Tag: Martin Scorsese

Mean Streets (1973)

Scorsese’s calling card is an energetic, gripping, electric mix of themes that would shape his career

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Harvey Keitel (Charlie), Robert De Niro (Johnny Boy), David Proval (Tony), Amy Robinson (Teresa), Richard Romanus (Michael), Cesare Danova (Giovanni), Victor Argo (Mario), George Memmoli (Joey), Lenny Scaletta (Jimmy), Jeanne Bell (Dianne), David Carradine (Drunk), Robert Carradine (Gunman), Martin Scorsese (Jimmy Shorts)

Mean Streets wasn’t actually Scorsese’s film debut but that feels like a technicality. If young Martin had a calling card, it was Mean Streets. It’s a vibrant, electric punch to the solar plexus and a dazzling display of virtuoso skill mixed with grungy, improvisational energy. Mean Streets is an artist finding his voice and screaming his agenda from the rooftops, bringing together a host of ideas, styles and themes that would dominate the rest of his work. Mean Streets remains raw, dynamic and overpowering, a major artistic statement like a punchy companion piece to Terence Malick’s Badlands, another new-found distinctive voice in American from 1973.

Mean Streets was strongly inspired by the environment Scorsese saw around him growing up on the rough streets of New York, crammed with the sort of sin Travis Bickle would later swear to wash away. It’s a world of gangsters and masculinity where boys never grow up, but become immature sharp-suited guys whose conversations end in hasty punch-ups and saving face means everything. Charlie (Harvey Keitel), nephew to the leading neighbourhood Mafiosa, is plagued with Catholic guilt. His idea to deal with this? To ‘save the soul’ of old friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), an impulsive tearaway, in debt to every money lender. Charlie will struggle to curb Johnny Boy’s self-destruction, but with limited success.

Catholic guilt soaks through Charlie, introduced kneeling in Church while we hear the words of a priest (voiced by Scorsese) outlining Charlie’s moral quandaries. Charlie has a morbid fascination with punishment of his sins, never seeing a flame without feeling the urge to dip his hand into it. He claims his hero is St Francis of Assisi (though there is no sign he has read or understood anything St Francis ever said). Charlie continues a clumsy internal monologue with God (hilariously, late in the film he slips into continuing this outload to the confusion of Johnny). He has not time for confession, with its Hail Mary’s: he’s arrogant enough to think, as a real sinner he needs more.

But, like so many of Scorsese’s gangsters, his guilt runs skin-deep. He’s a nice guy, scrupulously polite and well-spoken, only as far as it goes. Charlie may know his guilt springs from his life of crime being full of greed and sin, but never once does he even consider changing it. Just one flash of his uncle casually suggesting he could own his high-class restaurant soon is enough for him to shelve all idea of personal change or real sacrifice. His self-imposed mission to reform Johnny Boy is really a self-aggrandising deflection effort, designed to make him feel better about his horrendous life choices. As if it’s fine to be a low-level rent collector and friendly face of Mafia loan sharks, if he makes one wildcard play by the rules everyone else obeys.

Keitel captures Charlie’s walking contradictions very well, his surface decency hiding his obsessive pride. He may be more articulate about his flaws, but Keitel makes clear Charlie talks a good game, but is obsessed about what people think of him. He considers himself in love with Johnny Boy’s epileptic cousin Teresa (Amy Robinson, very good) – but he’s way too embarrassed to ever let their relationship become public, because of the scorn that will be heaped upon him for dating someone ‘diseased’. Just as the idea of dating Black dancer Dianne (Jeanne Bell) is instantly rejected.

All these low-level gangsters are obsessed with status. Nearly every conversation – most strikingly in a pool room payment haggle – seems about five seconds away from a punch-up over some semi-imagined slight. No one has anything to talk about, other than booze and girls. They are all basically children, giggling over immature jokes or watching films like enthralled toddlers. Only Tony, a surprisingly thoughtful eccentric, seems to have any hinterland (and even he keeps baby lions in his basement). Most of them are useless. Michael, an incompetent loan collector introduced bungling a camera shipment deal, is desperate to look lean and mean in his sharp suits but constantly fails to look like anything other than someone’s dumb younger brother.

The willingness to call out these bullshit self-images is part of what makes Johnny Boy such a dangerous figure. Introduced blowing up a post box for shits and giggles, this is a jaw-dropping firecracker of a performance by De Niro. He makes Johnny Boy a larger-than-life figure with a sociopathic streak, stirring up trouble and conflict simply for kicks. There can be charm to his unashamed insolence – De Niro captures all this has a stunning early monologue, a rambling shaggy dog story excuse that Keitel’s Charlie can’t help grinning indulgently at. But he’s also capable of sudden, thoughtless violence. Just as he can collapse into vulnerable tears when the pressure’s on – tears he can instantly forget when he starts chasing the next thrill, like a dog with a car.

De Niro’s stunning performance beautifully complements Scorsese’s superb direction. Both artists collaborate perfectly for De Niro’s arrival at Tony’s bar – a perfectly paced tracking shot towards Keitel, cut to perfection to The Stones ‘Jumping Jack Flash’. It brilliantly tops Keitel’s own entrance earlier, where the camera followed him in tight close-up from behind (to the tune of The Stones ‘Tell Me’). Mean Streets is full of wonderfully selected rock ‘n’ roll tracks, the action cut to these tunes to perfection. Scorsese understands every beat of this music and how it can maximise impact. From ‘Rubber Biscuit’ to the stunning use of ‘Be My Baby’ at the film’s start, few directors have used pop songs better.

It brings a rocky edge to a film that feels constantly propulsive and wired, despite the fact the plot is strikingly straight-forward. It feels ripped from the streets in places (so persuasive is its energy, you can forgive the multiple obvious continuity errors), full of punchy energy. Sequences like Keitel’s drunken revelry – the camera attached to Keitel makes us feel we are woozing around as much as Charlie. An extended pool-room fight is a masterpiece of energy.

The film is full of masterful edits, immediate tracking shots and whipper-crack roving camerawork. All to see a world of shallow desires, where the characters feel awkwardly out of place as soon as they leave their dark streets (never has anyone looked less comfortable at a beach, than Charlie does here). Every problem is addressed with fists and Charlie is lying to himself when he says he’s less wild and foolish than the others.

Mean Streets builds towards a crescendo, but it’s a masterclass before then of atmosphere. And it’s a major awakening of a great artist – and a major statement of a great actor, De Niro as sensational as Scorsese’s filmmaking as breathtaking. In any other career it would be the highlight: the fact it might only crack the top ten of both, shows the greatness of the careers that would follow.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

An engaging film explores the difficult choices faced by a generation of women

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Ellen Burstyn (Alice Hyatt), Kris Kristofferson (David), Alfred Lutter (Thomas Hyatt), Diane Ladd (Flo), Vic Taybeck (Mel), Valerie Curtin (Vera), Jodie Foster (Audrey), Harvey Keitel (Ben), Lane Bradbury (Rita), Billy Green Bush (Donald Hyatt), Lelia Goldoni (Bea)

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore takes a traditional ‘woman’s picture’, and firmly updates it to the concerns of the 1970s. It’s a successful mix of hope, romance and compromise, that manages to capture a sense of what a difficult and unusual time for a generation of women who grew up told being a wife-and-mother was the be-all-and-end-all only to find themselves in an era of possibilities with more options in life.

Alice (Ellen Burstyn), a wife-and-mother in a comfortable but largely romance-free marriage, is suddenly widowed. She realises she has a chance of becoming what she wanted to be when she was a kid: a singer. She and twelve-year-old son Thomas (Alfred Lutter) leave town, hoping to find this dream in Monterey, where she grew up. Their road trip is interrupted as Alice searches for singing jobs to pay their way, eventually stalling in Tucson where she works as diner waitress and finds the possibility of romance with softly-spoken divorced rancher David (Kris Kristofferson).

