“The clouds have cleared” for the long-term of cinema recently. At least that’s how Martin Scorsese felt after watching “TÁR,” which he praised at the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner in early January 2023.
That kind of compliment means a lot. Scorsese isn’t just one of the greatest filmmakers of all time: he’s one of the greatest cinephiles. In recent years, he’s known for movies (or, as he’d say from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “theme parks”), that he doesn’t like. But the Oscar-winning director’s favorite films are as varied in terms of genre, year of release and national origin as one can imagine, from Ti West’s “Pearl” to Val Lewton’s horror films to the works of Senegalese master Djibril. Diop Mambety. Es such an avid cinephile that, in a recent interview with Time magazine, he admitted that he opposed the lists of the 10 most sensible films because they found them limited.
“Over the years, I’ve gone through to create lists of videos that I personally consider my favorites, whatever that means,” Scorsese told Time. “Then you find out that the favorite word has other levels. The videos that inspired you the most, as opposed to the ones where you simply need to stay watching, as opposed to the ones you stare at and are informed about. They’re varied, of course, that didn’t stop him from joining Letterboxd.
Scorsese has also been a tireless advocate for film preservation and discovery, helping to repair many films through his Film Foundation and the World Cinema Project. He also spoke at length about his private favorites in his documentaries “A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies” (which, it should be noted, provided much of the films below), “My Voyage to Italy” and “Letter to Elia. “You can screen several of those titles for free on the Film Foundation’s website.
Scorsese’s wisdom about the history of cinema also permeates his cinema. Many have noted that Tommy DeVito’s filming of Joe Pesci in front of the camera at the end of “The Freedmen” is a nod to the last shot of “The Great Train Heist. “, Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Shutter Island” transports us to film noir, and even something like “The Wolf of Wall Street,” with its heady combination of depravity and moralism, is influenced by his love for Cecil B. DeMille. Even “Hugo”: an adaptation of old fiction based on the turn-of-the-century trans-final silent short film “A Trip to the Moon” by Georges Méliès.
Below is an incomplete collection of 82 of Scorsese’s favorite films, indexed in no particular order. It was compiled from years of interviews with the director, as well as transparent cinematic references to Scorsese’s filmography and his vote in the Sight poll.
With editorial contributions from Christian Blauvelt, Alison Foreman, and Zack Sharf.
[Editor’s note: The following was originally published in July 2020 and has been updated several times since then. ]
In October 2023, when “Killers of the Flower Moon” was released, Scorsese shared on his Letterboxd account a list of the 10 most productive “big screen movies” of all time. One of the films he included on the list is Alain Resnais’ masterpiece. “Last Year at Marienbad,” a surreal story about a boy and a woman staying in a luxury hotel who may or may not have met the year before.
Another film that Scorsese has included in his list of big-screen films is “Zulu,” the 1964 Cy Endfield film depicting the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, where an organization of 150 British infantrymen withstood an attack through 4,000 Zulu warriors. The film won critical acclaim and is notable for propelling Michael Caine to foreign fame.
Another film on Scorsese’s list of the most productive big-screen films, David Lean’s epic “Lawrence of Arabia,” stars Peter O’Toole as the real-life character T. E. Lawrence, who chronicles his involvement in the Arab revolt of World War I. The four-hour epic has long been acclaimed for its 35mm photography and long reach.
The last finished film by legendary German director Max Ophuls, “Lola Montés” dramatizes the life of Irish dancer and lover Lola Montez (Martine Carol), who had affairs with tough men such as Franz Liszt and Ludwig I of Bavaria. Considered a vital influence on the French New Wave, the film on Scorsese’s list of the most productive films for the big screen.
While it’s not Sergio Leone’s most productive and well-known spaghetti western (“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” beat him to the punch), “Once Upon a Time in the West” is arguably his most acclaimed. The film, starring Claudia Cardinale as a woman hunted by a killer (Henry Fonda), on Scorsese’s list of the most productive big-screen films.
A dark vintage of global cinema, Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó’s “The Round-Up” centers on an organization of men imprisoned after the failed 1848 revolution opposed to the Habsburg Empire, while suffering torture and punishment at the hands of their captors. who go out to hunt down their leader. Scorsese included the film in his list of the top 10 big-screen videos of all time.
In his 2023 interview with Time magazine, Scorsese praised several films by the legendary Orson Welles. Among them is “Chimes at Midnight,” in which the director plays Falstaff, the recurring character in several of William Shakespeare’s early plays.
“There are a lot of other degrees in the movie,” Scorsese said. “When it comes to action scenes, the war scene that’s never been filmed is ‘Chimes of Midnight. ‘”
Another film is about Scorsese’s interview with Time magazine, “The Trial” is Welles’ adaptation of Franz Kafka’s old novel about a man on trial on a charge about which he is denied information. Scorsese called the film “a very disturbing film” and said that one scene, where children’s eyes peer through cracks in a wall, animated one of the first photographs of “Killers of the Flower Moon. “
Scorsese also referenced several films through director Stanley Kubrick in his interview for Time magazine, and added the filmmaker’s 1975 period play, “Barry Lyndon,” about an escalation of social debauchery in the 18th century. Scorsese called the film “elegant” and praised Kubrick’s use of a zoom lens, which he admits he “doesn’t like,” but which works in this express image.
Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini was also mentioned in Scorsese’s interview with Time magazine, in which the director of “The Killers of the Moonflowers” praised his 1950 film “The Flowers of San Francisco. “”It’s humble, it’s sweet, it’s funny, it’s unsettling in a clever way,” Scorsese said.
