“The cinema had mice, but I felt like I was on the edge of the ring”
Steve McQueen Scorsese is so good in intro scenes. I love the one in Mean Streets where De Niro walks into the bar for the first time. Harvey Keitel watches him, everything is still, Jumping Jack Flash on the soundtrack. It’s one of the most perfect introductions to a character I’ve ever seen: a beautiful piece of music, visuals and choreography. I also love De Niro waiting for Joe Pesci in the desert in Casino. Is Pesci his friend or foe? He doesn’t know yet. It’s absolutely incredible, so beautiful: the car driving through the sunglasses, the music – another introduction, another uncertainty about what’s going to happen. There is an anticipation. you are at a dead end. And there are the fights in Raging Bull. I remember seeing it for the first time at the Scala cinema in London in the late 80s: there were mice running around, rubbish everywhere, and it felt like I was on the edge of the ring. I remember the sound of the knock and the punch. It’s very heavy, very visceral. There is a dynamism and physicality to Scorsese’s films that have informed my work. As a visual artist, I make things – it’s not about thinking, it’s actually about doing. It happens in the moment: you can write something, you can think about something, but on set you really have to do it. When I make a film, I don’t think about Tarkovsky or Kieslowski or Bergman or whatever, I think about how to do my best in the moment – and I can appreciate that in his films. Scorsese is a creator: a filmmaker rather than a director. Lynn Ramsey. Photo: Mondadori/Getty Images
“It’s all wrong, but it’s still romantic”
Lynn Ramsey Scorsese is the master of memorable scenes and it’s hard to pick a favorite. “Are you talking to me?”, “Do you think I’m funny?”, the dead-end phone call to Betsy in Taxi Driver and the dance floor in an empty hall when she’s not interested. Alka-Seltzer foams in the glass in the restaurant. The camera on Mean Streets. Too many to mention – all brilliant and so cinematic. There is something about the misunderstanding of the world or situation that Scorsese captures that is so recognizable and so human. “Every man has to go through hell to get to his heaven,” says Max Cady, played by Robert De Niro in Cape Fear. In that film, teenager Danielle (Juliette Lewis) tests her growing sexuality against Max’s menacing and manipulative adult power. The scene between them in the gym is brilliantly and nail-bitingly awkward. Watching it, I felt transported back to that time, so unsure of the world and trying to navigate its rules. Everything is wrong, yet innocence and psychopathy somehow sit together in strange unison. it’s even romantic (in her eyes). Max: You thought about me last night, didn’t you? Daniel: Yes, I did. Max: I think I might have found a partner for this long walk in the light. The first take was used and Lewis knew De Niro could do something unexpected – but not for his thumb, which he uses to caress her cheek before sliding it into her mouth. She holds her own brilliantly and captures this uncertain age wonderfully. A lamb and a wolf. However, the lamb does not understand that it is a lamb. Luca Guadagnino. Photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for FLC
“It’s one of the most romantic moments in cinema ever”
Luca Guadagnino For me, Scorsese’s work is paramount and a reference point to which I constantly return, for the incredible power and intelligence he has displayed throughout his career. The first sequence I want to highlight is the finale of The Last Temptation of Christ. It’s my favorite Scorsese movie. I’m not talking about the story of Jesus Christ being crucified and then called back to the life of a normal man and his delirium with the devil. I’m talking about the last minute of the movie, where he asks why God has abandoned him. Then he’s back on the cross, and the camera has an amazing moment, a super-Scorsesian thrust to Jesus, waking him, and waking us, from the dream, and finally he says, “It is finished.” The camera lingers on Jesus, and then to show him ascending into the heavens, Scorsese does one of the most beautiful and profound cinematic moves ever captured: basically, he flickers the film, as if the film becomes a journey light and be how Jesus goes to heaven. Unbelievable, so beautiful. The idea that he can combine the life of Christ from Kazantzakis’ novel with his own life in the land of cinema and bring Jesus to heaven through the power of cinema is wonderful. It also reminds me of the way we go up into the sky at the end of the Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light, when the camera goes up, up, up. Such moments are simply unbeatable and amazing. The other sequence I want to