What’s striking about Alice is that you might expect it to be a story of feminist independence: a woman, striking out on her own, seizing her dreams. But it’s actually a more realistic – you might almost say quietly sad – film, where dreams are notoriously hard to achieve. Alice attracted ire at the time as she didn’t fit the bill of a feminist role model. For starters, at times she remains just as keen on finding a man as she does making it as a singer. Her talent is good but not stand-out – even she claims her voice is weak with an odd wobble. And she makes a host of dubious personal decisions out of a desire to be liked or to accommodate herself to others.

Burstyn captures this in her outstanding, Oscar-winning, performance. Alice is caught at that cross-roads of not being ready to let go of the traditionalist outlook she absorbed growing up, while dreaming of standing on her own two feet. It’s a problem you can imagine many women in 70s America, a country fumbling towards gender equality, struggled with. We grow incredibly fond of her as she strives for independence, while also sometimes wanting to shake out of her timid reliance on affection from others.

ADLHAM is a film about complexities and defies easy answers. Her marriage seems like one of mutual convenience. Then it surprises us: Alice’s tearfully silent realisation that they she and her husband have nothing to really talk about is met not with incomprehension but with a tenderly affectionate hug from her husband. Alice has an undeniable deep grief at his death – but she’s also quick to feel emotions, and you could argue her quickness to move on suggests she mourns the loss of an anchor in her life.

Her relationship with her son is an a mix of motherly care and a desire to be his friend. Alfred Lutter is very good as this slightly spoilt pre-teen who can switch from sulking playful laughter. ADLHAM shows plenty of fun and games between these two, like a water-fight in a motel. But it also makes clear Alice’s inability to control Tommy and her tendency to let take the lead. She rarely (if ever) corrects his bad behaviour or language, allows him to play music at top volume whenever he wants (to the intense irritation of others) and you feel her discomfort with being an authority figure (only once does she put her foot down, and is consumed with tearful guilt almost immediately after).

Similarly, her need to be close to a man leads to a parade of dubious choices. She is unable to pick up on signals that a seemingly charming man she meets at a bar (Harvey Keitel) is a married man with a hair-trigger temper. The gentler David might seem like a better prospect, but there is enough in Kris Kristofferson’s manner to suggest he has only so much patience for Tommy and that he might also be as flat and dull a man as Alice’s first husband was. ADLHAM could be suggesting some people are trapped into making similar mistakes over-and-over again.

Burstyn is the heart-and-soul of this look at the difficult balance between hope and reality. Alice is deeply emotional, her heart perilously close to her sleeve. Tears come incredibly easily, in juddering waves that shake her whole body. Burstyn makes her both defiant – “I don’t sing out my ass” she tells one leering bar-owner – but also vulnerable and needy. She’s can be playful and comic – she performs skits for David, throws herself into banter with Tommy and loves putting on voices – and then touchy and judgemental. It’s a performance that mixes rawness with insight and delusion, where Alice can go from cold-eyed realism at her singing to convincing herself all her problems will be solved the second she arrives in Monterey.

Scorsese, directing with subtle, classical grace, makes this goal feel like a chimera. In fact, the constant postponing of the journey suggests it will never happen. Scorsese opens the film with a 50’s style prologue (deliberately shot on a soundstage and filmed like a mix of The Wizard of Oz and Powell and Pressburger) showing the young Alice at Monterey that hardly makes it feel like a golden future. In fact, it looks more like a step backward when Scorsese cuts from it to a wide-angled, rock-n-roll sound-tracked panning shot over Socorro in a whip-sharp transition.

There is a slight unease in ADLHAM that nothing is quite fixed, which Scorsese accentuates with the film’s subtle hand-held camera-work (every shot has some slight shaky movement in it). It’s balanced with some lovely old Hollywood touches (at one point Alice lights a cigarette for David in her mouth and passes it to him, a classic Hays Code metaphor for sex), genuine comedy and human connection. Lots of that comes from the Tucson dinner, either from Valerie Curtin’s hilarious inept waiter (introduced passing the same three meals between three people with increasing panic) and Diane Ladd’s (Oscar-nominated) turn as blousy but caring Flo, with whom Alice forms a surprising bond that surprises her. (It perhaps echoes the film’s complex message, that life-long waitress Flo, flirting for tips, seems more independent than Alice).

Alice is an interesting, refreshing look at how difficult this moment of time could be for people caught between two ways of thinking. It has a superb performance by Burstyn (who provided much of the drive behind making the film, including hiring Scorsese) leading a very strong cast (including a strikingly mature, relaxed performance from Jodie Foster as a precocious pre-teen tearaway). It’s ending breaks into something more reassuring and traditional, but it’s also soaking in hints that it is far from a full-stop: the possibility that Alice has entered into a new chapter in her life that might be more similar than she thinks to her old one.

The King of Comedy (1983)

Scorsese’s dark satire on the obsessive love of fame was miles ahead of its time

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro (Rupert Pupkin), Jerry Lewis (Jerry Langford), Sandra Bernhard (Masha), Diahnne Abbott (Rita Keene), Shelley Hack (Cathy Long), Frederick De Cordova (Bert Thomas)

Like moths to a flame, celebrity attracts obsessives, weirdos and those desperate to grab their slice of fame’s limited cake. In our world of influencers and social media, the sharp, uncomfortable and acidic King of Comedy has become a classic after flopping on release. The world seems full of Rupert Pupkin’s today, people who feel their mission in life is to share their gifts for entertaining with the world and feel ownership over their famous idols.

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) feels like this about TV chat-show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis). Pupkin sees himself as a polite, affable comedy-star-in-the-waiting and only the fact that he and Langford have never met is preventing them from forming a deep and lasting friendship. In actuality, Pupkin is a fantasist with an elaborate fantasy-world he struggles to differentiate from reality. Believing Jerry wants to give him his big break, his stalkerish attempts to become the star’s protégé lead to inevitable rejection. Desperate, he allies with Jerry’s even-more-openly obsessive stalker Masha (Sandra Bernhard) to take desperate measures to break into the spotlight.

The King of Comedy gets, in a way few other films have done before or since, the dark outer-reaches of the allure of fame. It’s a film about people desperate, in different ways, to have a part of the glamourous exciting world are pressed up against the screen watching. It’s about the darkly-comic – and, in their way, terrifying – lengths people will go to feel special and noticed. To land a quiet moment with a distant superstar or (even better) to become the celebrity themselves.

There’s a little bit of Rupert Pupkin in all of us. Perhaps that’s why we find De Niro’s exquisite performance both hilarious, mortifying to watch but also strangely endearing. Who hasn’t spun in their head elaborate fantasies full of warm conversations with those we admire, where they fall over themselves to tell us how amazing we are? Or imagined a critical teacher going on television to tell the world how wrong they were? Or dreamed of impressing the person we fancied at school with tales of our high-flying success among the hoi-polloi?

What we perhaps don’t do, is build a replica TV studio in our apartment, staffed with life-size cardboard cut-outs of our heroes. Or act out, long into the night, the conversations we wished we had. We probably don’t try to force up fantasies weekend retreats with superstars into reality by turning up at their houses unannounced with a date we want to impress in tow. We might enjoy flirting with a little fantasy life, we’ve probably not started to believe it or started to resent the celebrities for not performing in real life the affection they show us in our mind.

