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Home , Joe Pesci, Kundun, Madeleine Stowe, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Ray Liotta

directs Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator © THE KOBAL COLLECTION (WARNER BROS)

American God From to , Martin Scorsese has shaped modern cinema CLIVE JAMES

he large format of this glossy new like Scorsese now has the reputation that you monograph about Martin Scorsese once got for painting the ceiling of the Sistine is a reminder Chapel. The book deals Scorsese: A Retrospective that Thames & with all of Scorsese’s mov- by Tom Shone (Thames & Hudson, £29.95) Hudson once ies in chronological order, Tdid books about such people as Michelangelo. each chapter crowded with photographs. We But times have changed, and a film director see frames from the productions, candid shots

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of the productions being produced, and any reading whatever aspect of the industry he number of portraits of Scorsese himself, look- talks about. (His book Blockbuster is a must.) ing either frantically active or deeply thought- Talking about Scorsese, he speaks the lan- ful, and sometimes both. guage of admiration. Most critics are at their Often to be seen in the same photograph as best when speaking the language of derision, the man with his name in the title, even such but Shone has the precious gift of being carried charismatic actors as are hard away in a sensible manner, and of being cele-

“In Britain the film stars... are thought of as people, whereas in America they are royalty” put to generate as much charisma as their bratory without setting your teeth on . director. Scorsese was born in Flushing, Queens “Celebration” of film directors, and indeed after the Second World War and grew up in Lit- of all the key personnel involved in making tle Italy. Stricken with asthma, he did not grow movies, is an activity most highly developed in up very far, and physically he is a small man. America, where Shone is based. He is however, But throughout the book he stares out at you British, and perhaps retains a touch of the tra- with a show-stopping intensity. The best way of dition by which critics in this country’s upmar- describing his stature, as it were, is to say that ket press count it as poor form to overdo the his career of movie-making—try to imagine hosannahs. To put the distinction briefly, in modern cinematic history without , Britain the film stars, even when radiating the and Goodfellas—really does deserve international fame conferred by success in Hol- this kind of hagiography. A hundred portraits lywood, are thought of as people, whereas in of, say, M Night Shyamalan making profound America they are royalty. By extension, a plati- faces suitable to the director of The Sixth Sense, num brand-name like Scorsese is, in America, a would merely look as manufactured as his god, perhaps even Jesus Christ. His birth in the souped-up name. With Scorsese, the hoo-hah mean streets of might as well have fits. been a birth in a manger. Of Scorsese’s prentice The volume is a glory to leaf through, but you work Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967), could possibly do that in a bookshop: serially on Shone says: “Scorsese’s Catholicism fumigates different days, if not all in one go. What makes the film’s climax as overpoweringly as a thuri- the book worth taking home, however, is the ble.” The axis of the book can be thought of as excellent text, fragments of which are some- Shone’s attempt to reconcile Scorsese’s holy times visible among the illustrations. These presence on earth with a deep interest in how words are by Tom Shone, a film critic worth blow each other’s heads off.

2 AMERICAN GOD © THE KOBAL COLLECTION (TAPLIN-PERRY-SCORSESE) COLLECTION © THE KOBAL Mean Streets “made Scorsese’s name.”

Much as we might value Scorsese’s less vio- hood, although he doesn’t say much about how lent movies—I myself think that After Hours traumatic that childhood was, apart from the (1985) is a masterly effort—there can be no asthma. Scorsese’s excellent mother (in one doubt that when we think of him we think of his more recent documentaries, the direc- of kicking someone to death, or of tor captured her on screen) always forbade, Robert De Niro all tooled up like a one-man we learn, any hint of foul language in the fam- armoured division. We think, that is, of Amer- ily home. Shone fails to explain how Scorsese, ican gangsters, usually of Italian extraction, brought up in a house where it was forbidden dropping the f-bomb every second word during to use the f-word, should have spent his entire the brief periods when they aren’t killing some- adult life making movies in which it was forbid- body. Shone takes it for granted that this strain den not to use it every 30 seconds. in Scorsese’s work is generated by his child- Still, perhaps he’s compensating: acting

