You Know It's Scorsese IF...

would you like to be a part of this history yes I would you know you're watching Martin Scorsese if there's an unlikable protagonist often played by Robert De Niro the rubric popkins Travis bickel's and Jake LaMotta of the world make viewers cringe Scorsese forces us to identify with this person who makes us uncomfortable film professor Julianne Cornell explained to us none of us wants to be Travis Bickle while we often aspire to be like sports stars we don't want to be like Jake LaMotta and Scorsese asks us to feel and understand these characters that are objectively unlikable in another directors films we'd be encouraged to eventually find such characters sympathetic but Scorsese actively prevents this by having his protagonists act out in repulsive ways a lot of you are probably wondering why Jerry isn't with us tonight well I'll tell you the fact is he's tied up and I'm the one who tied it we're not here to like this person but to witness a study of the human condition knowing this is follow me my whole life everywhere this video is brought to you by mu B a curated streaming service showing exceptional films from around the globe it's like your own personal Film Festival streaming anytime anywhere Scorsese's most iconic protagonists are studies in insecure masculinity they grapple with deep-seated feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy boys [Music] Scorsese's insecure male is often obsessed with a cool blonde goddess raging bulls Vicky's taxi drivers Betsy and casinos ginger are almost religiously revered by the destructive man as angelic more than human she was wearing the white dress she appeared like an angel the protagonist is obsessed with this woman most of all because she feels unattainable when Travis is watching Betsy's she appears like a remote apparition separated from the camera by many moving chaotic bodies before the shot dissolves into an extreme close-up on words from Travis's diary they cannot touch her Vicki is associated with water and like a liquid that can't be held she always seems to be slipping away from Jake when they meet they're on opposite sides of a fence separated by a screen of sorts that obscures her face with cross-hatching so from the start he can't quite see her for who she is and he seems to want her to stay out of reach stoking his frustration when Vicki finally leaves Jake she's obscured by the windows of the car cut off for good as he always expected her to be the blonde goddesses reflect back to the obsessed men their own insecurities often leading them to act out in jealous violent abuse Jake's Madonna [ __ ] complex twists his physical desire into rampant paranoia and suspicions of Vicki's character just one actually one thing was joy rather than wanting to truly be with this woman the man strives to possess his idea of her his futile desire for this idealized perfection drives him mad and his toxic worship frequently derails the woman's life he makes me sneak around to see my own friends in the wolf of wallstreet Jordan Belfort chases Margot Robbie's character as a trophy embodying the materialistic hedonistic lifestyle he delights and takes pride in but this good life slips through his fingers and his downfall is expressed in her loss of respect for him as she comes to see him as a fool you're a sickness in the age of innocence after Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel day-lewis as characters feel they have to repress their love overtime he cherishes the dream of her so much that he decides not to ruin it by trying to touch it in real life you really won't come at all Scorsese's habit of using female characters as symbols to help work out the male issues can invite feminist critiques Meryl Streep said in 2011 I would like Martin Scorsese to be interested in a female character once in a while but I don't know if I'll live that long you ever hear of women's lib the blonde goddess also can't help but make us think of one of Scorsese's key influences Hitchcock and perhaps she grows out of an homage to the Hitchcock blonde Hitchcock's vertigo is also explicitly about the quest to overcome masculine insecurities by possessing a blonde apparition in Hitchcock and especially in Scorsese looking back at Hitchcock this woman with her light reflective hair really symbolizes cinema itself she's a pure image untouchable and immaterial so the man's obsession with a woman he can't hold or really know or understand is our inability to get inside cinemas projections of light often there's a charismatic false father figure man makes his own way no one gives it - you have to take it this figure embodies how authorities can be seductive yet unscrupulous and often can't be trusted Scorsese uses a trademark expressionist style to paint his character psychology he achieves this Expressionism through techniques like slow motion freeze frames distorted perspectives long tracking shots such a voiceover in music and rapid rhythmic editing let's look in more detail at each of these Scorsese is renowned for his experimental use of slow motion which intensifies our attention creating moments that seem to exist out of time bets he appears in slow-mo filmed from a distance the way Travis sees her Jake also sees Vicki for the first time in slow motion while