Introduction

Introduction Christopher B. Barnett and Clark J. Elliston That Martin Scorsese is one of finest directors in the history of cinema is certain. Indeed, one could reach this conclusion in any number of ways. Scors- ese has received eight Academy Award nominations for Best Director—top among living directors and tied for second (with Billy Wilder) among all directors since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began presenting the award in 1929. Such accolades situate Scorsese at the head of the cinematic establishment, but he is equally venerated among the avant-garde. In 2007, the British periodical Total Film named Scorsese the second greatest director of all time (behind only Alfred Hitchcock),1 and the American Film Institute listed three of Scorsese’s films among the 100 best American films, including Rag- ing Bull (1980) in fourth place.2 Already in 1998, well before Scorsese released recent classics such as The Departed (2006) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), the celebrated critic Roger Ebert professed, “There is no greater American film- maker right now than Martin Scorsese, and hasn’t been for some time, perhaps since Welles and Hitchcock and Ford died.”3 Yet, despite all of Scorsese’s accomplishments, “surprisingly few books have been written on his work.”4 Revered by cinephiles, he has been less popular among academics. Moreover, when Scorsese has received scholarly attention, there has been an understandable if exaggerated accent on certain aspects of his background and interests, whether his upbringing in Manhattan’s Lit- tle Italy or his attraction to stories about organized crime. As a result, other aspects of Scorsese’s filmmaking have been underemphasized. For example, while commentators have frequently noted the religious ideas and imagery in Scorsese’s oeuvre, comprehensive and focused treatments of such matters are scarce—a deficiency that this volume hopes to redress. To be sure, from the start, Scorsese’s films have involved religious ques- tions. Ebert notes that Scorsese’s debut Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967) centers on a protagonist who “embodies Scorsese’s own Catholic obsessions,” 1 Total Film, “Greatest Directors Ever—Part 2,” GamesRadar+, August 20, 2007, http://www. gamesradar.com/greatest-directors-ever-part-2/. 2 “afi’s 100 Greatest Films of All Time,” American Film Institute, accessed December 13, 2017, http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies10.aspx. 3 Roger Ebert, Scorsese by Ebert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 218. 4 Aaron Baker, “Introduction: Artistic Solutions to Sociological Problems,” in A Companion to Martin Scorsese, ed. Aaron Baker (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 3. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:�0.��63/97890044��40�_00� <UN> 2 Barnett and Elliston many of which “would inspire Martin Scorsese for the whole of his career.”5 Broadly speaking, these “obsessions” include themes such as faithfulness, puri- ty, redemption, and suffering. But such a general list does not begin to address the idiosyncratic nature of Scorsese’s vision—the tension between Catholic piety and Mob loyalty in Mean Streets (1973), the pain of spiritual trial in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), the exploration of religious non-violence in Kundun (1997), not to mention the director’s groundbreaking use of camera- work and soundtrack. Nor, finally, does it address the depth and the intimacy of Scorsese’s personal involvement with Catholicism: “I wanted to be a priest. My whole life has been movies and religion. That’s it. Nothing else,”6 he once remarked. “Movies and religion”: the task of the present volume is to tease out the cou- pling of these two elements in Scorsese’s life and work. That Scorsese him- self conjoins the two already indicates that this is not so much an ancillary facet of Scorsese’s career as one approaching its very core. The issue, then, is not whether this study is warranted; it is how it will proceed. In particular, the groundwork must be laid for calling this volume Scorsese and Religion, rather than, say, Scorsese and Theology or Scorsese and Catholicism. For once this question is settled, it will be clear that terms such as “theology” and “Ca- tholicism,” while germane in certain cases, do not do justice to the breadth of Scorsese’s interaction with religious issues and themes. 1 Scorsese and Religion The term “religion” is often traced to the Latin verb religare (“to bind fast”) and, in turn, to the noun religio (“respect for the sacred,” “fear of the gods”). At its root, then, “religion” suggests a connection or even an obligation to the di- vine order—a meaning instantiated in the Middle Ages, when persons taking monastic vows became known as “religious.” And yet, this particular use of “religious” only scratches the surface of how the term is employed: “In terms of us- age religion is usually defined as ‘having dealings or relations with the sacred,’ and this in the broadest possible sense so as to include speculative, aesthetic, and ethical religious acts.”7 Indeed, according to Thomas Aquinas, “the name 5 Ebert, 21. 6 Quoted in Mary Pat Kelly, Martin Scorsese: A Journey (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), 6. 7 Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Dictionary of Theology, 2nd edition (New York: Cross- road, 1981), 437. <UN>.

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