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tough while acting tall. But the same was true 60lb merely in order to look like a slob. Eddie of Joseph Stalin, who never made Mean Streets Murphy probably did better: in The Nutty Pro- and Taxi Driver. Those movies made Scors- fessor he just wore a fat suit, instead of inhal- ese’s name, and made a poetic style out of low- ing a thousand hamburgers. Raging Bull is an life scunge. On the other hand, New York, New admirable movie on Scorsese’s pet theme, the York (1977), the film that avowedly “celebrated” self-destruction of the powerful; but De Niro (alas, the right word) the wonders of his home damned near destroyed himself making it. city, was a dud. Made with a proper Hollywood One need hardly add that De Niro seems to budget, as opposed to the small piles of used have quite liked the idea: he is the kind of actor bills that had financed his creative efforts up to who, to play a burned man, would set himself then, it disappeared into the maw of an anom- on fire. aly. It was supposed to be a homage (another De Niro came back from his own outer limits bad word) to the New York the world had to star in King of Comedy (1982), Scorsese’s dis- learned to love from musicals. It was also sup- turbing study of fame’s ruinous effects. Abetted posed to have “a loose, documentary, cinéma by the frighteningly batty , vérité feel” (Shone’s words). These two con- De Niro, playing the giftless would-be television tradictory ingredients made for a failed vinai- host Rupert Pupkin, kidnaps Jerry Lewis. For grette. Scorsese, in search of a wider audience, my money, however, the film’s best exponent of had put in all the tough stuff that a nation of fame’s corrosion is Jerry Lewis himself, if only honest film-going citizens didn’t want to see, because he plays a reasonably sane character and had also put in all the corny uplift that his who has had to adopt paranoia for self-protec- art-house fans were proud of avoiding. Shone tion. The De Niro character is a nut, and there- calls the result a combination of barbed wire fore illustrative only up to a point. For someone and a wedding cake. who was brought up on the Italian -realists, Scorsese has a vision out of The Invasion of the hone paints a picture of a man born to Body Snatchers. make movies, but not in Hollywood, The 1970s were a high period for Scorsese— whose rules he has always been keen to no beginnings had ever been more brilliant— break. It’s a rule, for example, that you but the early were a low period, although Sdon’t monkey too much with the male star’s we shouldn’t forget After Hours just because personal appearance, because the audience nobody went to see it. The late 1980s, however, has come to see him as he is. In Raging Bull saw him rise again, like his favourite character (1980), Scorsese shut down production so that Jesus, about whom he had always wanted to De Niro could eat himself into fatness. De Niro make a picture. But first he made The Colour of had already put on 20lb of muscle training to Money (1986), at the request of , be a boxer, but on top of that he put on another who wanted another shot at playing the Hus-