the audio in Reverse shots play in regular speed from Jake's perspective she slows the entire world down later slow-mo also expresses Jake's paranoid obsession with Vicki here again the sound plays at regular speed the real world continues on the same but Jake's jealousy monopolizes his attention freeze frames emphasize important details or symbolic images Henry Hill has a freeze-frame moment when he recalls the exact instant that Jimmy Conway Zalora began to wear off that's when I knew I would never have come back from Florida alive in the king of comedy the shot of mashes hands pressed to the window of Jerry Langford limo backlit by a flashbulb serves as an encapsulation of the film itself a study of outsiders trying to break through the glass into the seemingly untouchable world of celebrity professor Mark lapa doula told us King Comedy is a movie about the idea of this obsession with Fame in America and ass obsession to be famous even if you don't have a talent this was way before the Kardashians and all these reality shows came into existence and it was really appreciate in the way that if you do something something horrible you're well-known Scorsese pairs for two oh so long tracking shots with theatrical voiceovers and rock music to coax the audience into his worlds giving them a sex appeal that's often hand-in-hand with danger or corruption Jordan Belfort in the wolf of Wall Street acts as a sort of ringmaster for capitalism as carnal pleasure and Scorsese dazzles us with fluid 360-degree dolly shots to make us feel similarly unstoppable seduction is also the name of the game in Goodfellas famous three-minute three-second tracking shot where Henry Hill leads Karen into the Copacabana Club the uninterrupted shot bewitches us with its dreamlike continuity just as Henry's power and access overwhelmed Karen beautifully choreographed long takes also established settings as all-consuming forces unto themselves in the age of innocence the Steadicam dancing through the Gilded Age interiors revels in the spectacle of wealth that surrounds and ultimately and traps these characters a swift moving even aggressive camera energizes characters at the top of their game in Raging Bull the camera even swings in 360-degree arcs and falls to the ground as though it were struck by a punch another interesting thing about scorsese is is use of moving camera and is very often to disparity between these elaborately choreographed long moving camera shots most famously in Goodfellas and the stillness of some of the other images and that's where the feel of Scorsese's films is different they're very kinetic very visceral because of the movement of the camera there's this freedom of moving through space and that's contrasted to the often the constriction of the individual by other social forces or more importantly in Scorsese their own self-destructive behavior rapid or rhythmic editing builds a powerful atmosphere an emotional response and can be used to break a character down in the gangs of New York's opening battle scene the quick rhythm of the editing evokes the slicing of the knives Scorsese shapes the physical space of his films to evoke his characters distorted perspectives the boxing rings in Raging Bull change sizes to reflect LaMotta psychology when he's on his game feeling like the big man they're tiny other times they're huge signaling that he's diminishing in importance losing control and feels the world is escaping him the king of comedy visits imaginary spaces that are physical projections of Rupert Pupkin mental state this space echoing with canned applause and laughter visualizes a vacuous and self enclosed personality obsessed with celebrity and delusions of grandeur in Goodfellas the vertigo inspired dolly zoom when Henry and Jimmy meet at the diner subliminally unsettles the audience just as Henry's own worldview is pulled out from under him during the scene last but definitely not least of his expressionistic techniques music a rock soundtrack is Scorsese at his most Scorsese his films are seen as part musical [Music] and his career is a testament to the fact that sometimes the perfect pop q says it all [Music] it's hard to even hear the song gimme shelter without thinking of this director in Goodfellas the song returns as a motif highlighting the growing instability of Henry Hills lifestyle in which the end of it all maybe just a shot away the stone sound contrast with the nostalgic 50s Phil Spector girl group sound that makes up the fabric of the first half of the film as time passes in the story the period-appropriate progression from 50s pop to 70s rock evokes the arc of lost innocence that Henry goes through as the music introduces harsher textures and a cool brand of cynicism Scorsese frequently pulls in multiple expressionistic techniques together to achieve his desired effect as far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster in the sequence when we first meet Sharon Stone's ginger and casino Scorsese uses a freeze-frame a slow track inward on DeNiro a pop music cue with the lyrics that comment on the scene and a perspective shifting shot as she walks away in slow motion cinematics jackpot as they might say in casino there's memorable hyper aesthetic violence which Scorsese portrays with brutal realism rapid cuts