Another Scorsese film cited as influential in his interview for Time magazine is Akiria Kurosawa’s “High and Low,” the Japanese great’s 1963 crime drama about a wealthy industrialist whose circle of relatives falls victim to a kidnapping plot. Scorsese praised the film’s blocking, saying that “Everything is locked in a very exact way, which provides a very modern feel,” calling it “a very charming movie. “
In 2012, Scorsese appeared on the cover of a part of Fast Company magazine. In addition to the main profile, the publication also published a list of the 85 films discussed during the interview with the director, some in passing, some in depth.
A film praised by Scorsese “The Band Wagon,” a Vincente Minnelli musical starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse as the quarrelsome stars of a Broadway production. “It’s my favorite Vincente Minnelli musical,” Scorsese said. I love the script that combines Faust and a musical, and the crisis that ensues. “
One of Preston Sturges’ most popular films and a highly influential comedy, “Sullivan’s Travels” tells the story of a Hollywood director (Joel McCrea) who embarks on the life of a handicapped man in search of his next film, a socially applicable story. drama. .
“Billy Wilder said to me, you’re just as smart as you were in your last movie. Sullivan, played by Joel McCrea, is in the studio system, under that kind of pressure. He does comedies, but one day he makes a decision he has to make. “Oh, brother, where are you? He puts everything on the line to be more informed about the poor. The film’s solution is very emotional,” Scorsese said in his interview with Fast Company.
Another Vincente Minnelli film that Scorsese loves and talked about from his interview with Fast Company is “The Brute and the Beautiful,” a 1952 melodrama that won five Academy Awards. Kirk Douglas stars in the film as Jonathan Shields, the son of a disgraced Hollywood studio executive. We decided to make it in the industry. Lana Turner plays an actress who falls in love with Shields and her manipulations.
A quirky vintage with a morbid twist, Frank Capra’s “Arsenic and Old Lace” stars Cary Grant as a newlywed man who is horrified to realize that the aunts who raised him spent years murdering lonely old men to end their “suffering. “In an interview with Fast Company, Scorsese called the 1944 film one of his favorites to watch with his family.
“Cat People,” an influential first-time horror film by Jacques Tourneur, stars Simone Simon as a newlywed woman who believes she is descended from an ancient breed of Serbian cats that turn into panthers when sexually aroused. Scorsese talked about the horror harvest in his interview with Quick Company.
“Caught” is a classic film noir by director Max Ophüls, known for his French films such as “Les boucles d’oreilles de Madame de. . . “. Barbara Bel Geddes stars in the film as a substandard branch model, Leonora, whose dream marriage to wealthy millionaire Ohlrig (Robert Ryan) turns into a nightmare when she begins to demonstrate manic, controlling, and violent behavior. Scorsese talked about the era of film noir in his interview with Fast Company.
Based on Ron Kovic’s 1976 autobiography, Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July” stars Tom Cruise as a Vietnam veteran who becomes paralyzed by the fighting and becomes an anti-war activist. Scorsese spoke about the film in his interview with Fast Company, using it as an example of how Universal sought to make “special movies” in the 1980s.
Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole” garnered negative reviews and had no effect on the box office at the time of its release, but is now considered one of the director’s most successful films. Kirk Douglas plays an egocentric journalist who exploits the story of a local boy trapped in a cave to advance his own career. In his interview with Fast Company, Scorsese called the film “so harsh and brutal in its cynicism. “
Melodrama king Douglas Sirk’s most iconic film, “All That Heaven Allows,” stars Jane Wyman as a wealthy but bored widow who falls in love with the younger, smarter but undeniable Ron Kirthrough (Rock Hudson, in his most prominent role). . Noted for its use of stylized colors, the film commented on by Scorsese in his interview with Fast Company.
Elia Kazan adapted his own book by directing “America, America,” a story animated by his family’s history. An unknown cast, led by 21-year-old Stathis Giallelis, starred in the film about a young Greek man in 1890s Turkey who seeks to locate a path to America. The film is one of several films discussed in Scorsese’s interview with Fast Company.
One of the biggest musicals of all time, “An American in Paris,” directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Gene Kelly as the titular American, who falls in love with a woman engaged to another man. It stands out for its outstanding climactic fantasy dance sequence. the film is one of several discussed in Scorsese’s interview with Fast Company.
One of the most famous war films of all time, “Apocalypse Now,” directed by Francis Ford Coppola, one of Scorsese’s contemporaries in the New Hollywood era. Taking the broad outlines of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and transplanting this story to the Vietnam War, the film stars Martin Sheen as a captain who travels through South Vietnam and Cambodia to track down and assassinate a renegade officer, Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). The film is discussed in Scorsese’s interview with Fast Company.
In fact, Scorsese is a fantastic enough director to consider one of his films a favorite, but in this case, he really praises the 1962 film edition of “Cape Fear,” directed by J. Lee Thompson, the original starring Gregory Peck. While a lawyer stalked through a rapist (Robert Mitchum), he helped put him behind bars.
In 1991, Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro starred in the remake of Scorsese’s “Cape Fear,” which also featured cameos from Mitchum and Peck. The remake began under development by Steven Spielberg, before “swapping” it with Scorsese in exchange for “Schindler’s List. “Scorsese told Fast Company that he had reservations about the project, basically because he held the 1962 edition in high regard.
“The original is very good,” Scorsese said. I mean, you’ve got Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, it’s amazing!—WC
Scorsese included “Ikiru” in his poll for Sight’s all-time video list
When Scorsese presented the award for most productive image for “TÁR” at the New York Film Critics Circle dinner, he didn’t hesitate.
