Martin Scorsese: The man who brings the street to the screen
Published: Tuesday, Feb 20th 2024, 23:20
Updated At: Tuesday, Feb 20th 2024, 23:20
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He is one of the most influential filmmakers: Martin Scorsese has been considered an icon of contemporary Hollywood cinema since the 1970s. The 81-year-old has been awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlinale for his life's work. "Numerous of his works have written film history, the versatility of his work is unique," is how the International Film Festival describes it.
"Your job is to get the audience excited about your obsessions," Martin Scorsese was once quoted as saying. He has always been able to fascinate audiences and critics with one of these obsessions: the machinations of the mafia, its gangsters and the laws of the street, which the slender New Yorker has relentlessly sketched in many of his films. Scorsese's penchant for the mafia genre is hard to overlook. But where do the extraordinary portraits of this milieu come from?
Childhood among mobsters
Martin Scorsese was born in New York in 1942, the son of Sicilian workers. The young boy spent his childhood in the "Little Italy" district - a neighborhood characterized at the time by mafia structures and street crime. "Martin Scorsese owes his best works to his experience of the milieu", wrote the Neue Zürcher Zeitung many films and years later, "it was the streets of New York from which Martin Scorsese wrested his best material".
"Hexenkessel", a tough milieu study about life on the streets of New York, first earned him the praise of many critics in 1973. In the years that followed, many of these films flickered across the screen, and Scorsese's passion for the mafia genre was sealed with "Good Fellas", "Casino" and "The Irishman". His experiences and observations from his childhood are constantly evident in his filmography.
Fascination for power
The filmmaker is particularly interested in one thing when it comes to organized crime: the question of power. "How people deal with power, how they gain power, how they lose power, how they fight to maintain their power," Scorsese tells the magazine "Süddeutsche Zeitung". "The question that interests me is always: Who makes the law? Who is the law?" Power manifests itself in many institutions: State, church, dynasties or governments. However, there are not only the laws of the state, but also those of the street.
Scorsese actually wanted to become a priest, but falling into the gangster milieu himself was never an option for the devout Catholic. Instead, he moved his stories from the street to the screen in the director's chair - and became a Hollywood legend with allies such as actor Robert De Niro and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus.
Martin Scorsese has now been honored by the Berlinale. "For anyone who sees film as the art of crafting a story in a way that is both personal and universal, Martin Scorsese is an unsurpassed role model," said Berlinale directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, explaining the decision. Scorsese's view of history and humanity helped "to understand and question who we are, where we come from".
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