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tler, Fast Eddie Felson. If De Niro had played and didn’t need to make another. It lost a lot the role, he would have staked himself out on of money and he was lucky to get a chance to an ice-cap until he had aged 20 years. But New- make Goodfellas (1990), in which Warner Bros man looked the part, and never acted better. wanted him to cast and . Shone is surely right to call The Colour of Money We got lucky too. Scorsese was able to film the best movie Scorsese made in the 1980s. The the script using De Niro and Joe Pesci from his Hollywood moguls loved it too: on a budget of old repertory company of f-bomb hoodlums, $14.5m he brought the movie in for $13m, the plus , an actor so engaging that a sort of responsible accounting much admired suburban audience loves him even when he is by studio heads with two swimming pools and beating one of his fellow thugs to pieces. Shone three mistresses each. It certainly helps that has a sentence that fits exactly: “Goodfellas has the film has a recognised star at the centre of it, the bloom and decay of a plant or flower rip- working his way to the first Best Actor Oscar he ening in its own rot.” My favourite moment ever received. is Joe Pesci’s “Are you kidding?” look when he realises that he is about to be executed. he same could not be said of Scors- But everybody has a favourite moment in a ese’s other film of the later 1980s, movie so rich in incident. The women, espe- The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). cially, are wonderful: dolled up to the nines Hardly anybody knew who Willem yet tense with the strain of declining to recog- TDafoe was. You could argue that hardly any- nise that their husbands earn all that money body had known who Jesus Christ was, at the from death and torture. “As far back as I can time: I can remember delaying my first look remember,” says Liotta, “I always wanted to at the movie because the news had long ago be a .” Watching a movie in which vio- reached me that the project was regarded lence is so normalised, I am almost convinced as a joke throughout the business. But when that I always wanted to be a gangster too, but I saw it, I could see that Scorsese, his writer got side-tracked into a less fulfilling field. and his money-man Mike Ovitz But only almost. Not even Scorsese really had done something strange and wonderful. wanted to devote his entire career to the wise The miracles, in particular, are the work of an guys, although he has never yet found a com- exalted imagination. Shone is right, though, fortable escape route. AfterGoodfellas he went to say that the film “is also, for long stretches, on to make Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Inno- baffling.” cence (1993) and Casino (1995). In Cape Fear The main source of bafflement is that Jesus De Niro got a chance to be repellent instead of carries on like a man of action, thus remind- merely fat, but you had to be a worshipper at ing you that Scorsese had been, for a long time, Scorsese’s altar not to think that the movie was making movies about men getting crucified, a pointless remake. The Age of Innocence was a

5 AMERICAN GOD © THE KOBAL COLLECTION (WARNER BROS.) (WARNER COLLECTION © THE KOBAL Goodfellas, in which Warner Bros wanted Scorsese to cast Tom Cruise and Madonna nice rest—19th century high society, with no to borrowing the tones of : “it may guns—but as if by reflex he was soon back with be Scorsese’s most underrated film.” But Shone the hoodlums again. Casino is often praised, also sees that when Scorsese manages to shift but only by the tolerant. The main story, about away from his usual beat, he seldom leaves his skimming money in Vegas, is an incompre- usual obsessions behind. , according hensible mess: which of these heavies are the to Shone, is “a paean to peace from cinema’s crooks? De Niro doesn’t do much more than most caffeinated jitterbug.” Perhaps sharing model pastel jackets and tasteless shoes. With- the same opinion at some deep level, Scorsese out the sharply realised character played by didn’t stay all choked up with sacred reverence , the movie would hardly be there. for long. (2002) was more It’s pretty—the chips fall like coloured snow— like him, even though it was a Hollywood movie but it’s all too clearly an exercise in a standard with all the usual elements including constant genre. As if realising that he couldn’t go on like interference from the mogul in charge, Harvey this, Scorsese abruptly upped the spiritual level Weinstein. to the ineffable sublime. Personally I wish that Weinstein could have In Kundun (1997), his movie about the Dalai interfered more. I find the movie barely watch- , the holy person doesn’t once pull a gun. able, and not just because I don’t like razors. Admiring the movie, Shone finds himself driven Like the majority of civilised cinemagoers,

6 AMERICAN GOD © THE KOBAL COLLECTION (WARNER BROS.ANDREW COOPER) (WARNER COLLECTION © THE KOBAL : Scorsese’s “‘later work can feel too cosily cocooned in film-buffery’”

I want to see the tough guys blasting at each applies generally to the director’s later career. other with guns, not cutting each other up. The “If his early work felt electrified by its con- feeling of “Why am I watching this?” was only tact with red-hot reality, his later work can feel increased by the range of prosthetics applied too cosily cocooned in film-buffery.” Scorsese to Daniel Day-Lewis’s face. Daniel Day-Lewis has seen and re-seen too many movies, some would no doubt feel restricted if he were always of them his own. The urge not to repeat your- obliged to look as beautiful as he did profil- self is rarely the artist’s best path to a renewed ing beside Madeleine Stowe in The Last of the originality. The Aviator (2004), a big film about Mohicans, but he should at least look like Dan- Howard Hughes, might have been made in iel Day-Lewis. Boys, beware of the false nose: the same spirit as Hughes himself built the it’s seldom a good idea, except when playing Spruce Goose: get the enormous thing done, Cyrano de Bergerac. and then who cares if it only flies a hundred Admiring of Scorsese’s brave seriousness but yards? Leonardo DiCaprio did his best in it, not in awe of him, Shone has a sentence that but it would have been nothing without the