“For a long time, many of us have been watching movies that let us know where they’re headed. I mean, they hold our hand, and even though it’s unsettling at times, they comfort us by telling us that in the end everything will be okay,” Scorsese said. “But it’s insidious, because you can get carried away and get used to it. This brings those of us who have experienced cinema in the afterlife – much more than that – into depression about the future of this art form, especially for the younger generations.
He continued, “But those are the dark days. The clouds cleared when I saw Todd’s movie, “TÁR. “What you’ve done, Todd, is that the very design of the movie you’ve created doesn’t allow for that. All the facets of cinema and cinema that you have used are a testament to this. The displacement of the stalls, for example, the displacement of the stalls does what cinema does best, which is to reduce the area and time to what they are, which is nothing.
“You’re making sure we exist in his head. We only delight in their perception. She is the world. Time, chronology, and space become the music she lives with. And we don’t know where the movie is going. Just stick to the character on their provocative path to their final destination. Now, what you’ve done, Todd, is a genuine high-flying act, because it’s all conveyed through masterful mise-en-scène, in the form of control, precise, dangerous, pronounced angles, and geometrically chiseled edges, so to speak. A glorious 2:3:5 facet ratio for symbol compositions.
Finally, Scorsese said, “The limitations of the framing itself and the provocation of long, measured shots are the brutal architecture of his soul: the soul of ‘TÁR. ‘—AF
Scorsese sat down with Quentin Tarantino for a verbal exchange in late 2019, organized through the Directors Guild of America. The filmmakers touched on a variety of topics, at one point discussing Joe Pesci’s casting for “Raging Bull” — Scorsese’s triumphant seventh film — and the three-time Oscar-nominated actor’s breakout role. He won his first Best Supporting Actor award for “Raging Bull” in 1981, and won a decade ago for Scorsese’s “The Freedmen. “
“I’m going to see this movie that Ralph De Vito did, ‘Death Collector,’ which was Joe Pesci’s [first movie],” Tarantino said.
“That’s how we discovered Joe for Raging Bull,” Scorsese said of the 1976 independent crime film. “Death Collector,” [Robert De Niro] saw it on CBS. I said, “I saw this on TV and this guy is interesting. “”, so they gave us a copy.
“It’s a smart movie,” Tarantino said. When I saw it, I liked, ‘Oh, wow, this is like an exploitative edit of ‘Mean Streets. ‘”
Scorsese enjoyed sword-and-sandal epics as a child. In fact, he even imagined himself directing his own equally lengthy ancient drama, writing the credits of a hypothetical film called “The Eternal City,” set of course in ancient Rome and starring, among others, Jean Simmons.
“I was fascinated by the ancient world,” Scorsese said in the 1993 special titled “Martin Scorsese’s Favorite Movies. “Day is one of my favorite movies, knowing that it’s not a smart movie, maybe not even a very smart movie, but nevertheless it’s “The Land of the Pharaohs” directed and produced by Howard Hawks. But that’s the old story of Hawks saying he had a genuine challenge with the image because how the hell does a pharaoh speak?And it’s a movie about death, it’s a movie about how to prepare for death. It’s a desirable film. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I like it. —AF
“Where ‘La Dolce Vita’ is panoramic, ‘Journey to Italy’ is intimate,” Scorsese said in “My Journey to Italy” of Roberto Rossellini’s poignant drama about a brimmer wedding. “Where Fellini’s film is dramatic and fast-paced in its impact, Rossellini’s is meditative and a bit mysterious. It’s a film that moved me enormously as soon as I saw it for the first time. But I wonder why I find it so moving, because “Journey to Italy” works very differently than other films. . —AF
There is no doubt that Scorsese deeply appreciates Georges Méliès’ “A Trip to the Moon. “It featured turn-of-the-century filmmaker, played by Ben Kingsley, and the paradigmatic silent short from his 2011 adventure “Hugo”: an adaptation of Brian Selznik’s old fiction “The Invention of Hugo Cabret. “
Depending on how fast the movie is filmed, “A Trip to the Moon” is between nine and 18 minutes long. Chronicling the dreamlike adventure of five astronomers in space, the paintings of 1902 are known for their mythical photo of a spacecraft landing in a kind of humanoid eye of the Moon.