But Rupert does. Superbly played by De Niro – this might just be his finest performance, hilariously over-eager, pathetic but with just the possibility of Bickle-like danger under the surface – Pupkin lives half in this world, half in his own. He doesn’t even seem to realise how socially awkward or desperate he is, approaching every conversation with an air of polite, calm decency. The sort of guy who hands over his own autograph to the girl he’s trying to impress, telling her it will be worth a fortune one day. Who, when he finally gets the chance to talk to his idol after ’rescuing’ him from a deranged fan (something we quickly realise is a set-up – and an indicator of the ends Pupkin will go to), seems literally unable to let the conversation end, utterly unaware each additional word that passes his lips makes it less-and-less likely Jerry will ever speak to him again.

Pupkin only looks normal when he’s compared to his partner in Jerry-obsession Masha, a superbly grating performance of unhinged monomania from Sandra Bernhard. Masha and Rupert – the sparky, bickering interplay between De Niro and Bernhard is electric, the two sounding like children feuding over the last cookie in the jar – are two halves of the same personality: Rupert the more polite, more capable of affecting normality part who longs for a celebrity to recognise him as one of their own; Masha is the possessive id, who wants to grasp her object of affection tight and never let them go, focused on celebrities because they are easier to follow than regular people.

But we’ve all been desperate to take a chance to get close to something we want haven’t we? When presenting himself at Jerry’s office with his demo tape, Pupkin politely but firmly refuses to read any social cues from the staff that they want him to leave. De Niro’s permagrin is a superpower, rejection bouncing off him unscathed. De Niro manages, under the smile and unassuming manner, to always demonstrate Pupkin’s belief fame is his due. The King of Comedy really understands the belief many feel that all which separates them from success is luck. Pupkin rejects hard work and honing his act, genuinely not understanding why he can’t graduate straight to prime-time TV. He’s a millennial ahead of his time, someone who believes if he really, really wants something he should get it.

What’s fascinating about Scorsese’s film is it encourages us to share Pupkin’s delusional perspective. Jerry Langford – a superb performance of bitter, dark self-parody by Jerry Lewis – is all smiles on TV but, as far as we can see, a surly bully in reality, frequently abrupt and rude. But think about it: we only really see him from the perspective of the invasive Pupkin and the frankly terrifyingly Masha. Would you cut these guys any slack? In brief moments where King of Comedy puts us in Jerry’s shoes, it’s clear his world isn’t always pleasant: the woman who responds to his polite refusal to talk to her son on the phone screams “You should die of cancer” at him and he’s obvious genuinely scared of Masha. Is it a surprise he clutches a golf club throughout his confrontation when Pupkin arrives at his home? He chooses his words carefully because too much interaction can be as dangerous as none-at-all.

What’s also quietly clever about King of Comedy is that Pupkin isn’t talentless as such. His problem is all his material is as derivative and carefully studied as his attempt to act normal is. When we see his act, some of the jokes land – but they land like with the carefully planned poise of an obsessive who has copied the tics of those with genuine talent. Pupkin is witty, but it’s outweighed by his obsessive desire for immediate fame. Everything about him is carefully crafted, his entire persona constructed to cope with the world. That’s why he retreats so often in fantasy, where everything is easier.

And maybe King of Comedy heads into fantasy, much as Taxi Driver perhaps does. Don’t trust a Scorsese-De Niro film where someone who we’ve seen as maladjusted, unaware and self-deceiving as Pupkin gets what he wants at the end. King of Comedy shares huge amounts of DNA with Taxi Driver – history repeating itself as farce – even if Pupkin is too childish and incompetent to be as much of a danger as Bickle is.

King of Comedy captures all this with a brilliant understanding of the addictive qualities of fame and celebrity. Sure we sort of like Pupkin sometimes, but we also understand why Jerry finds him so unbearable and unsettling – and also clear just how short a distance he would need to travel to become Masha. King of Comedy delivers all this with an unflashy skill and hosts a truly superb performance from De Niro, a pitch-perfect study in weakness, longing, delusion, repressed desperation and strange vulnerability. It speaks to feelings we’ve all had, but it also reveals the horrific end results of those longings.

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Scorsese tries to tell an Indigenous story – but from the persecutor’s perspective

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Ernest Burkhart), Robert De Niro (William King Hale), Lily Gladstone (Mollie Kyle), Jesse Plemons (Thomas Bruce White), Tantoo Cardinal (Lizzie Q), John Lithgow (Peter Leaward), Brendan Fraser (WS Hamilton), Cara Jade Myers (Anna Brown), JaNae Collins (Reta), Jillian Dion (Minnie), Jason Isbell (Bill Smith), Louis Cancelmi (Kelsie Morrison), William Belleau (Henry Roan)

In the 19^th century, the American government forcibly shifted Indigenous nations from their rich, fertile lands to unwanted backwater reservations. The Osage nation was moved from Missouri to Oklahoma, land no-one wanted… Until oil was discovered there in the early 20th century. Suddenly hugely rich, the Osage nation’s land once again became the focus of white Americans, as keen to dispossess these Indigenous people as they were in the last century. This ruthless grab of oil rights – and the brutal exploitation and murder of dozens of Osage people – is the theme of Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon.

Ernest Buckhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns from war service (as a cook) to live with his uncle William King Hale (Robert De Niro) in Oklahoma. Hale lives on a ranch in the heart of reservation country and has built himself a powerful local presence by acting as benefactor of the Osage people. But Hale is, in fact, a ruthless sociopath who smiles cheerily at his neighbours, while plotting ceaselessly to steal their oil rights. Hale persuades Buckhart to marry Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), whose family own headrights. While the gullible and easily-led Buckhart truly loves Mollie, he also willingly takes an active part for years in Hale’s schemes to murder the rest of Mollie’s family, so that their oil rights will collect with Mollie – and, in effect, with Hale.

Scorsese’s film is certainly a rich tapestry, but also a curiously mixed viewing experience. It feels at times like what it is – a film that dramatically changed its focus several times during its development, eventually reaching towards bringing the Indigenous experience to the screen, only to find that reach exceeding its grasp. The original book by David Grann focused on the FBI investigation into the crimes with DiCaprio originally set to play FBI investigator White (now played by Jesse Plemons). DiCaprio instead was drawn to the role of Buckhart, with the film repositioned to focus on the killers rather than the investigators or victims. During Scorsese’s extensive work with the Osage nation, the filmmaker became increasingly compelled by the exploitation of the Indigenous people.

Watching the film, it feels like a late swerve in focus Scorsese isn’t quite able to deliver on. However, some of the film’s most compelling content is its commentary on the Indigenous experience and the brutal exploitation and murders by a white community that sees the Osage people as second-class human beings. As a sort of twisted natural progression from encroaching on land a hundred years ago, people like Hale talk of marrying into Indigenous families, breeding out the blood and turning these communities into extensions of their own white families so they can control their wealth.

Over the course of the film, Scorsese carefully shows community gatherings becoming more and more dominated by white faces. Even tribal functions and ceremonies become awash with white faces, staring on with paternalistic, unfeeling smiles. From an early montage of Indigenous people enjoying their unexpected wealth (in a mix of historical and recreations photos and film stock), we progress ever more sharply into seeing whites take over. These fall into two firm categories: Masonic pinstripe types who stick together to cover-up crimes, and trailer trash and inept lesser-family members who are farmed out like cattle to soak up Osage wealth.

Scorsese’s film doesn’t shirk from depicting the casual racism of this community. A KKK march heads through the town. When Hale attends the cinema, he first sees newsreel footage of the Tulsa massacre then The Birth of the Nation. A montage of suspicious Osage deaths is marked by a Mollie voiceover stressing the lack of investigation. Osage oil owners are dispatched with increasing blatantness, as pretence of staged suicides and accidents degenerates into shootings, executions and finally bombs. Hale rants about the need to “take back control” and coldly states that they can escape any retribution because, fundamentally, no one cares or will remember.