slow motion swift aggressive camera movements striking angles and dynamic music hues [Music] Scorsese is fascinated by violence as an inescapable part of human nature spectacle of fearsome acts somebody steals from me I cut off his hands he offends me I cut off his tongue at times the immediacy of the camera edit and music can make us identify swept up in the thrill of the acts yet by the end of a Scorsese film we reject that identification as Scorsese illustrates that violence is never the answer violence is never cathartic even in taxi driver where Travis feels that his violence is cathartic it turns out not to be and so violence is always the most awful thing that a human being can do to one another and he uses that as a way to explore this larger question of the casual violence we do the emotional violence that we do to one another as we pursue our individual needs and goals and violence is something that in the American tradition is very often seen as redemptive and for Scorsese it's never redemptive redemption comes from somewhere else we may think it's in violence but it's not often Scorsese's films aren't really about what they seem to be about I find that his films are often not even about what they say they're about Raging Bull is not about boxing it's the animal within us all the rage with an assault the anger that we carry with us in wolf of wallstreet it's the greed this kind of selfishness and narcissism and trying to achieve these goals purely to pursue them you've got all the money in the world you need everybody else's money Goodfellas I think is the desire to live a life that's exciting I mean that Henry Hill talks about that in the film where he wanted to be like the gangster simply because their lives seemed more interesting it meant being somebody in a neighborhood that was full of nobodies they weren't like anybody else I mean they did whatever they want they double-parked in front of a hydrant nobody ever gave them a ticket they didn't have dead-end lives even though their lives often ended up in death they just seemed to be living larger than life but in the end they don't really even achieve that the Irishman isn't really about the mob it's about ageing and mortality sooner or later everybody put here as a date when he's gonna go that's just the way it is a number of Scorsese's films are really about Catholic guilt or struggles with faith and the way our religious experience shapes us this is a theme that's close to home for Scorsese who once wanted to be a priest you don't make a few sins into Church you do it in the streets you do it at home but his characters are often plagued by their religious ideas boxed into situations where they can't escape the need to sin or they find it's not straightforward to decipher the path of a good spiritual man Scorsese's films also tend to be about self-destruction Jake beats up his family members and himself literally ending the film alienated alone and unable to stop compulsively destroying himself I don't think there's a director who's is able to portray characters who are inherently self-destructive doing something that will not benefit them and seemingly unable to stop doing so Scorsese is also known for his gritty depictions of New York I take people to the Bronx Brooklyn I take him to Harlem the director grew up in an apartment on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy Mean Streets which relied heavily on the directors memories of acquaintances involved in crime keeps itself confined to the blocks of Little Italy and falls apart when Charlie and Johnny boy attempt to drive out of the city taxi driver takes us up town to Harlem and to the seedy areas around Times Square this city here's I can open sewer you know it's full of Filth and scum take it the King of Comedy plays with midtown extras reacting to celebrities like Jerry Lewis walking down the street after hours plops an ineffectual uptown er into a wild artsy soho bringing out the dead captures the underside of New York by night wolf of Wall Street takes us to the one-percenters castles and fidi and West Chester Scorsese's to period films show us two different historical New York's divided by about a decade and vast class differences New York was a city full of tribes WarChiefs through these many New York's Scorsese reveals how characters are shaped and confined by their precise environment and he shows us how these diverse subcultures and experiences coexist in one enormous urban microcosm of humanity Scorsese likes to make self referential cameos which you might say is yet another update to Hitchcock Hitchcock's famous cameos sometimes send subtle thematic clues in strangers on a train a double bass underscoring the film's motif of doubles in North by Northwest we see him miss the bus setting the tone for Cary Grant's narrative mishaps Scorsese builds on this with cameos that are frequently self-reflexive allowing him to literally direct the narrative from inside the movie in mean streets his gunshot puts an end to Charlie and Johnny boys get away in Hugo he's a daguerreotype era photographer another type of image maker in taxi driver we get Scorsese's longest cameo notice how Scorsese is addressing this speech to the back of De Niro's head and working himself up trying to elicit a reaction out of the