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Born November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York and raised in Manhattan’s Little Italy, Martin Charles Scorsese earned a B.S. in film communications in 1964 and an M.A. in the same field in 1966. Having made his own short films since 1959, he made his first feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door starring Zina Bethune and Harvey Keitel in 1967 which was nominated for a prize at that year’s Chicago Film Festival. He did not make another until 1972’s Boxcar Bertha starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine. The following year’s Mean Streets starring Keitel and Robert De Niro won numerous awards including a New York Film critics award for De Niro and put him on the map.

Scoresese’s first brush with Oscar came when 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore earned three nominations and a Best Actress win for Ellen Burstyn. 1976’s Taxi Driver firmly established his position as one of the best directors of the decade, earning four Oscar nominations as well as numerous other awards for himself and stars Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster. His next film, the big budget 1977 musical, New York, New York starring De Niro and Liza Minnelli, was a box-office disappointment, and earned no Oscar nominations, not even one for its iconic title tune.

The director’s 1980 film, Raging Bull finally earned him his own first Oscar nomination for Best Director, along with seven other nods and two wins including one for De Niro as Best Actor. 1983’s The King of Comedy and 1985’s After Hours were modest successes, while 1986’s The Color of Money earned four Oscar nominations and provided Paul Newman with a long-delayed win. Scorsese himself received his second Oscar nod for 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ, the film’s only nomination.

1990 was a momentous year for Scorsese. His GoodFellas won numerous year-end awards including one Oscar out of five nominations, while his ten-year-old Raging Bull was being called the best film of the 1980s by some influential critics. He also founded the Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation.

The 1990s brought Scorsese just a single Oscar nomination for his screenplay for 1993’s The Age of Innocence, although 1991’s Cape Fear, 1995’s Casino and 1997’s Kundun were nominated in other categories. In the 21st Century, Scorsese has directed seven feature films thus far, every one of them an event. He has personally been nominated for at least one Oscar for five of them, 2002’s Gangs of New York, 2004’s The Aviator, 2006’s The Departed for which he finally won, 2011’s Hugo and 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Only 2010’s Shutter Island failed to receive any Oscar nods, while 2013’s received just one for its cinematography. Leonardo DiCaprio was the star of all of Scorsese’s 21st Century films except Hugo and Silence.

Martin Scorsese has been married five times and has three children. He is currently in pre-production for The Irishman in which he will once again direct Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel at the age of 74.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

Scorsese’s films from the start had been known for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity. Robert De Niro supplied both as the lonely, depressed titled character in Taxi Driver. More controversial, however, was Jodie Foster’s portrayal of the foul-mouthed 12-year-old prostitute Iris “Easy” Steensma that De Niro’s Travis Bickle takes upon himself to save from pimp Matthew “Sport” Higgins (Harvey Keitel). The film provided added notoriety when Foster’s stalker John Hinckley claimed his 1981 attempted assassination of President Reagan was to impress her.

RAGING BULL (1980)

Although it initially received mixed reviews from critics, by 1990, a mere ten years later, the film was dubbed the “best film of the 1980s” by influential critics including Roger Ebert. It was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in only its second year of existence and the film’s first year of eligibility. Scorsese’s biographical drama starred Robert De Niro as self-destructive boxer Jake LaMotta. It wrestled with Robert Redford’s Ordinary People for the most year-end awards, picking up Oscars for De Niro and Thelma Schoonmaker for editing, but lost Best Picture and Director to Ordinary People.

GOODFELLAS (1990)

Scorsese’s biographical film of gangster Henry Hill won the lion’s share of the year-end critics’ awards, but lost the Oscar to Dances with Wolves and its actor-director Kevin Costner exactly ten years after Scorsese lost to another film and its actor-director. Although I agreed with the earlier win for Ordinary People, I did not agree with the win for the good, but rambling Dances with Wolves. Scorsese’s film was the best American film of the year and the best of the nominees, but truth be told, there were two non-nominated foreign films, Dekalog and Cinema Paradiso that were better.

THE DEPARTED (2006)

Scorsese finally directed a film for which he won his own Oscar. The film received four Oscars in all, including Best Picture. One of the better remakes of a foreign film, this came only four years after Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs upon which it was based. For my money, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson deserved acting nominations at least as much as Mark Wahlberg who was nominated for his supporting performance in this examination of good cops vs. bad cops and the Boston underworld (ruled by Nicholson). DiCaprio was nominated for the inferior Blood Diamond instead.

SILENCE (2016)

Scorsese received the second of his eight Best Director Oscar nominations thus far for the controversial 1988 religious drama, The Last Temptation of Christ. This time around the controversy was muted and so were the accolades for what was really the better of his two films that explore questions of faith and guilt. Andrew Garfield received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a WWII conscientious objector in this year’s Hacksaw Ridge in which he was very good, but he is even better here as the 17th Century priest who must renounce his faith in order to save it in Scorsese’s most complex work to date.

MARTIN SCORSESE AND OSCAR

  • Raging Bull (1980) – nominated – Best Director
  • The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – nominated – Best Director
  • GoodFellas (1990) – nominated – Best Director
  • GoodFellas (1990) – nominated – Best Screenplay
  • The Age of Innocence (1993) – nominated – Best Screenplay
  • Gangs of New York (2002) – nominated – Best Director
  • The Aviator (2004) – nominated – Best Director
  • The Departed (2006) – Oscar – Best Director
  • Hugo (2011) – nominated – Best Picture
  • Hugo (2011) – nominated – Best Director
  • The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – nominated – Best Picture
  • The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – nominated – Best Director

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