Since his emergence in the early seventies, Martin Scorsese has become one of the most respected names in cinema. Classics such as
Taxi Driver
,
Raging Bull
and
Goodfellas
are regularly cited as being among the finest films ever made.
Born in New York City in 1942 to Sicilian-American parents, Scorsese spent much of his childhood absorbing the sights and sounds of Little Italy from the balcony of his family’s tenement apartment – music blaring, drunks brawling and neighbourhood kids playing stickball. A lifelong asthma sufferer, he took no part in his friends’ games and instead fell in love with cinema at an early age, crafting intricate storyboards for as-yet-unmade Westerns and Roman epics.
This long apprenticeship paid off in 1962 when Scorsese was accepted onto a film course at New York Universityand immediately attracted attention with a series of quirky and technically accomplished student shorts. Having made his breakthrough with the gritty
Mean Streets
(1973), Scorsese outgrew his early reputation as a virtuoso of violence, creating films as diverse as a nineteenth-century literary romance,
The Age of Innocence
(1993), a dramatization of the early life of the Dalai Lama,
Kundun
(1997), and a 3D children’s fantasy,
Hugo
(2011). This lavish retrospective is a fitting tribute to a remarkable director, now into his seventh decade in cinema and showing no signs of slowing up.
Leading film writer Tom Shone draws on his in-depth knowledge and distinctive viewpoint to present refreshing commentaries on all twenty-six main features, from the rarely shown
Who’s That Knocking at My Door
(1967) to
The Irishman
(2019), as well as covering Scorsese’s notable parallel career as a documentary maker. Impeccably designed, and copiously illustrated with more than two hundred stills and behind-the-scenes images, this is the definitive celebration of one of cinema’s most enduring talents.