| By Nicholas Tana When you think of Martin Scorsese you can't help but think of violence; his films deliver dramatic tension like a knockout blow, straight and in your face. To the gangster genre, he adds stark realism. To the boxing story, Scorsese gives an upfront and personal perspective. Even his comedy revolves around a struggle for survival, his gangster films the first of their kind to successfully combine comedy and tragedy in the same scene. Revered as one of the world's greatest directors, Martin Scorsese has been nominated four times for an Academy Award for best director and has never won. Maybe it's because he's too unconventional. Maybe it's because he shows us a side of violence, a side of humanity, too scary to accept. Whatever the reason, if there is a central fabric running through his best films, it's his mastery of violence. Scorsese's worlds are violent, his characters often sociopaths. Mean Streets, GoodFellas, Taxi Driver, After Hours and even Gangs of New York take place amidst tough urban backdrops. Within these sordid cityscapes, Scorsese creeps around like a voyeur, exploring the lives of complex characters like the gangsters in GoodFellas or the ex-Marine-turned-vigilante in Taxi Driver. Scorsese uses violence as a catalyst to drive his plots and to test the merit of his characters. Even in his comedy After Hours, the humor revolves around a scary string of criminals, psychotics and sadomasochists. There are no heroes or villains in Scorsese's films, just people. And while some characters appear more redeeming than others, all share a certain psychological instability, a sense of isolation, and a tendency toward violent resolution. The vigilante Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, conducts a bungled assassination attempt of a politician; this failure leads to his heroic struggle against a crew of hoodlums and pimps to save an exploited young prostitute, in a possibly ironic "happy" ending. The film GoodFellas presents a similar paradox. The central character, Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, cooperates in a RICO trial that imprisons most of his former gangster associates, only to retell his bloody account of friendship and betrayal from the point of view of someone trapped in suburban America, who longs nostalgically for the corrupt privileges of mafia life despite its violent trappings. It's interesting to note that Scorsese once entertained the idea of becoming a priest, since his films challenge Judeo-Christian notions of good and evil, dangling violence like a double-edge sword so that we can run our fingers along both sides of its blade. A daring director, Scorsese defies genre convention through violence. To the boxing genre, Scorsese brought stunning, violent realism. His film Raging Bull, about former champ Jake LaMotte, made use of black-and-white cinematography for a more gritty and surreal visual feel, turning the red blood black, while invasive camera work made veteran boxers of his audience. In Raging Bull, Scorsese positioned his camera inside the ropes, eye-level with the boxers, while prior directors of the boxing film kept their camera ringside at a safe distance. From inside the ropes, Scorsese shows the boxer like a beast, trapped by aggression, isolated from those he loves. Quick cuts from boxing fights to fights with friends and family reveal parallels between Scorsese's films and boxing, his characters waging their fight for the pleasure of ringside on the safe side of the silver screen. The same fearless direction that helped Scorsese change how moviegoers view the boxer revolutionized the gangster genre. Films like Mean Streets and GoodFellas show a type of gangster more real than those portrayed in old Cagney films or in Francis Ford Coppola's stylized translation of Mario Puzo's celebrated novel, The Godfather. Where Coppola portrayed the gangster as a glorified antihero, lending a theatrical appeal to the mobster role further confirmed by Sammy "The Bull" Gravano in his autobiography, the gangsters in GoodFellas are horrifying. The stab sequence following Joe Pesci's realization that the guy stuffed in his trunk isn't dead is anything but glorifying. Coppola's gangsters are like dark knights while Scorsese's are murderous barbarians. And who can forget the scene in Casino when Nicky Santoro, played by Joe Pesci, squeezes a guy's head in a vice? Scorsese films show us the many faces of violence, even to make us laugh. Mean Streets and GoodFellas are some of the first films in cinema history to juxtapose the evils of gangster life with the dark humor surrounding it. In GoodFellas, a laugh that Joe Pesci's character, Leo Getz, shares with friends nearly leads to murder. Even in Scorsese's comedy After Hours, humor derives from terror after an attempt to meet a woman at her apartment leads to confrontations involving an obsessive cocktail waitress, a suicidal girl, and a suspected murderer. By the end of the film, the main character, Paul, played by Griffin Dunne, must run for his life from an angry mob who thinks he's a burglar. Simultaneously entertaining and horrifying, Scorsese's movies present an inimitable violence - honest, daring, and fun. Unlike Quentin Tarantino, who has stylized retro-violence, or Sam Raimi's comic-book fantasy violence, Martin Scorsese's violence delights and disturbs so that we might find ourselves leaning into the silver screen with one eye closed. It's only when Scorsese tries to be too Hollywood-like in his presentation of gang violence in Gangs of New York that he fails. Extravagant set designs play into a story more concerned with historical accuracy and the grandiose historical drama behind New York than with the relationships among his characters. His elaborate set design in Gangs of New York received more critical attention than the characters themselves, whom Scorsese set up according to a traditionally dualistic "hero-versus-villain" epic struggle, with the token love interest tossed in for good measure. When Scorsese sticks to a less conventional, more maverick style of filmmaking as in Mean Streets - real locations, diagetic music, realistic dialogue - he shines. It will be interesting to see if his newest film, The Aviator, proves successful. The story of Howard Hughes seems better suited for a director like Oliver Stone, a master of the epic historical drama. If it succeeds, it will be because Scorsese has found a way to probe the inner angst of the tortured and desperate tycoon, Howard Hughes, without relying on the overproduced filmmaking frills - big budget, overrated actors, and formulaic screenwriters - often allocated to celebrated directors. But so far, Scorsese has proven strongest at home in the mean streets of urban America. |
