A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995)

Powerful

Just perfect...

Fresh and Exciting

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Spoilers herein.Popular culture plays a central role in inventing a life, the first tenet of which is choosing which sources to ingest. Scorsese is worthy of exposure: he is earnest and skilled.But the second law of conscious self-invention is a matter of which ideas and notions you cleave to. For me, Scorsese doesn't make the cut and none of his films are on my `worth watching' list, including this one.That's because Martin has a perspective on film that misses the real magic, the value. His review of important directors here clearly shows this. It is as valuable in revealing the cleft between him and others more creative as its intended purpose in `revealing film.'Scorsese believes film is a child of the theater and that the purpose of both is to allow us to explore the humanity of each other. His commitment to film mirrors his earlier commitment to the ministry. All his films can be clearly seen in this light -- and so can his `personal history' of film. Even the form of this documentary turns out to be an exploration of a single, interesting being. And the evolution from early films is traced in singularly one-dimensional path of human exploration to the latest evolution shown: the extreme Cassavetes. Cassavetes makes pure emotional `encounter' pieces.All well. But there are richer notion of film, and art. And life. These have less to do with the character of what we see than HOW we see it and HOW we react, probe. Who we are is more the issue, especially when encountering self as a process of the art.Contrast Scorsese to his peers dePalma and Coppolla. All of Scorsese's projects are anchored in the character. The camera is slave to the character. All action, indeed the whole environment revolves around the person, even emanates from them. His world of `Goodfellas' is a world of people surrounded by space that we passively watch and sometimes follow.Coppolla on the other hand lives in the visual assembly. His mind is situated not in the center of the character's heart, but in the filmmaker's hands. That's why we get cinematic effects of action in one place paralleled or superimposed on action in another, amplifying both. The drama is moved by the situation (mostly the visual situation) and the characters are just objects in the tide. It is very intelligent, this manner of composition. It is a little too mannered in fact for my taste, but it is intrinsically a cinematic art (both words emphasized), far from where Scorsese comes from.Or consider dePalma. He is something between and more clever. His projects are even more selfaware, and anchored by the camera -- the Eye. His eye places the audience not in a theater seat, but makes us God. We swoop into and around the action, abstractly separated from it. The camera has motivation and expresses curiosity, determination equal to that of a character. Coppolla creates montages after Eisenstein; dePalma, great eye poems after the manner of Tarkovsky.Take your pick. I prefer the narrative intelligence of dePalma, but both he and Coppolla know something about the magic of cinema that eludes mister Scorsese. Taking his work to be important art, the stuff one uses to form a mind, is a lazy decision.

As a "rebuttle" of sorts to the AFI's top 100 films, the British Film Institute worked out a documentary with Martin Scorsese.Now. I am a huge film fan and pride myself on having seen many, many films. But, I am nowheres in comparrison with my idol. In this fantastic (though long) documentary, Scorsese walks the viewer through several stages of the American History on film. This is divided in to several sections including the Western, the Gangster film and the Noir. Full of bouncy enthusiasm, Martin Scorsese is a great tour guide as well as a fantastic professor.

I would never have thought I would almost cry viewing one minute excerpted from a 1920 black and white movie without sound. Thanks to Martin Scorsese I did (the movie was from F. Borzage). You will start to understand (if it's not already the case), what makes a good movie.

This documentary was interesting, but it was also long (so long it lasts a total of 225 minutes), like Ben-Hur long. But if your into that, this is for you. But only if you have a passion for movies, like I do. Being that Martin Scorsese is my favorite director (live and maybe even ever), this is quite fascinating, especially if you know the style of Scorsese's works. Because then you can understand where he got his inspiration for many of his films. Not the best documentary film ever made, but it is a leap for Scorsese, which is always good to watch. A