discuss is in The Age of Innocence, when Newland Archer and Countess Olenska, who fall relentlessly in love throughout the film but always repress what they feel, find themselves alone in a carriage. Newland opens the countess’s glove and unbuttons it, then fingers the piece of leather the glove is made of and kisses her wrist. This detail is almost like him opening her vagina with his own hands – it’s one of the greatest and most erotic moments in cinema. It takes masterful detail to do such things – Scorsese is a master, and I salute and celebrate him. I don’t see him as a violent director. I think he’s not sentimental – as any real filmmaker should be. It explores humanity and what that entails, including violence. The Age of Innocence is in my view one of the most violent films ever made: it is about repression and oppression. To understand his display of violence, consider the scene at the end of the film with the magnificent dinner to celebrate the Countess’s return to Europe. Everyone in attendance knows they’re making sure she and Newland break up forever, and they do so by hosting the most wonderful meal. Marty goes from the bottom of the table to the top showing the grandeur of the design these monsters created and the loneliness of these two. The doom they have to face, being separated by the turmoil of society, losing their innocence forever. It’s beautiful. What I have learned from Scorsese is how he is always relentless in exploring every detail, contradiction and strength within a character. At first I looked for the kinetic energy in his way of editing film, but I soon realized it was unparalleled. But with more maturity I discovered that despite the incredible brio of his style, he is a humanist who thinks very deeply about human nature. It’s a constant lesson I try to learn from him. Takashi Miike. Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
“I lived peacefully in Tokyo, but I was one with the immigrant boxer”
Takashi Miike Immediately after the film opens and having been unfairly defeated in a match against Sugar Ray Robinson, the scene shifts to LaMotta’s house. Arguing with his wife as she cooks the steak, LaMotta tells his brother, who tries to intervene, “Hit me in the face.” This scene made me experience the wonder of the film. I, being from a different country, time and environment, could hear LaMotta’s screams inside his mind: his frustration and uncontrollable anger that has nowhere to go. I, living peacefully in Tokyo, could become one with the immigrant boxer. This is a brilliant scene. Today, when so many screenplays seem to consist of dialogue, the value of this film has been enhanced. Mars Star. Photo: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP
“Scorsese’s clearest expression of love for his medium and his religion”
Mars Star The last 40 minutes of The Last Temptation of Christ are among the richest and most emotionally complex of any film I’ve seen—willfully twisted, ambiguous in ways that persist in haunting me, and thick with wonder. There is the Sturm und Drang of Christ’s earthly moment of doubt (“Father! Why hast thou forsaken me?”), followed by the ethereal stillness that ushers in his tour of an unlived life. There is the tenderness of Christ’s guardian angel (Satan in the strange disguise of a good child) kissing the wounds of Jesus after freeing him from the cross. the shock and greatness of Jesus having a child with Mary and the subsequent strangeness and mystery of his coupling with Lazarus’ sisters. And, of course, there’s the spontaneous glory of Harvey Keitel as Judas (a role he first played in Mean Streets), somehow the hero of the film, tortured like Christ, but with the hardest job. The complexity of Judas here is just right, as the figure of Judas must be the most recurring and central object of fascination in Scorsese’s work – reaching its peak with the eternal traitor Kichijiro in Silence, one of the great films of this century and beyond waiting for the celebration she deserves. But nothing beats the last moment of Christ’s ecstatic death – “It is accomplished!” – during which the film exits off-camera, unleashing a flurry of heavenly, milky flares, accompanied by a wave of mourners giving way to Peter Gabriel’s triumphant and rhapsodic final cue. The credits play over an orange screen, evoking fire but also celebrating the film’s pop sensibility. This orange is a freeze frame of the film screening, random and God-given, and it feels like Scorsese’s clearest expression of love for his medium and fervor for his religion. Despite this film’s commitment to the more incendiary ideas of Kazantzakis’ book, every one of Scorsese’s choices feels informed by a deeper, more committed faith. Even those controversial New York accents…