Scorsese enjoyed Ti West’s “X” prequel so much that he shared his own review with /Film: “Ti West’s films have such a rare kind of power in those days, driven by a pure, undiluted love of cinema. You feel it in each one of them. In each frame, a prequel to “X” performed in a diametrically opposed cinematic style (think of the color melodramas of Scope of the ’50s), “Pearl” is 102 minutes wild, mesmerizing, and deeply, and I mean deeply, unsettling. West and his muse and artistic wife Mia Goth know how to play with their audience. . . before sinking the knife into our chests and starting to squirm. I was enthralled, then disturbed, then so volatile that I had a hard time falling asleep. But I couldn’t help but look. —CB
The director said John M. Stahl “got suspended between two very long, transparent breaths” when he first saw him on Hollywood television around 1973, when he was suffering from a severe asthma attack. Festival, recalled that first vision, “a hallucination overpowered Gene Tierney. . . His face was a mask of the best calm, hiding those dark and very deep emotions. “The best examples are Black, starring Tierney as a suffering new wife. With a serious intellectual illness: she makes the decision to murder her husband’s younger brother so that his new wife can spend more time with her. Scorsese cites Leon Shamroy’s cinematography as influential in the color palette of “New York, New York. “The film’s costumes also encouraged the dresses worn by Ava Gardner from Kate Beckinsale in “The Aviator”. —CB
In the article titled “Scorsese’s Guilty Pleasures” in the September-October 1978 issue of “Film Comment,” the director indexed several of his favorite films, adding Irving Lerner’s ascetic hitman drama. Vince Edwards is a loner who spends his days in existential confinement. in his apartment before venturing out to make hits. It’s an exploration of male angst and loneliness that feels like an absolute prelude to “Taxi Driver,” which Scorsese declared paying homage to “Murder Through Contract” with the scene in which Travis Bickle trains to stay. Fit: Edwards finds that toning his body is one of his few distractions. Scorsese bluntly called it “the film that influenced me the most. “
In that same Film Comment factor, Scorsese spoke of his love for the biblical epic starring Charlton Heston. “I love De Mille: its theatricality, its imagery,” he writes. “I’ve read ‘The Ten Commandments’ maybe 40 or 50 times. Forget the story, you have to, and focus on the special effects, texture, and color. For example: The figure of God killing the firstborn is green smoke; then, on the terrace, as they talk, dry green ice touches George Reeves’ heel or somebody’s, and dies. Then there is the coil of the Red Sea and the blood of the Passover lamb. De Mille brought a fantastical, dreamlike quality to a film. So genuine that if you watched his movies as a kid, they stayed with you for a lifetime.
The Technicolor Western King Vidor is mistakenly referred to as the first film Scorsese saw in a movie theater. But as he recounted in the 1993 special “Martin Scorsese’s Favorite Movies,” it was actually just one of the films that inspired him the most, and he was already a fan of westerns. He believes his mom took him to see “Duel in the Sun” because the film had been condemned by the Church for its overt sexuality. He called it “an incredible film that terrified me,” especially for the sensuality (unusual by 1940s standards). He said that when he met the film’s star and villain, Gregory Peck, he told her he was to blame for his love life for having seen that movie.
“Jacques Tourneur was a modest craftsman,” Scorsese said in “A Personal Journey” of this hypnotic and unforgettable play about a West Indian nurse willing to do anything, even a hotel or witchcraft, to save her patient. that of a carpenter who simply carves a chair or table for which he was hired. But years later, at the end of his career, Tourneur confessed that he had taken a passionate interest in the supernatural. A bit psychic, he made films about the supernatural because he believed in it and had even experienced it. Tourneur left it to the imagination of the public. . . Its twilight zone was a labyrinth. Their journeys were perilous into the unknown and rarely into the occult. Reality remained opaque and other people were rarely what they seemed. They stood on the edge of a hidden world, a glowing web of remote whispers and deep shadows. —CB
“I literally don’t forget watching that movie and the emotion that came out of it, and I think I had identified, like everybody else at that age at the time, I was 12, thirteen years old, with James Dean at that time. I say I never took acting categories or learned acting techniques in school, unless it was in school in Kazan, which was “On the Waterfront” and James Dean in “At the Beginning of the Sea. “East of Eden. “—CB
“Today, a film like ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’ has the poignant appearance of a lost art,” Scorsese said in “A Personal Journey. “”Because it was the fall of the wonderful American epics. Like Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann was a master of the Western. “The Fall of the Roman Empire” presented a multi-layered drama as intense as any of the director’s westerns. His sense of area and dramatic composition have never been more intense. more obvious. Throughout the film, the gods can be heard laughing in the background. A ruthless laugh that sounded the death knell for all the protagonists and the Roman Empire. —CB
Ida Lupino, a pioneer of women behind the camera in Hollywood, was praised by Scorsese in “A Personal Journey. “He focused especially on his film “Outrage,” which tells the story of a young woman who is raped, the scene in which she is raped. for the first time. The cat’s cry on an abandoned street may have been filmed by Fritz Lang or featured in a Val Lewton horror film, but it gives it an empathy and subjectivity that is all Lupino. ” Ida Lupino used visual film noir, but for her own very express purposes. In Lupino’s films, they are young women who go through hell when the security of their average elegance is shattered through a traumatic experience: bigamy, parental violence, unwanted pregnancy, rape. The audience must face the ordeal of its heroines from the inside. In “Outrage,” she presents the ultimate female nightmare, not as a melodrama, but as a study in low-key behavior that captures the banality of evil in an ordinary small town. CB
“Few people were as clever as Vincente Minnelli when it came to using CinemaScope to achieve dramatic effects,” the director said in “A Personal Journey Through American Cinema with Martin Scorsese,” starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, “Some Came Running” is a movie. A cauldron that tragically ends the night in a carnival, its soft burst of color in the dark. “The actors seem to merge with their surroundings. The suspense really comes from its integration into the environment. You don’t know if and when the killer and his unsuspecting prey will end up in the same space. CinemaScope allows Minnelli to unfold a more complex and therefore more threatening image. The more open the frame, the greater the impression of intensity and the more shocking the ghost of reality. . Depicted through a colourful and chaotic canvas, it is up to us to explore and interpret it. ‘—CB
Martin Scorsese was such a fan of Ari Aster during his first two films, “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” that he wrote the A24 script for the latter. “Like all memorable horror films, it sinks deep into something indescribable and “It’s indescribable and the violence is as emotional as it is physical,” Scorsese wrote of “Hereditary. “
On “Midsommar,” Scorsese added, “I can tell you that the formality is just as impressive as ‘Hereditary,’ if not more so, and that it delves into feelings as genuine and deeply uncomfortable as the ones they share. Characters in the image above. I can also tell you that there are genuine visions in this picture, especially in the last part, that you probably won’t forget. In fact, I didn’t. —ZS
Scorsese cited Souleymane Cissé’s 1987 drama “Yeelen” as one of his favorite pieces of African cinema. His Film Foundation’s collaboration with the African Film Heritage Project in the winter of 2019. “I can’t express how deeply encouraged and excited I am by African cinema. . Films; “Yeelen,” “Touki Bouki,” “Trance,” “La Noire de. . . ,” “Al Mummy,” “Bamako,” Scorsese said at the time. “I keep going back to those photographs and all of them. “The experience is getting richer and richer. My appreciation for the talent, strength and wisdom of African cinema continues to grow.