7 AMERICAN GOD © THE KOBAL COLLECTION (RED GRANITE PICTURES) (RED GRANITE COLLECTION © THE KOBAL The “titanically overblown” Wolf of Wall Street women, especially as Kather- moved up to canonised status, every actor who ine Hepburn. Blanchett shows why she is a star wanted to be taken seriously was ready to take in the great Hollywood tradition by which the a pay-cut just to be in his next project. Out of audience comes flocking to see radiant people. this ocean of adulation emerged The Departed DiCaprio’s main histrionic achievement is to (2006), the movie that finally got him the grow his fingernails. By a cruel trick of chro- Oscar he should have won half a dozen times nology, the other big DiCaprio vehicle of the already. The Departed is generally regarded as time, Catch Me If You Can, caught the star at having set the seal on Scorsese’s eminence in an his most charming. Directed by Stephen Spiel- industry which his creativity had done so much berg—who had never rebelled against the stu- to energise, so it is worth while asking whether dio system, merely taken it over—it gave me it is really as good as its several predecessors a DiCaprio I could watch for two hours with- in his gangster mode. Shone seems to think so, out even once thinking of a fake iceberg, a fake but his vocabulary slips in a revealing manner. ship, and a million gallons of water. On the whole it is not wise to trust any critic But DiCaprio was still keen to star for Scors- who calls just “Jack.” It means ese. They all were: as the one-time interloper that the critic has been too close to the film peo-

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ple, and would like to talk as if making movies guns and with the whole cast carrying on like and criticising them were all the one world. It’s Joe Pesci. I saw a less entertaining movie once, the wrong idea in a big way. but Hitler was in it. The truth about Jack Nicholson in The At this point, near the ending of the book, one Departed is that he plays a major part—the would have liked to hear more about Scorsese’s part of a wrecking ball—in turning the movie influence on the TV serialBoardwalk Empire, of into a heap of rubble. How could such a - which he directed the . We are told no more chopath lead a team of crooks for even a week than that, but it would be interesting to hear without being assassinated? We can tell he is a that he acted as guardian angel throughout the psychopath by his bared teeth. Nicholson has project, and perhaps had an influence on the been doing weird things with his mouth since most impressive performance in the show: Ana- Prizzi’s Honour, which came out in 1985, but tol Yusef as Meyer Lansky. As deadly as any of the movie that turned him from a great screen his colleagues and rivals, Lansky comes on like actor to a posturing monster was undoubtedly a gentleman. With a dead pan and a quiet voice, The Shining. With the help of , Yusef lets the audience deduce the menace. It’s Nicholson managed to convince himself that the other way that Scorsese’s career might have his true role in life was to tear a passion to gone. But perhaps we needed all those decades tatters. of coked-up insanity before self-control could The Departed suffers only incidentally from look good again. the obtrusive fact that Leonardo DiCaprio and could swap roles, and that the film might have been less formulaic had they done so every 10 minutes. But it suffers cru- cially from being dominated by a mad God- father. You see the problem: Brando played it sane, so now everybody else has to play it hys- terical. But hysteria is probably a mode that Scorsese will go on being stuck with, if only because he finds it such a strain to stay calm. Tied to DiCaprio in what was starting to look like a folie à deux, Scorsese went on to per- petrate his big-budget, high-earning, titani- cally overblown comedy The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). A movie about which Shone seems to be in two minds, although one mind should have “If I’d known my life was going to be like this been plenty, it was like Goodfellas minus the I’d never have run away with you”

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