But yet… this is still a film where we see a traumatic event happen to a group, but which focuses overwhelmingly on the perpetrators rather than the victims. I find myself agreeing with one reviewer that it feels at times like Get Out, told from the perspective of the white people. Scorsese’s film’s main beat feels like regret and guilt and perhaps what it needed was anger. For all its noble efforts, it’s hard to escape the fact that Mollie is the only Osage character in its epic runtime who is made to feel like a character, and she remains a person things happen to. The other Osage characters are, by and large, victims – Mollie’s sisters or William Belleau as Hale’s drunken, depressed neighbour – people who pop up in order to be dispatched.

I was reminded somewhat of The Searchers. In 1956, a film that criticised a John Wayne hero as an unpleasant racist was a big statement – but in a film where the Indigenous characters were still faceless nobodies, villains or comic relief. It’s similar here: Killers of the Flower Moon shows us the vileness of its white villains, but doesn’t really give us a full Indigenous perspective. And it feels, in 2023, we should do better. Even the impact and workings of reservations, land displacements and white-guardians isn’t explained in the film. Gladstone is marvellous – her eyes are full of suppressed pain, suspicion, fury and glimmers of the possibilities of forgiveness – but her character remains somewhat of a cipher, never quite receiving the exploration the killers of her family receive.

It feels like a realisation made during the filming, but without the time to deliver (after all the stars are playing the killers). Scorsese gives two beautiful Osage-themed bookends (and his carefulness around avoiding cultural appropriation is to be applauded), but the Osage themselves become passengers in their own story, allowed only a few brief moments to protest or express their anger. In a film that stretches over 200 leisurely minutes, more really should have been done.

Saying that, the film is blessed with two wonderful performances by Di Caprio and De Niro. DiCaprio, his mouth stuffed with rotten teeth, his body stumbling from scene-to-scene, expertly walks a tightrope between weakling and coward. Does he realise the moral morass he has climbed into? Or does he not care? How does he manage the mental gymnastics of plotting the deaths of his wife and her family and yet also convince himself that he is protecting her? It’s a fascinating performance. De Niro gives his greatest performance in 25 years as a polite, gentle man who warmly means every word of his friendliness but is also capable of acts of shocking murder and violence towards ‘his friends’ without even batting an eyelid. De Niro’s avuncular presence chills noticeably over the course of the film, brilliantly letting the egotistical dark heart leak out into the surface.

There is a lot to respect about Scorsese’s film, not least the way the late Robbie Robertson’s heartbeat-inspired score constantly creates an air of menace. It’s beautifully filmed – even if it is incredibly stately in its huge runtime – and it’s trying, very hard, to address an under-addressed issue in American culture. But it fumbles the ball because, for all its good intent, it still tells the story of an Indigenous group through the eyes of white people. Worse – their white persecutors. A braver, better (and shorter) film would have centred Gladstone’s Mollie rather than making her, at times, a passenger on a very long ride. Killers of the Flower Moon strains to make amends to Indigenous Americans – but instead it feels like a long guilt-trip for its white film-makers.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Greed is Good? Scorsese’s masterpiece is a heady deconstruction of the excess of white collar criminals

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Jordon Belfort), Jonah Hill (Donnie Azoff), Margot Robbie (Naomi Lapaglia), Kyle Chandler (FBI Agent Patrick Denham), Rob Reiner (Max Belfort), Jon Bernthal (Brad Brodnick), Matthew McConaughey (Mark Hanna), Jon Favreau (Manny Riskin), Jean Dujardin (Jean-Jacques Saurel), Joanna Lumley (Aunt Emma), Cristin Milioti (Teresa Patrillo), Christine Eberle (Leah Belfort), Kenneth Choi (Chester Ming), Brian Sacca (Robbie Feinberg), Henry Zebrowski (Alden Kupferberg)

All The Wolf of Wall Street is really missing is an early freeze frame of a coke-fuelled banker slamming the phone down on a closed deal and a wistful voiceover from Jordan Belfort: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be Wall Street trader”. If Goodfellas was Scorsese’s exploration of the attractions – and dangers – of a life in blue collar crime, then The Wolf of Wall Street is its white collar companion piece. The fact that so many viewers find the behaviour of Belfort morally outrageous in a way that no one ever objects about Henry Hill is, for me, an indication of how much we loath these masters-of-the-universe. For all their faults, we’d still rather see a violent criminal as one of us.

Based on Jordan Belfort’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) autobiography, The Wolf of Wall Street follows his time building a dodgy trading empire and a large fortune. Not that he can remember most of it, as he seems to be on a permanent intoxicated binge of drinks, hookers and every drug you can ever imagine (and some you can’t). The FBI catches up with him eventually, but Belfort learns precious little from his experiences. Other than, perhaps, that so long as you are rich and white in America, you can basically get away with anything.

That’s perhaps the key to Wolf of Wall Street. Scorsese may not shy away from the delicious dark comedy of Belfort’s life of excess, but it doesn’t blind him to the shallow awfulness of the man or his unthinking, instinctive greed and self-obsession. You would need to be a pretty shallow person to look at Belfort’s greed, moral emptiness and self-destructive binges and want to ape him. If you think watching DiCaprio literally paralytic on quaaludes is the life you want, frankly there is something wrong with you.

What perhaps made some feel Wolf of Wall Street was oddly in love with Belfort is its electric pace. The film is a brilliant reminder of Scorsese’s faultless understanding of pace. Or one who matches unparalleled cinematic skill with the rambunctious energy of a first-timer allowed to play with his movie toys for the first time. Brilliantly assembled, this is a superb collection of cinematic techniques, from jump cuts to fluid transitions that power through a series of increasingly bacchanalian parties and isn’t afraid to admit that, in the moment, this stuff can be fun (rather like getting the best table in Goodfellas) but ultimately self-destructive. (After all, few know the dangers of drugs like Scorsese.)

At the centre of this whirlwind is a stunning performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. With his still youthful, charismatic handsomeness, DiCaprio only needed to tweak his screen persona to provoke the sort of perverted idolatry Belfort receives from his co-workers. But he goes above and beyond in his transformation in this role. He makes Belfort simultaneously oddly childlike and revoltingly corrupted, someone whom we enjoy spending time with while finding repulsive. He rips through Belfort’s trademark, drug-fuelled motivational speeches, monologues of insanely eye-popping intensity, explosions of off-the-chain wildness. At other times he’ll sulk and whine like a spoilt child. DiCaprio struts across the screen with an unpredictable physicality – his embodying of the physical effects of mind-altering drugs is hilarious and horrifying –in possibly his finest ever performance.

DiCaprio is the raw energy source that helps power the rest of the film. Scorsese matches him blow-by-blow with this dynamic expose of white-collar corruption. Using Belfort as a narrator – which serves to further expose his shallowness, greed and utter inability to learn any sustained messages from the depths he plummets to – the entire film is all about how the flip side of the American Dream tacitly promotes and encourages this sort of behaviour.

Belfort is the rash the system has come out as. In a highly effective early cameo, McConaughey plays Belfort’s first mentor, a coke-fuelled hedonist hooked on the buzz of closing deals, who pushes Belfort towards a career of success (including introducing a brilliant breathing exercise – improvised by McConaughey based on his own warm-up exercises – that becomes a mantra in the film). DiCaprio’s eyes have already lit up at watching a deal closing. Drugs and sex are just an attempt for Belfort to replicate the buzz of the real addiction: money.