Scorsese’s Film Foundation worked with the African Film Heritage Project to repair four African film classics and screen them for the first time on their continent. The commission included “Soleil Ô” to Med Hondo (1970), “Chronicle of the Ember Years” by Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamima (1975), “The Woman with the Knife” by Timité Bassori (1969) and “Muna Moto” by Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa. (1975). —ZS
Martin Scorsese and British writer-director Joanna Hogg have collaborated in recent years, with Scorsese’s director producing his famous “The Souvenir” and “The Eternal Daughter. “But Scorsese’s relationship with Hogg began as that of a fan, as the director became passionate. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Kate Fahy, Lydia Leonard, Amy Lloyd, and Christopher Baker.
“She’s amazing, Hogg. I just didn’t know her,” Scorsese told Film at Lincoln Center about his first experience with “Archipelago. “”I didn’t know who directed the film. I didn’t know if it was a man. A woman, whatever. And it’s so wonderful that you can watch videos that way without knowing who made them, and then track them down. So you can think of it as an art in itself, by itself. —ZS
Scorsese helped organize a quarantined film club for administrators Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino during the pandemic by providing a list of dozens of his favorite overlooked British films, and added two Anthony Asquith “standout” films, “Underground” and “Shooting Stars. “of the latter: “A remarkable use of editing. Click here to see Scorsese’s full list of overlooked British films that you can’t miss.
“I was so fascinated with this journey, so to speak,” Scorsese said of Kornel Mundruczo’s “Pieces of a Woman,” a drama the director enjoyed so much that he signed on to produce it after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. last year. ” I have 3 daughters. Two of them are from another marriage and my youngest daughter has just turned 21. So, over the years, mother-daughter dating has become very, very vital to me and fascinating, fascinating. , a mystery. Something I constantly face. It turns out that the first forty-five minutes of the scene are the birth scene. I felt like we had been through it and that I really lived it. The nature of the camera paintings and writing is such that I felt immersed in the film. It wasn’t a movie anymore, I was immersed with those people. —ZS
Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” is on many filmmakers’ list of videos never made, and Scorsese is no exception. The director placed “2001” on his list of favorite movies for the Sight survey.
“8 1/2′ has been a touchstone for me,” Scorsese told Criterion of Federico Fellini’s autobiographical odyssey, praising “the freedom, the sense of invention, the underlying rigor and deep core of desire, the mesmerizing physical appeal of the camera movements. “and compositions. As a filmmaker, Scorsese was inspired by the way Fellini controlled the cinematic transcription of the artist’s struggle.
“It gives a strange portrait of the artist of the moment, who seeks to remove all the pressure, the criticism, the adulation, the requests and the advice, and to locate the area and the calm to simply pay attention to himself,” Scorsese said. encouraged many films over the years and we have noticed the dilemma of Guido, the hero played by Marcello Mastroianni, repeated over and over again in reality. As with “The Red Shoes,” I watch it every year or so, and it’s another experience. —ZS
Scorsese compares Andrzej Wajda’s “Ashes and Diamonds” to “a nightmare that will never stop it from unfolding. “The film is set in a post-World War II time and follows a Polish soldier who pursues the anti-communist who is then plunged into an existential crisis. He was ordered to kill an executive member of the Polish Workers’ Party. “The film has the force of a hallucination,” Scorsese told Criterion. “I can close my eyes and some photographs come back to me with the strength they had when I first saw them. I saw them more than fifty years ago. ” The director praised Wajda as “a style of paper for all filmmakers. ” ZS
“Another haunted space movie, full of sadness and dread,” Scorsese wrote of “The Changeling. “The supernatural horror film directed by Peter Medak and starring George C. Scott in the role of a prominent composer who moves from New York City to Seattle. And he becomes convinced that his new house is haunted. Scott’s character is recovering from the deaths of his wife and son, allowing “The Changeling” to use horror to read about mental pain. It’s a theme that Scorsese would explore in his own endeavor in the horror genre. “Shutter Island. ” —ZS
Indian director Satyajit Ray’s films have long encouraged Scorsese, and the “Goodfellas” director credits Ray’s first film, 1955’s “Pather Panchali,” with opening his eyes to Indian culture. Scorsese’s Film Foundation played a role in the revival of Ray’s film. 1977 feature film “The Chess Players,” with the director enthused: “Very few administrators have been brave enough to even attempt to show history in progress. This film is about an incredible moment of change in Indian history and is told from a comedic point of view that characterizes Ray’s work. Looking at it again, I realize that this is what it must really feel like to live through a moment of historic change. It’s either wonderful or tragic. “—ZS
Scorsese’s “Citizen Kane” Orson Welles in his Sight poll
Scorsese praised Jean-Luc Godard’s “The Contempt” as “one of the most moving films of its time. “The 1963 drama centers on a love triangle between a French playwright (Michel Piccoli), his wife (Brigitte Bardot) and an American woman. manufacturer (Jack Palance). ” Over the years, it became more and more, at the most unbearable, and it moved me,” Scorsese told Criterion. “It’s a heartbreaking portrait of a marriage gone wrong, and it’s very profound, especially the long and remarkable scene between Piccoli and Bardot in their apartment: even if you don’t know that Godard’s own marriage to Anna Karina was falling apart. In the moment, you can feel it in the action, the movement of the scenes, the interactions getting bigger. So painfully but majestically, like a tragic piece of music.
