it. And I think this one has a broader range of interviews. Enjoying Peck, Billy Wilder, etc.

absolutely sets out where and i guess when the film-bro canon* emerged -- but also (via this very smart and practised and engaging film-making mind) why it took the shape it took, and if some of it seems long-congealed these days it's a lot of fun round its weirder edges**

*griffith! the searchers!
**the extracts from the Q&A with king vidor was like gilgamesh was giving a 70s press conference lol, deeper movies from before the dawn of time

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) (TV)

This is on MUBI. It's over three hours long, half an hour and I am loving it.

I owe this one a rewatch. My first summer out of college, I shotgunned both that and his Italian cinema one, and it kicked off, among other things, a massive Antonioni phase

deeper movies from before the dawn of time

with letters deep as a spear is long on the trunk of the World Ash Tree!

i know i shd watch the italian one, if only to engage with someone i have more time for than i do mark cousins explaining me towards actually liking antonioni or fellini

hmm it doesn't seem available in MUBI America, alas.

Tbh the Italian one didn't feel as engaging. In this one he is clearly playing with the question of how he can be (or carry on being) a filmmaker in America after the old studio systems have collapsed and the kind of stories he wants to tell are perhaps falling out of fashion.

Part II is on YouTube fwiw

Yeah, the Italy one had far less discipline than the American one overall. There were a few movies were it felt like he was going to show, more or less, the entire movie

absolutely sets out where and i guess when the film-bro canon* emerged

Not entirely unfair but not entirely accurate either I think - I don't think film bros spend as much time on musicals as he did.

Or, indeed, on episodes of Young Indiana Jones.

You really do not want to run into John Ford in a dark alley

The Godfather was just stills. Assume Coppola didn't allow footage 👎

lol ford just demolishes earnest seeker bog bogdanovich

iirc MS only talks about the artistic and technical merits of D. W. Griffith, but other than that I was enjoying it so much I didn't want it to end.

lol I watched Zizek talking about movies on mubi as well, that wasn't as good

Treated him like a silly boy.

xp yes this section on silents and Griffith is so good. Never heard of Pastrone's Cabiria.

an epic silent movie with a million budget, that was astronomical in 1915!

don't think he even mentions BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), it's mostly abt an early film whose name i forgot -- blimey DWG made a lot of shorts -- and BROKEN BLOSSOMS (1919)

also TIL that the W in D W Griffith stands for WARK

I think he does mention Birth of a Nation, but yes he starts with his short film.

This section going from editing right up to the role of sound, colour, CinemaScope is fantastic. Then to the end of the epic with the rise of newer tech to re-create the landscapes...all with his little bits of biography as a cinemagoer is just wonderful.

I must revisit the Scorcese - Marvel controversy.

2001 is the first moment of weaknes

yes he shd have gone with star wars

BLOSSOMS (1919)

also TIL that the W in D W Griffith stands for WARK

― mark s,

He does in Pt. II -- he spends about five minutes discussing Griffith's close-ups.

MS sez (of 2001) that "every frame… made you aware that the possibilities of cinematic manipulation are… infinite"

i like the notion that 2001 is literally just abt dragging humanity via the monoliths thru into the CGI abyss (= star wars & MCU)

no wonder kier dullea looks the way he does at the end

kieth dullea

xxp -- ah sorry, i was watching in bits and bobs and evidently missed some of it

the Protestant wark ethic

"MS sez (of 2001) that "every frame… made you aware that the possibilities of cinematic manipulation are… infinite""

It's maybe the only so far where he doesn't delve into a bit of technical detail to elaborate 🤔

Though he then goes into b-movies and Jacques Tourneur. Places him next to Welles.

Tourneur :)

Two or three of these directors wore eye patches.

It was a thing to allow you to look at the camera better, right? Remember watching the doc with a friend, both going "why did so many directors have eye problems??" and then gradually realising our stupidity.

Oh right lol

Fritz lang at least did suffer an eye injury