Scorsese recognises that we don’t need to know the details of Belfort’s illegal dealings. (In his voiceover Belfort literally tells us it doesn’t matter, all that does is the shitload of cash they were bringing in.) We learn enough about the huge mark-ups (50% of the deal’s value) he can make from selling penny stocks (trades of small public companies) and “pump and dump” tactics to know it’s wrong. I will admit the film does little to show the victims – but then Belfort never cares either, proudly stating at one point he has no guilt fleecing his clients out of cash, because he knows how to spend it, better than they do.

It all pours into a hedonistic, alpha-male environment where the air is as littered with fucks (the film held a record for most use of the word) as the floors and desks of Belfort’s offices are during his hooker-filled end-of-week parties. Wolf of Wall Street is also an expose of toxic alpha-maledom. Bullying, abuse and screaming are ripe, women are basically commodities traded as easily as shares. The only exceptions are those allowed into the boys’ club as either surrogate-male fellow traders or trophies to adorn the arm. Margot Robbie (superb in a star-making role) plays Belfort’s glamourous wife, who knows she needs to use her physical assets to make her way in this world.

The film rips along through a party-deal-party structure. Belfort goes from wowing his fellow penny stock traders by making $2k in two minutes to wrapping the trading floor of his fake-old-school Wall Street firm around his finger in excess filled speeches. He also goes from a charming party animal to an incoherent, rambling, deeply unpleasant and dangerous drunk and drug addict. But crucially, he learns nothing . There is no life-and-soul shattering payback like Henry Hill undergoes. Fault, guilt and consequences roll off his rich, spoilt back. He ends the film still winning the adulation of would-be millionaires, his conscience (if it exists) untroubled by any impact his actions have had on others.

Perhaps Scorsese could have allowed more space to victims – and to Kyle Chandler’s dutiful and dedicated FBI agent who brings him down (our final shot of this character stresses his humble, low-paid status – echoing back to his confession to at times regretting leaving a trading career for a law one). But that’s to criticise the film for not being obvious enough. Of course parties are fun. But each party becomes wilder, more orgiastic and uncomfortable as the film goes on. But if we didn’t understand the fun, we couldn’t understand how people get hooked on this adrenalin fuelled life.

Wolf of Wall Street though is a warning to the curious – if you are smart enough to look. Belfort’s soulless, horrible life is not one to aspire to, and his moral emptiness not one to wish to have. It’s a funny film, but it’s also a dark one. DiCaprio is brilliant beyond belief, Jonah Hill funny and pathetic as his best friend, Margot Robbie becomes a star and Scorsese rips through the film with the energy, passion and dynamism of a much younger director. An outstanding tentpole film in his CV.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

Willem Dafoe plays the Son of God in Scorsese’s supremely controversial The Last Temptation of Christ

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Willem Dafoe (Jesus Christ), Harvey Keitel (Judas), Barbara Hershey (Mary Magdalene), Harry Dean Stanton (Saul), David Bowie (Pontius Pilate), Verna Bloom (Mary), Barry Miller (Jeroboam). Irvin Kershner (Zebedee), Victor Argo (Peter), Andre Gregory (John the Baptist), Nehemiah Persoff (Rabbi), Tomas Arana (Lazarus), Gary Barsaraba (Andrew), Juliette Caton (Girl Angel)

There are few films as controversial as this. Scorsese’s earthy adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ has lived its whole life under the shadow of the parade of traditionalists, conservatives and evangelists who have called for everything from the negative being destroyed to the death of its director. All this is rooted in the film’s quest – as in the book – for the human in Jesus, the saviour who was both mortal and divine. As part of this, it showed him expressing anger, doubt and of course, presented him with temptation and threw him into the dirty, working-class world where he made his ministry.

The film follows the life of Jesus (Willem Dafoe) pretty much as per the Gospels, with several interjections and reinterpretations (some of which seem designed to piss off the faithful). We meet Jesus as a carpenter who crafts crosses for Roman crucifixions by day, plagued by voices and fits at night. He knows he has a purpose but is scared of what it might be. Eventually he finds it, encouraged by Judas (Harvey Keitel) his most faithful disciple and a passionate campaigner against the Romans. The last temptation itself fills the final act of the film. On the cross, a disguised Satan comes to Jesus and offers him the chance to leave behind being the messiah and live a normal life: marriage, children and content old age surrounded by family.

The Last Temptation of Christ is Scorsese’s wrestling with his faith. It’s a highly personal, defiantly modern and daring version of the gospels that strongly invests in the notion that true faith is only possible if we also have doubt to overcome. And it applies this logic to Jesus, who is shown here as far more grounded, human and flawed than He has ever been in the movies (or anywhere else). Voiceovers communicate His constant doubts and insecurities – and even His resentments about not understanding what God intends for him.

Where other Biblical epics are old, stodgy and stiff, The Last Temptation profoundly challenges its viewers. This is not a picture postcard world. Jesus’ surroundings are humble and dirty. His disciples are simple men – Judas, the only one with any form of intellect, attacks them as clueless yes-men. But it’s a film that stresses the humanity of Jesus. It wants us to admire him even more, because He needed to overcome the same internal demons we all confront. This is not a saviour unbent in purpose, but battling always. It asks us to try and relate ourself to Jesus in a new way, to ask how we might have felt and whether we would have been strong enough to take on that mantle.

Played with extraordinary passion and fire by Willem Dafoe, this is a Jesus who is scared, reluctant, shows flashes of bitterness and anger but struggles to put all this aside to embrace His destiny and purpose as the Messiah. On other words, He’s far more human than we’ve seen before. He’s also rough and unprepared, in many ways, for His ministry. We see His first attempt at preaching – having, with half-confidence, half-apprehension told Judas He’s sure God will give Him the words – which is carefree, impassioned and amateurish but full of inspirational fire. He doesn’t quite convey the message He’s aiming for, but it is enough to win the devotion of several of the men who will become his disciples.

Scorsese shoots this, as he shoots many of the scenes among the crowds, with an immediacy and urgency, using a mobile camera and throwing us in among those listening to Jesus’ words. John the Baptist’s ministry by the lake is a near-orgy of religious ecstasy (with added nudity), full of wild emotion and jubilant singing – all of which drops out on the soundtrack to just the lapping of the river, as Judas and John meet. (It’s a brilliant moment that shows the world-stopping impact of revelation). Scorsese mixes this with scenes of a spiritual stillness and gentle mysticism. During his time in the desert – during which Jesus sits inside a perfect circle, which He draws free hand in the dirt – He encounters, in scenes of haunting unknowability, temptation from Satan in the form of a snake, a lion and a jet of fire.

It’s a starting point for Jesus’ embarking on a series of miracles and world-changing preaching. Controversially, even now, He is still uncertain of what He is meant to – he tells Judas (who remains a constant confidante) that God only gives Him small parts of the total picture as He needs them. He comes from the desert inviting his disciples to war – against Satan, and to bring God’s word to the world. It seems another provocative image – Jesus brandishing an axe in one hand, His own heart (plucked from His chest before the disciples) in the other – and it’s one of the points in the film where I feel Scorsese overplays his hand. I’m not quite sure what he is suggesting here, as Jesus calls his disciples to war, unless it’s a campaign of muscular Christianity.

It competes with several other images and sequences that infuriated many. Some of these are too much: Jesus crafting crosses and even helping the Romans (in the film’s opening) nail a victim too one is far too much, a tasteless attempt to show a flawed man. Waiting to apologise to Mary Magdalene (a delicate Barbara Hershey) for his part in this, He sits while she services a roomful of men one after another. Moments like this always feel a little too much, even if it’s a more genuine insight into what Mary Magdelene’s life was actually like than we normally get.