actor this cameo reveals that Scorsese seized the directors job as creating conditions that guide the actor towards a response meanwhile on the story level he's a narrative instigator introducing disturbing violent ideas into Travis's mind which will simmer in his unconscious before exploding Scorsese is the ultimate cinephile director Scorsese's films are an ecstasy of influence think of the exes foreshadowing deaths in The Departed a tribute to Howard Hawks is Scarface the vertigo style shots of flowers in the opening credits of age of innocence hugo cover a dangling from a clock like harold lloyd and safety last and the use of music from jean-luc Godard contempt in casino [Music] in the departed the rhythm of the cuts when Sullivan takes a shower might call to mind the most famous shower sequence in cinema psycho and one of the murder scenes is edited exactly like a murder scene in the Public Enemy with James Cagney direct oh ma jizz are only the tip of the iceberg the very fabric of Scorsese's films reflects his deep knowledge of film history such as the way that the color changes in the Aviator to match up with the way film development technologies would have appeared in each time period Scorsese formerly studied cinema at NYU Martin Scorsese belongs to that generation of filmmakers that were university trained for the first time Spielberg Lucas Spike Lee Scorsese there were real students of the cinema in fact Raging Bull is dedicated to Scorsese's college mentor Haig P Manoogian with this biblical quote implying that his professor taught him to see through cinema Scorsese reveals that his guiding light is not just films themselves but also the study and philosophy of films I think what Scorsese represents is someone who is constantly learning from other filmmakers and if you listen to him speak about movies talks a mile a minute ed Stanley crema making certain kinds of very socially conscious films at Kazan doing that too in late 40s early 50s and then you had of course outer perimeter he's somebody that is just absolutely consumed and passionate about his art form you could say that Scorsese has been training his whole life to become the cinephile director as a child Scorsese's intense asthma made it difficult for him to play outside with other kids his family would take him to see movies at the Roxy near Times Square he became an avid movie goer absorbing and internalizing the films of Alfred Hitchcock Italian neo-realist like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini whose gritty aesthetics were hugely influential on Scorsese's own depictions of italian-american New York Akira Kurosawa whose Rashomon would inspire some of the ensemble stagings and meditations on justice in silence and John Ford Marc lappa doula explains that Scorsese modeled taxi driver on the searchers the searchers was a very important movie for all those guys in that generation and it's a film where the John Wayne character is a real racist I mean he just hates the command they're cold enough Comanche they're called the Comanche could be commenced so there's a real parallel between these two films these filmmakers are using classical film models in order to tell their stories of today another important influence is Michael Powell Scorsese pays tribute to his black narcissus in the fades to color in age of innocence Powell himself inspired Scorsese's decision to make Raging Bull in black and white when Powell saw some test footage he remarks that De Niro's boxing gloves looked too red incidentally Powell's wife Thelma Schoonmaker is Scorsese's longtime editor shaping the rhythm of his films ever since Raging Bull Scorsese's masterful documentaries also sprang from his love for the Arts he tends to tackle either music that's personally inspired him or film history a personal journey with Martin Scorsese through American movies is a loving tapestry of a film curriculum steeped in his own memories and experiences in that spirit Scorsese has dedicated himself to film preservation in 1990 he founded the film foundation and he's brought global cinema to wider audiences through his world cinema project Scorsese's filmography explores how our inner demons lead us to self-destruct and why we're so deeply driven by the unattainable but while his characters redemption may be limited in the end like his life Scorsese's films are most of all about the love of cinema and how the right shot the right song and the right cut add up to that unforgettable moment of cinematic sight hey guys this is Grace and today I want to talk to you about one of our favorite places to watch movies mu B mu B is a treasure trove of films every day movie premieres a new film whether it's a movie you've been dying to see or one you've never heard of before there is always something new to discover so in this world where it's very easy to spend hours debating what you should watch movie is like having a really cool friend with amazing taste in movies making it so much easier for you they feature hard to come by 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Channel: The Take

Views: 215,997

Keywords: martin scorsese, martin scorsese interview, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman

Id: _-OXe5fsjBg

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 15 2019