Scorsese added: “Contempt” is also a lament for a type of cinema that once disappeared. . . And it’s a profound cinematic encounter with eternity, in which lost marriage and cinema seem to dissolve. It’s one of the scariest wonderful videos. never done. —ZS
Considered one of Scorsese’s favorite horror films, “Dead of Night” is an anthology film made up of 4 short films directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer and Basil Dearden. “A British classic: 4 stories told through 4 strangers mysteriously accumulated in “An incredibly unsettling country house, culminating in a montage in which elements of all the stories converge in a crescendo of madness,” Scorsese told The Daily Beast. “Like ‘The Uninvited,’ it’s a lot of fun. . . And then put you under the skin. —ZS
“Barbara Hershey plays a woman who is brutally raped and raped through an invisible force in this indeed terrifying film,” Scorsese told The Daily Beast of Sidney J’s “The Entity. “worldly decorations” and “California. ” -modern house” by “accentuating the unsettling quality” that constitutes its tone. Author Frank De Felitta adapted the film from his own 1978 novel of the same name. —ZS
“A classic, parodied, very familiar, and it’s as terrible as the day it was released,” Scorsese writes of William Friedkin’s horror classic. “This room—the cold, the violet light, the demonic transformations—it’s actually haunting you. Scorsese named “The Exorcist” one of the scariest videos ever made and one of his private favorites on a list published through The Daily Beast.
Scorsese named Robert Wise’s “The Haunting” as one of his favorite horror films, calling the 1963 supernatural film “absolutely terrifying. “The film stars Richard Johnson as a paranormal investigator who invites a small organization of other people to the home of a 90-year-old man. -old. mansion in Massachusetts to examine suspicious supernatural behavior. The cast includes Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn. —ZS
Jack Clayton’s 1961 mental horror film “The Innocents” is considered one of the scariest films ever made, and Martin Scorsese agrees. The filmmaker called “The Innocents” one of his favorite horror films, writing, “This Jack Clayton adaptation of ‘Another Turn of the Screw’ is one of the few photographs that does justice to Henry James. It’s superbly designed and acted, impeccably shot (by Freddie Francis) and very scary. The film is also a favorite of fellow administrators like Guillermo del Toro. —ZS
“There’s a moment in this Val Lewton film, about plague patients trapped on an island during the Greek Civil War, that never ceases to scare me,” Scorsese told The Daily Beast of the Mark Robson-directed film “Isle of the Dead. “It’s not hard to draw a connection between “Isle of the Dead’s” remote setting and its themes of mental paranoia with Scorsese’s own efforts in the horror genre “Cape Fear” and “Shutter Island – ZS. “
Nicholas Ray’s 1954 western, “Johnny Guitar,” stars the legendary Joan Crawford as a tavern owner who becomes a murder suspect after helping an injured gang member in a farm animal village in a remote Arizona town. “When I first saw it, I enjoyed it “In America, other people expected a western, but it can look like a western and it can look like a western [but it’s not], so other people ignored it or laughed,” Scorsese said of the film. “It’s a tense, unconventional and sublime painting, full of ambiguities that make it incredibly modern. “-ZS
One of Scorsese’s most recent favorite films is Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” about the true story of a black Colorado police detective who infiltrated a local Ku Klux Klan bankruptcy. The film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and earned Lee his first competitive Oscar (he won Best Adapted Screenplay).
“The symbol takes you into a position — we’re watching a movie, it’s shown on a screen — and all of a sudden, we’re catapulted into it,” Scorsese told Deadline about the film. Because what you see on the screen is rarely real, it happens. It happens, and it’s sanctioned through the government. . . He transcends the middle, which is what he did there in the last 10 minutes. It’s cinema and it’s beautiful. ‘ —ZS
Jean Vigo’s French drama “L’Atalante” has been called “the pinnacle of cinematic art” by Scorsese. “Vigo is a visionary filmmaker who was able to make four films before he died. Like all wonderful paintings, this film is unique,” Scorsese said while presenting a revival of “L’Atalante” in 2017. “You see in every frame and frame a transcendental love and pastime for cinema itself. This is reflected in the pastime between husband and wife. Vigo continued to paint until the end of his life, even when he was so weak and in poor health that he had to walk on a stretcher. —ZS
“It’s hard to believe a film that has a stricter understanding of how other people are connected to the world around them, through what they see, touch, taste and hear,” Scorsese told Criterion of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura. “which won the Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. “I realize that the film is meant to be about characters who are ‘oblivious’ to their environment, but that word has been used in such a way to describe this film and Antonioni’s films in general that it more or less closes your mind. In fact, I see it more than ever as a movie about other people in religious distress: their religious signs are disturbed, which is why they see the world around them as hostile and unforgiving. Visually Sensually, thematically, dramatically, in each and every way, it is one of the wonderful works of cinema. —ZS
Luchino Visconti’s Palme d’Or winner “The Leopard” is “a Sicilian masterpiece, a meditation on eternity and an ancient tapestry of infinite richness, meticulously composed in color and in 70mm,” Scorsese added: “It’s a movie that has more and more important to me over the years.