But the Temptation itself is fascinating and moving – if a little too long. There was of course outrage at seeing Jesus marry and make love to Mary Magdelene, rejecting his purpose for a life of normality. Surely, if Jesus could be tempted by anything it might have been this: the man who never knew a moment of the life you and I lead, given a chance to experience it. With Satan – passing himself off as a young female guardian angel – guiding him, the vision sees Jesus age into an old man. Satan presents a plausible argument: man and Earth can live in a simple happiness, if they forget the demands of God in heaven.

The very idea of Jesus either deceived by Satan for a time – or seriously considering abandoning His divine purpose – is anathema to many, but again it re-enforces Scorsese’s view that doubt is essential for faith. That we can only commit the supreme act of commitment to God, if we are uncertain about doing it in the first place. And Jesus’ re-devotion at the end to his mission truly gives a sense of “It is being accomplished” in a way few other films have managed.

Ideas like this – and the earthy, vigorous nature of Jesus’ world – dominate the film and dare and push the viewer. Dafoe is superb – and Harvey Keitel excellent as a politically committed Judas, here not betraying Jesus, but taking on the harder role (that of betrayer – Jesus even tells him he is not strong enough for such a role, so has the easier part in dying). It’s shot with a brilliant modernism and has a superb score from Peter Gabriel, stuffed with lyrical etherealism and making use of several contemporary instruments. It sometimes overplays its hand, but as a personal work of a director juggling his own doubts, fears and faith on screen, it’s perhaps one of the most extraordinary religious films ever made.

The Color of Money (1986)

Newman and Cruise set the table in The Color of Money

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Paul Newman (“Fast” Eddie Felsen), Tom Cruise (Vincent Lauria), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Carmen), Helen Shaver (Janelle), John Turturro (Julian), Bill Cobbs (Orvis), Forest Whitaker (Amos), Keith McGready (Grady Sessions)

The Hustler is one of Newman’s most iconic roles. It’s remembered for his cocksure cool, leaning across the table and dispatching balls with a twinkling smirk. What people don’t remember is that The Hustler is actually more of a kitchen-sink drama than a Rat Pack party. It deals with depression, assault, corruption, injustice and suicide. It’s not even remotely a laugh a minute. The Color of Money is a belated sequel, that feels made by people who remember their impression of what The Hustler was, but don’t actually remember the tone of the film itself. But then, Scorsese intended from the very start to make an entertainment to showcase a star, so I’m sure he knew that making a real tonal companion to the original film was always going to be a no-no.

It’s 25 years since “Fast Eddie” Felsen (Paul Newman) was banished from pool clubs throughout the land by gangsters. He now earns a living selling booze to clubs, largely so he can hang out pool clubs and mentor and stake the ‘hustler’s and stars of tomorrow. The kid who catches his eye is Vincent Lauria (Tom Cruise) an exceptionally gifted pool player with a cocksure confidence and a love of the game, that perhaps reminds Eddie more than a little of himself. Vincent, and his girlfriend Carmen’s (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) grifting skills leave a lot to be desired: but Eddie sees promise and takes them out on a road trip to train them up and make a fortune.

It’s a fitting title, as it’s pretty clear that The Color of Money was the main thing on Scorsese’s mind when he made this. Don’t get me wrong, this is an enjoyable and well-made star vehicle, but it’s also the only time Scorsese was a hired gun working for a star who made films he grew up watching. Scorsese has spoken openly that his main aim here was to bring it in on time and on budget (he made it faster and cheaper than that), in order to help win studio backing for The Last Temptation of Christ. (Ironically of course, most people have far fonder memories of The Color of Money than that film, but then this is a film designed to entertain not challenge.)

It’s a fairly traditional and even predictable storyline. The mentor and the mentee, the latter jaded but rediscovering some of his old fire from the callow exuberance of the other. To be honest not very much actually happens in the film other than pool games and some predictable feuds before the final reconciliation. Inevitable lessons are learned and understandings are achieved. Compared to The Hustler, this is a very callow piece of work indeed, a straight entertainment vehicle that takes the fun, memorable beats of the original and crafts a whole film around them. In many ways you could argue it’s as much a sort of spiritual sequel to Newman’s work in The Sting as anything else.

But Scorsese shoots the hell out of it, so there is always something to look at. No end of editing and camera tricks are used for the pool games, which are shot like action sequences. Swift pans, tracking shots, sharp camera spins are all used to turn a game of knocking nine balls into pockets into something epic. Interesting shots abound, especially several sequences where a camera is mounted on a car bonnet to product an odd Steadicam effect. This is work way beyond a journey-man-pro director, but compared to Scorsese’s other works it’s minor. Scorsese opens the film by delivering a voiceover introducing nine-ball-pool, but the film never feels personal.

What it is, is a triumph for its two leading men. The year before Newman had won an honorary ‘career’ Oscar, which he accepted with a slight air of surprised resentment. No wonder, since he won a ‘real’ Oscar a year later for this reprise. To be honest, the film doesn’t ask anything particularly demanding of Newman, compared to the heights he had achieved in, for instance, The Verdict. It’s a lot of charm and aged confidence, mixed with a mentor exasperation and an unspoken concern that his powers are fading. Newman does spice things up with some interesting character work – there is a great scene when Eddie berates himself for being suckered by pool shark Amos (also a beautiful cameo from Forest Whitaker), humiliated for having lost his touch. But, whereas the first film was a below-the-skin character study, this is more like a victory parade for a charismatic star who even signs off the film by stating “I’m back!”. He’s great but not challenged.

Cruise raises game as he always does when working with legends (see also his work with Hoffman and Nicholson). The film captures perfectly both his cocksure confidence and the gentleness and vulnerability that Cruise manages to hide beneath it. You only need to see how vulnerable and scared Vincent is of being abandoned by the more sophisticated Carmen, to know that his karate moves with a pool cue while singing along to Werewolves of London is a front of a young man wanting to look like a big one to the world. Mastrantonio is pretty good in a fairly simplistic role, that is essentially a twist on a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold.

The Color of Money offers up fairly predictable charms and plot twists and no real surprises at all. While its original film was a piece of neo-realism tinged social drama, this is a brash entertainment, stuffed with pop songs and charismatic actors doing their thing. All pulled together by a director who wanted to prove he could make something as glossy and empty as the next man. Entertaining but forgettable.

The Departed (2006)

DiCaprio, Nicholson and Damon runaround in Scorsese’s cartoonish Oscar-winner The Departed

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Billy Costigan), Matt Damon (Colin Sullivan), Jack Nicholson (Frank Costello), Mark Wahlberg (Sean Dignam), Martin Sheen (Captain Queenan), Ray Winstone (Mr French), Vera Farmiga (Dr Madolyn Madden), Alec Baldwin (Captain Ellerby), Anthony Anderson (Trooper Brown), James Badge Dale (Trooper Barrigan), David O’Hara (Fitzy), Mark Rolston (Tim Delahunt)

It’s one of those historical oddities that Scorsese finally won his Oscar for his lightest (comparatively speaking) most out-right entertaining film. I’ll confess I’ve never been a huge fan of The Departed. It won Best Picture in a year without a clear front runner, with the Academy feeling an overwhelming sense that Scorsese was ‘due a win’. The Departed is certainly entertaining, but as a great big, violent cartoon which feels like a different universe from the director’s real gangster masterpieces, such as Goodfellas, Mean Streets and Casino. The Departed also can’t hold a candle to Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and The Aviator (I know that last one is controversial). Still it may be just a bit of fun, but at least it is fun.

