Martin Scorsese directs Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator © THE KOBAL COLLECTION (WARNER BROS) American God From Mean Streets to Goodfellas, 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 1 AMERICAN GOD 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 Robert De Niro 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 edge. 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 Taxi Driver, Britain the film stars, even when radiating the Raging Bull 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 New York 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 gangsters 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 Joe Pesci 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 3 AMERICAN GOD 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 Sandra Bernhard, 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 neo-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 1980s 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 Paul Newman, be a boxer, but on top of that he put on another who wanted another shot at playing the Hus- 4 AMERICAN GOD 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 Tom Cruise and Madonna. 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 Ray Liotta, 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.