“Time itself is the protagonist of ‘The Leopard’: the cosmic scale of times, centuries and epochs, on which the prince reflects; Sicilian time, where days and nights stretch to infinity; and an aristocratic era, in which nothing is ever rushed and everything happens as it should, as it happened,” the director said. “The landscapes, the ordinary settings with their conscientiously chosen elements and drawings, the costumes, the ceremonies and the rituals, all this is at the service of deepening. our sense of time and change on a grand scale, and the total representation culminates in an hour. A series of dances in which one feels, through the eyes of the prince, a total way of life. ‘ —ZS.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s stunning Technicolor film “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” has been a favorite of Scorsese’s since the director first saw it as a teenager. Since then, the romantic war drama has been on Scorsese’s calendar every year. The sprawling narrative follows a British soldier as he rises through the ranks of various wars, culminating in World War II. “Every time I revisit it, whether it’s once or twice a year, it grows,” Scorsese told the film’s Film Foundation. It becomes much more poignant and profound. There have been some wonderful videos that I’ve watched countless times over the years, but with this one I feel more comfortable with, what it says about development and how to let go. ‘—ZS
Scorsese has decided to have Frank Borzage’s film noir “Moonrise” screened as part of his MoMA retrospective at Republic Films. The film noir stars Dane Clark, Gail Russell, and Ethel Barrymore. Scorsese is a big fan of Republic Films, the studio that ran from 1935 to 1967 and made stars of John Wayne and Roy Rogers. “From the ’30s to the ’50s, the other studio logos, in the most sensitive part of each symbol, had their own associations and expectations,” Scorsese said in introducing the MoMA series. And to me, the so-called Republic at the eagle at the top of the mountain meant something special. Republic Pictures called it a “poverty alleviation” studio, but the lack of resources and the prestige of its symbols make up for it with inventiveness. , surprise and, in some cases, true innovation. —ZS
Jacques Tourneur’s The Night of the Devil named by Scorsese as one of the most productive horror films ever made. The film stars Dana Andrews as an American psychologist who arrives in England to investigate a murderous satanic cult. “Jacques Tourneur made this movie about old curses close ‘To the end of his career, but it’s just as hard as his movies for Val Lewton,'” Scorsese told The Daily Beast. “Forget the devil himself; Again, what’s so hard is what you don’t see. “—ZS
Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation restored Marlon Brando’s 1961 western “One-Eyed Jacks,” which the director went on to present at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and the 2016 New York Film Festival. Stanley Kubrick was originally scheduled to direct the film before disputes arose between the studios. Brando as chairman of the director. ” One-Eyed Jacks” is the only film directed by Brando. “What he’s done is visually stunning,” Scorsese said of the film’s NYFF premiere of Brando. and the new tastes that were to emerge in the sixties. The essence of this film is a kind of old Hollywood. —ZS
Scorsese told the Criterion Collection that he considered Roberto Rossellini’s 1946 drama “Paissan” to be the beginning of Italian cinema as a dominant force in foreign cinema. “I first saw it on TV with my grandparents and their heartbreaking reaction to what had happened. to their country since they left at the turn of the century, as bright and brilliant to me as the photographs and the characters,” says Scorsese. “I experienced the power of cinema itself, made far beyond Hollywood, in incredibly difficult situations and with inferior conditions. team. And I also saw that cinema not only about the film itself, but also about the quotes between the film and its audience.
Rossellini’s neorealist war drama tells six stories set during the Italian campaign of World War II, each of which is about a tragedy resulting from communication breakdowns. Fellini said that when Rossellini was filming the Po Valley sequence, he acted on natural instinct, freely inventing “The result, in this episode, as well as in the Sicilian, Neapolitan and Florentine episodes, is surprising: it’s like seeing the truth itself spread out before your eyes. ZS
“Again, it’s so familiar that you think, ‘A smart movie, but it’s not as scary anymore. ‘Then you look at her. . . and you temporarily start thinking again,” Scorsese says of “Psycho. “Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic horror film that brought Norman Bates into the lexicon of terrifying movie villains. ” The shower. . . the swamp. . . Mother-child dating: It’s incredibly unsettling on so many levels. It is also a wonderful art painting. —ZS
Scorsese presented a revival of Nicholas Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause” at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival. “When I saw this movie, I was thirteen years old and the movie was starting a month after James Dean died in a car accident,” Scorsese said. “It’s the best age to watch the movie. Any age is the best age to watch the movie, but in 1956 it was aimed directly at us teenagers. It’s as if there’s a secret language in the film. It’s anything I’ve been with me for years. —ZS
Whenever Scorsese publishes a list of his favorite movies, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s ballet drama “The Red Shoes” is included at most. “I’ve said and written a lot about this symbol over the years; “It’s one of the biggest ever created, and every time I go back, about once a year, it’s new,” the director said. “It shows another side, some other level, and it’s reaching deeper. . . It’s magnificent, one of the most beautiful technicolor movies ever made. He has such a common sense of magic.