Boston is a city where the Irish community is split, between cops and robbers. Crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) gets a man on the inside by pushing his protégé Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) to train as a police officer so he can get tips from the inside. Simultaneously, Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) recruits officer trainee Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), an honest young man with a dodgy family, to go under cover in Costello’s gang. Both moles feed information on their ‘side’ to the other – but the stakes heighten as they both become aware of the others existence and race to unmask the other’s identity.

Based on a Hong Kong action film, Infernal Affairs (which has the same plot, but tells the story in about half the time). The Departed takes the basic template and ratchets almost everything up to an even more frenzied pitch. Scorsese throws in fast-cutting visual flair, makes effective use of montage and lays The Rolling Stones over the soundtrack (he really does love Gimme Shelter doesn’t he?). It’s hard to tell, watching The Departed, how much Scorsese’s tongue was in his cheek. This could very easily be a parody piss-take of Casino, with its bright-lights, extreme violence, effing and jeffing and toxic masculinity.

What is clear is that The Departed has all the logic of a playground game. Nothing ever feels particularly real, all emotions and personalities are dialled up to eleven. Big name actors have fun with big, chewable dialogue fully of sweary one-liners. There is barely any sense of a wider world, The Departed really being a chamber piece involving a few key characters, played out in a graphic novel style. In real life both Costigan and Sullivan would have been uncovered in seconds (it makes Line of Dutylook like a fly-on-the-wall documentary). If it has links to any Scorsese film, it’s probably Cape Fear, which was a similar heightened pastiche (of Hitchcock). Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of fun in watching Scorsese essentially take himself off, and it’s nice to see him having fun, but the film’s constant resorting to foul-mouthed, cartoonish action means depths are missed.

For starters, the film touches on but never really dives into the complex divided loyalties Costigan and Sullivan feel for their sides. After years (at least I think its years, there is very little sense of timeline in the film) pretending to serve one master while actually serving another, you’d expect an exploration of loyalty being increasingly torn between these two masters. It’s not a sense that comes across in the film. Instead, both of them feel fear of their false master and resentment to the true master. Both want to retire – seemingly to the same (lawful) side. The film spends time on the psychological impact of the constant stress of living a lie – but its analysis of this is skin-deep, trauma exhibiting as a bubbling, unpredictable temper (especially with DiCaprio’s Costigan) rather than really giving us an understanding of the psychological trauma. All the final shots in the world of a rat crawling across a railing in front of the court house, doesn’t translate into insight.

The film also misses the mark in exploring the dangerous masculinity of this world. The intense male attitudes here – with the macho posturing and the constant use of sexual and homophobic slurs – are obviously part and parcel of this world. But you feel a smarter film would have unpacked this more, rather than using it for punchlines and chuckles. There’s only really one woman here – a female psychiatrist who (obviously) becomes involved with both men – and you feel more could have been made of how the destructive bloodshed of this film is at least partly powered by overgrown schoolboys on both sides burning the world down to prove their manliness.

But this film is designed as an entertainment, not the sort of insightful character study Scorsese has delivered in the past. And with its primary colour pallet and shots – like a character falling from a building, and low-angle Dutch angle shots of characters checking phones – that seem inspired by graphic novels, it’s clear that we are not meant to take things too seriously here.

That carries across to the performances, many of which are Grand Guignal in their excess. None more so than Jack Nicholson in a performance of such flamboyant “Jack-ness” that it will either delight you or make you wonder whether Scorsese gave him any limits at all. The cast is roughly split between the OTT and the method. Mark Wahlberg follows Nicholson’s lead as a foul-mouthed, permanently angry cop, with rigid morals (he was Oscar-nominated and gets most of the film’s funniest lines) while Baldwin showboats amusingly on the chewy dialogue. At the other end, Sheen brings a fatherly warmth to Queenan while Winstone mumbles a lot as Costello’s number two.

In the leads, DiCaprio brings an edgy, firecracker intensity to Costigan, a man who seems constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Damon, by contrast, underplays rather effectively as the seemingly straight-laced Sullivan, letting the Boston accent roll around his tongue and riffing effectively off his “boy next door” looks. Vera Farmiga does decent work as the woman caught in the middle – even if she’s not 1% convincing as a trained trauma psychologist.

That doesn’t matter though in the heightened, cartoony posturing, blazing gun battles and operatic shouting that makes up the crazy world of The Departed. Scorsese lifting the Oscar for this is rather like David Hockney winning the Turner Prize for a doodle. I enjoyed it a lot more this time around, but it’s still a big, crude, graphic novel, something that looks and sounds clever., but is only a B-movie imitation of Scorsese’s finest work. The Departed is frothy but misses the mark when it aims for true thematic or character exploration.

The Aviator (2004)

Leonardo DiCaprio excels as Howard Hughes in The Aviator

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Howard Hughes), Cate Blanchett (Katharine Hepburn), John C Reilly (Noah Dietrich), Kate Beckinsale (Ava Gardner), Alec Baldwin (Juan Trippe), Alan Alda (Senator Owen Brewster), Ian Holm (Professor Fitz), Danny Huston (Jack Frye), Gwen Stefani (Jean Harlow), Jude Law (Errol Flynn), Willem Dafoe (Roland Sweet), Adam Scott (Johnny Meyer), Matt Ross (Glen Odekrik), Kevin O’Rourke (Spencer Tracy), Kelli Garner (Faith Domergue), Frances Conroy (Katharine Houghton), Brent Spiner (Robert E Gross), Edward Herrmann (Joseph Breen)

Howard Hughes grew up wanting to make the biggest movies in the world, fly the greatest plans and be the richest man in the world. He achieved all of this. He ended his life a wild-haired long-nailed recluse, terrified of stepping outside his controlled zone, a victim to crippling OCD. Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator is a triumphant, brilliantly engrossing, sumptuous exploration of Hughes’ years of triumph, where everything seemed to go right publicly – even while everything was beginning to go wrong internally.

It’s Scorsese’s second teaming with Leonardo DiCaprio – and while DiCaprio’s boyish good looks don’t really relate to what the real Hughes looked like, his charismatic enthusiasm, passion and determination brings Hughes triumphantly to life. It’s a brilliant performance, which dominates the movie. DiCaprio seems to completely understand power of driving ambition, who will mortgage everything he has time and time again to achieve his dream – and also the force of personality needed to turn those dreams into success. But obsession drives both success and eventual personal disaster. There is always something slightly fragile about DiCaprio – maybe its those boyish good looks – and here he brilliantly captures the tragedy of a man clinging to his sense of self, struggling with the demons within him.

Scorsese’s film gloriously balances the epic with the personal. It so brilliantly relates to the irrational but very convincing fears of those suffering from OCD, that scenes featuring Hughes obsessively plucking tissues from boxes, or stuck in restrooms scared of touching the door carry a real sense of threat. The grandness of much of the rest of the film – and the sense we get have how much more Hughes could have achieved – means the demons he carries are even more affecting. Imagine what he could have done, if he wasn’t terrified of even the smallest germ, or was able to put aside his destructive urge to control every inch of his environment and the people in it.

All this tragedy works because the grandness is so impressive. Scorsese’s film looks beautiful. The filming was inspired by replicating the visual and colour styles of contemporary Hollywood. The early 1930s-set section of the film apes the toned look of early-colour (green appears blue, most strikingly at a golf course) with full colour only appearing when the film hits the years of technicolour. The 1940s sequences are inspired by touches of film noir, leaning into the early days of epic technicolour by the end. It looks striking and also amazing. The production design is similarly breathtaking, while the film is shot and assembled with a wonderfully vibrant energy.

