Martin Scorsese Biography

Martin Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an acclaimed American film director.

Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian-American identity, Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo and the violence endemic in American society. Although he has received much critical acclaim he has never won an Academy Award despite numerous nominations. Scorsese is widely considered one of the most significant and influential of post-war American film makers.

Martin Scorsese was born in Flushing, New York, USA and came from a working class Italian-American family; his father, Luciano Charles Scorsese (1912–1993), and mother, Catherine Scorsese (1912–1997), both worked in New York’s Garment District. A sickly child, he spent much of his time recovering from asthma at home. It was at this stage in his life that he developed his passion for cinema.
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His initial desire to become a Catholic priest was forsaken for cinema; the Catholic seminary traded for New York University, where he received his M.A. in Film in 1966.

The main themes of Scorsese's work are intimately wrapped up in his Roman Catholic upbringing and his early attraction to the priesthood. Scorsese has once remarked that when he was growing up the most powerful people in his neighborhood were the gangsters and the priests. He claims that as a filmmaker he is in some ways a combination of the two.

Redemption and sin are the primary themes of Scorsese's films. His heroes tend to be fallen souls seeking redemption in a world of corruption. They often achieve this redemption only through a "passion", a crucifixion of sorts, in which a blood penance is extracted for their former sins. Charlie's final scene in Mean Streets, Travis Bickle's psychotic rampage in Taxi Driver, and Jake LaMotta's pounding his fists into the walls of his prison cell in Raging Bull would all seem to be expressions of this obsession with sin and redemption.

Scorsese's films have, oddly enough, become more bleak in this regard as his career goes on. GoodFellas, Casino, and The Aviator all end with their protagonists trapped in a metaphorical purgatory from which it is uncertain they will be redeemed.

Solitude and obsession also permeate Scorsese's films. His characters tend to be loners or misunderstood outcasts who are driven by emotional forces they cannot fully control. Over the course of his films, these forces tend to gather strength until they erupt into a frenzy of emotional or physical violence. It has been said that this is one of the factors which attracts actors to his films, because it gives them the opportunity to play extremely emotionally dynamic characters.

The corruption of the material world and the fall from paradise are also persistent themes in Scorsese's films, particularly in his gangster films. His characters are often torn between the temptations of the material world and the self-betrayal of their own spirits that the material world demands of them. This conflict often erupts into a cataclysmic fall from grace that sometimes leads to a quiet redemption. This theme is most explicit in Raging Bull, which ends with a New Testament verse spoken by a blind man who has been given sight by Jesus. (However, this quote can be read as part of the film's dedication to Haig P. Manoogian, his NYU film school mentor.)
Scorsese has been nominated five times for an Oscar for Best Director, but has never won. This places him in the company of such directors as Alfred Hitchcock (5 nominations), Robert Altman (5), Stanley Kubrick (4), Federico Fellini (4), and Ingmar Bergman , none of whom won a competitive Oscar for directing, though Altman, Hitchcock, Fellini, and Bergman were all awarded honorary Oscars.

Jon Stewart noted this at the 2006 Oscars, joking moments after rap artists Three 6 Mafia won the Best Song Oscar: "Martin Scorsese, zero, Three 6 Mafia, one."

MARTIN SCORSESE PICTURES

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MARTIN SCORSESE BIOGRAPHY