Scorsese added: “There is no other symbol that dramatizes and visualises the overwhelming obsession with art, how it can take over your life. But on a deeper level, in the movement and power of cinema itself, there is a deep and enduring love for art. , a trust in art as a transcendent state of fact. —ZS
Jean Renoir’s Indian film, “The River,” follows a teenager through youthful love and heartbreak and has been described by Scorsese as one of the “great meditations on existence. “Speaking to Criterion, the director added: “It was Jean Renoir’s first film. “after his American period, the first in color, and used Rumer Godden’s autobiographical novel to create a film about life, a film without a genuine story. It all depends on the rhythm of existence, the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration. , as well as the ephemeral good looks of the world. —ZS
Francesco Rosi’s 1962 Italian drama “Salvatore Giuliano” explores the murder of the Sicilian bandit of the same name through a neorealist documentary style, which Scorsese says allows the film “a deep and enduring love and understanding of Sicily and its people, of the betrayal and corruption it had to endure. “The director added, “It’s never dry, there’s blood running through its veins, and it’s shot in black and white, which is surely electrifying. ” Salvatore Giuliano” is, among other things, a wonderful hymn to Sicily, the land of my family, and it is for this reason alone that I appreciate it.
Scorsese singled out John Ford’s iconic western as one of the most iconic, delusional cinematic endings in history: “Only an artist as wonderful as John Ford would dare to end a film on such a note. “In its final moment, “The Seekers” suddenly becomes a ghost story. Ethan’s purpose has been accomplished, and like the guy whose eyes he gouged out, he’s destined to wander the winds. —ZS
“2001: A Space Odyssey,” the only Stanley Kubrick movie Martin Scorsese loves. The director called Stephen King’s adaptation of Kubrick’s “The Shining” one of the most important horror films ever made. “I’ve never read Stephen King’s novel, I have no idea how faithful it is or not, but Kubrick made a majestically terrifying film,” Scorsese said of the film, “in which what you don’t see or perceive overshadows each and every movement. The characters do. ” ZS
Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty has been championed through Scorsese as one of the most important voices in the history of African cinema. Scorsese’s World Film Foundation has restored Mambéty’s 1973 drama “Touki Bouki” and presented it at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, forty-five years later. In an introductory video, Scorsese commented, “The drama follows a cowherd and his student friend as they try to raise enough cash to move to Paris and leave their home. “
Scorsese called Japanese filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi “one of the greatest masters to ever paint on film,” and cited films such as “Life of Oharu,” “Ugetsu” and “Sansho the Bailiff” as his main influences. “It has the hardest effect on me,” Scorsese told Criterion. “There are moments in the photo, noted moments, that I’ve revisited over and over again, that still take my breath away: the ship slowly materializing through the fog and closing toward us, Genjuro collapsing into the grass in ecstasy and being smothered by Lady Wakasa, the last crane coming out of the son making provision at his mother’s grave in the fields beyond. Just thinking about those moments now fills me with respect and awe. . —ZS
Lewis Allen’s 1944 supernatural horror film, “The Uninvited,” stars Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey as a brother and sister who are affected by the paranormal after moving into a new house in Cornwall, England. “Another, more harmless, haunted space symbol, set in England, no less atmospheric than ‘The Haunting’: the tone is very sensitive and the sense of concern is woven into the setting, the tenderness of the characters,” Scorsese wrote, calling the film a masterclass in horror.
Scorsese is such an admirer of Alfred Hitchcock’s mental romance “Vertigo” that he wrote an entire essay about the film for The Guardian. “It’s hard to put into words exactly what ‘Vertigo’ means to me as a cinephile and filmmaker. As with all wonderful movies, really wonderful movies, no matter how much has been said and written about them, the discussion about them will continue. Because a film as big as “Vertigo” demands more than just a feeling of admiration: it demands a non-public response.
Scorsese has long defended South Korean directors and shared with The Film Foundation that Hong Sang-so is one of his favorites. The 2003 drama about Hong’s love triangle, “Woman is Man’s Future,” praised Scorsese for its “masterful sense of storytelling. “The director continued, “In each and every Hong film I’ve seen, each and every one of them starts out unpretentious. In this movie, you start with two friends chatting over a beer. We’re immersed in scenes with other people who have a story, and we deduce the stresses and lows of their dates as the film progresses. Hong Sang-so’s images peel like an orange. —ZS
In a 2017 interview with La Civiltà Cattolica, a religious magazine of the Jesuits in Rome, Scorsese reflected on the ecclesiastical influences of his painting while promoting “Silence. “He referenced several films that shaped his filmography and personal philosophy. adding “Diary of a Country Priest”: writer-director Robert Bresson’s 1951 French drama, which Scorsese said helped him see the sweeter side of God.
“I first saw the film in the mid-’60s,” he recalls. “I was in my twenties and growing up, outgrowing the concept of Catholicism I had as a kid. . . It gave me hope. All the characters in this picture, with the conceivable exception of the senior priest, are suffering. Every character feels punished, and most of them inflict punishments on themselves. And at one point, the pastor had an exchange with one of his parishioners, and he said to her, “God is not an executioner. He just needs us to be merciful to ourselves. And that opened everything up for me. “That was the key. -A F
Scorsese also praised Sam Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country” for its 2017 verbal exchange with La Civiltà Cattolica. The filmmaker evoked the 1962 western while talking about self-acceptance and the role relationships play in shaping our understanding of impermanence.
“There’s a scene where Edgar Buchanan, a drunken minister, marries Mariette Hartley’s character to this man, and he says, ‘You have to understand anything about marriage, other people change,'” she recalled. “The same goes for each and every one of us. “In every relationship, this is about collaborations. Over time, other people you know very well and have worked with for a long time will possibly have other desires, other things that become vital to them and that you want to acknowledge and deal with. You settle for who they are, you settle for the way they’ve changed, you try to cultivate the best, and you have to recognize that they have to find their own way. There was a moment when I thought that this was a betrayal. But I later learned that wasn’t the case. It was just a change. -A F