It’s also got plenty of wit. John Logan’s fast-paced script captures the sense of a fun of a man who was determined to turn his dreams into reality. John C Reilly is a lot of a fun as the weary number 2, constantly performing financial gymnastics to keep his bosses dreams afloat. Compulsion and obsession makes Hughes the sort of guy who will rebuild an aeroplane from scratch because of a minor flaw, or will reshoot a film because it will work better with sound. During the shooting of Hell’s Angels he keeps a private fleet of planes on the ground while waiting for clouds that will make the scene work. Frequently thousands of dollars a day are spent keeping projects ticking over, while Hughes waits for perfection. He’s not a man to compromise – and you can see why an artist like Scorsese would relate to that. While the film never lets you forget this obsessive perfectionism cuts both ways – and is as much a symptom of OCD as obsessive handwashing.

Scorsese’s passion for classic Hollywood clearly informs much of the first half of the film, that covers the shooting of Hell’s Angels and Hughes’ relationship with Katharine Hepburn. There are delightful cameos from Hollywood icons like Errol Flynn and Louis B Mayer. Playful references abound. The film’s emotional heart is the bond between the two larger-than-life ambitious figures Hughes and Hepburn. Cate Blanchett (Oscar-winning) is fantastic as Hepburn, a pitch-perfect impersonation that also captures her gsharp, uncompromising intelligence and no-nonsense energy. The chemistry between the two is spot-on.

The film’s second half covers more the aviation of the title, with Hughes’ struggle to break the near-monopoly of the skies owned by PanAm, with his own airline TWA. With Hughes starting to teeter on the edge of OCD collapse, even while energetically setting records in the air and fighting battles in the senate, its perhaps even stronger. It also introduces nemesis in Alec Baldwin’s smoothly manipulative Pan Am chairman Juan Trippe and, most delightfully, an Oscar-nominated Alan Alda as a hypocritically corrupt Senator Brewster. The dinner and senate clashes between Alda and DiCaprio provide glorious energy to power the film’s final act.

It also serves as a last hurrah for Hughes. It’s DiCaprio that really makes the film work as this star burns itself out, finally succumbing to the compulsions that we know will see him end his days locked into a room at the top of a Las Vegas hotel. Moments carry a suggestion of fantasy – is Hughes imagining some of the shady figures he sees at the edges of frames? Are oddly toned late meetings with Ava Gardner (an underpowered Kate Beckinsale) an illusion? It’s all part of the the powerful sense of tragedy of seeing him end, wild-haired, peeing into milk bottles and stuck into loops of repeating phrases over and over again. Scorsese’s film superbly captures the immense sense of lost opportunities.

The Aviator is undeniably grand and triumphant film-making, that looks a million dollars. But it also manages – in thanks to a superb performance from DiCaprio – to capture a tragic sense of a man who burnt himself out at the height of fame and success. It tells two parallel stories without us realising it: a man achieving his dreams, even while his nightmares consume him. With Scorsese’s perfectly judged direction and some wonderful performances, this is both a sprawling epic and a very personal story of loss. While it seems very different from the films we might expect from the master, I think it might be one of his finest works.

Cape Fear (1991)

Robert De Niro terrorises his lawyer’s family in Cape Fear

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro (Max Cady), Nick Nolte (Sam Bowden), Jessica Lange (Leigh Bowden), Juliette Lewis (Danielle Bowden), Joe Don Baker (Claude Kersek), Robert Mitchum (Lt Elgart), Gregory Peck (Lee Heller), Illeana Douglas (Lori Davis), Fred Dalton Thompson (Tom Broadbent), Martin Balsam (Judge)

Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is out of prison after 14 years. He went in as an ill-educated psychotic bum, sent down for the rape and assault of a young woman after his appalled lawyer Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) buried evidence on her sexual history that might have lightened his sentence. He comes out as a self-educated, articulate and psychotic force of nature, not sorry for one minute and intent on making Sam and his wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) and daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis) pay.

Scorsese’s remake of J. Lee-Thompson’s deliberately Hitchcock-esque thriller sees the great director go one better by trying to channel Hitchcock’s style as closely as possible. Framing and editing decisions echo Hitchcock, its design apes as much as possible cinematographer Robert Burk’s lensing, Elmer Bernstein remixes the original film’s Bernard Herrmann score into something even more Hitchcockesque than the original. Scorsese throws in several of the master’s favourite themes, with sexual obsession and frustrated, working men forced to defend themselves in extreme situations. Combined with the sort of lavish violence and extreme imagery Hitchcock couldn’t use, we end up with something like an odd film-school experiment, by film students who have watched too many slashers. It’s grim, tasteless, overlong and troubling – and not in a good way.

The film adjusts Nolte’s character from a lawyer and witness against Cady into his corrupt lawyer (no matter that his corruption in this case was well intentioned). The film has a slightly unpleasant concern with modern worries about masculinity, with Bowden now concerned he is not “man enough” to defend his home – the film constantly passes subtle judgement against Bowden’s lack of physical prowess. It also readjusts Bowden into a weasel, corrupt at work and having an affair with a young attorney (whom Cady then beats and rapes later in the film, with a slightly queasy air that she is at least partly culpable by allowing Cady to pick her up in a bar beforehand). To be honest Bowden is hard to sympathise with, and his quest to assert his masculinity rather than rely on the law or hiring others to do his dirty work not really that pleasant. Frankly Nolte was never the actor to engage sympathies in the way original choice Harrison Ford (he wanted to play Cady) would do.

Cady himself is played by Robert De Niro, channelling heavily the original’s star Robert Mitchum (with lashings of The Night of the Hunter) as the sort of articulate psychopath so beloved by film. It’s fun to watch De Niro grandstanding as this sort of violent Tyrannosaur, weaving both psychological and shockingly violent games to unnerve and panic Bowden and his family. The film doesn’t give much scope to make Cady much more than a sort of comic-book monster, but De Niro does at least have moments of reflection in amongst his insanity. And there is a sort of admirable emotional intelligence in Cady’s knack of detecting the underlying tensions in the Bowden’s marriage and family life and exploiting these to torment the family.

The film’s most effective moments are the quieter ones, none more so than Cady’s quiet befriending/seduction of Bowden’s daughter Danielle behind her parents’ back. This culminates in a deeply unsettlingly seduction scene in Danielle’s school hall, where Juliette Lewis (extremely good) fascinatingly and bashfully becomes entranced with Cady’s interest in her teenage reading list and problems with her parents. The sexuality of the scene is possibly even more unnerving today and a highlight of the film – not least, ending as it does, with Danielle sucking Cady’s thumb before kissing him and leaving with the giddy, confused excitement of someone both scared and fascinated. Few other things in the film match this moment for psychological complexity – or the unsettling exploration of teenage sexuality overlapping with rebellion against domineering parents.

Least of all the film’s overblown and final confrontation between the Bowden family and Cady, in which Cady rises from death no less than three times and which stretches on forever, jettisoning all the small stock of goodwill the film had built up in its quieter moments. But then this is just part of a film that chooses the graphic and the overblown over calculated and chilling, every chance it gets. It’s a shame as there is a more chilling, psychological terror film – with Cady as a demonically clever opponent – struggling to come out here, but which keeps tripping into slasher territory with Cady as an invulnerable Michael Myers.

Perhaps Scorsese just thought of the whole thing as a sort of cineaste’s private joke? All the Hitchcock references, the careful apeing of styles, even the casting of the original’s leads in small roles (a joke further amplified by casting Mitchum as the police officer, while ultimate straight arrow Gregory Peck plays a lawyer even more corrupt than Bowden). But jokes like this don’t really make for long-term entertaining films, and Cape Fear is so full of basically horrible people doing horrible things to each other (in an increasingly Grand Guignol fashion) that after a while you more than cease caring about it. You start getting actively annoyed by it.