In a few notes, between rock and samba, Sympathy for the devil of the Rolling Stones makes history. Written from Satan’s point of view, the song evokes the duality of individuals and their cruelty – so human -. An ambition that Martin Scorsese also carries in his filmography. It is with this melody that the documentary series naturally begins. Mr. Scorsese by Rebecca Miller, available on Apple TV.
A succession of interviews with actors, directors and childhood friends, peppered with film excerpts and personal archives, the five one-hour episodes paint a portrait of the great director that goes beyond simple hagiography. Throughout the coming and going, the director does not stop questioning the continuity between the work and the filmmaker’s life.
“Who are we? What are we, should I say, as human beings? Are we inherently good or bad? That’s where the whole dilemma lies. And I’m constantly faced with it.”
How can we understand the violence inherent in Scorsese’s characters and their exacerbated dark side without inspecting the childhood of “Marty” (his nickname, editor’s note)? The second of his brothers, the boy, leads a quiet existence in “paradise”, as he calls this haven of nature in Queens.
But Eden is ephemeral: his family is expelled when his father, ax in hand, fights with the owner of the accommodation, over a dispute that still escapes the filmmaker. The little boy then arrives at Elizabeth Street, in Little Italy, in southern Manhattan: its inhabitants and their stories will nourish the work of the future giant. Review of some anecdotes.
· “Thank you asthma!”
Young Martin spent his childhood in the southern neighborhoods of Manhattan watching neighborhood kids throw trash cans and fights, watching scores settle on his street… from his room on the second floor of the building. Because the little one won’t stop coughing at home. He was diagnosed with asthma when he was three years old, is on constant treatment and cannot play with his friends outside.
“I only have one thing to say: Thank you asthma! Fortunately it didn’t make it out,” Spike Lee now jokes.
The scenes that unfold through its small windows are so many vignettes – almost constituting a film – and they shape the vision of the future filmmaker. “I looked out the window. I saw the world below. Always from the window. That’s why I like high-angle shots, like a fresco that comes to life,” he explains.
In the heat, children’s asthma worsens: unfortunately there is no air conditioning at home. In search of a place with air conditioning, his father took him to all the movie theaters on 42nd Street. Then B movies appeared, such as black films or musical comedies. A culture that he completes with the Italian neorealist films that he watches every Friday with his family: “The five-year-old child that I was did not see the difference between the actors on television and the members of my family.”
· The Church, a frustrated vocation?
“Priest and gangster”, this is how the writer Gore Vidal saw Martin Scorsese. But could the boy really follow in the footsteps of his smuggler uncle Joe “The Bug” and become one of the thugs who populate his films today? His failing health clearly prevented him from doing so.
On the other hand, taking orders seems less incongruous. Marked at the age of seven by his first mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, the young man “took refuge in religion to escape violence.” At the age of fourteen he even decided to enter the preparatory seminary. As an altar boy, he rang the bells.
If the first months go well, the call of the outside world, more complex than in the biblical stories, becomes too strong. Marty, drawn to the rock’n’roll of Bo Diddley and the girls, no longer feels like he fits in and is fired after a year. However, he retains great affection for Father Prince, a tough guy in a cassock, who introduced him to culture and cinema.
· Diving in cocaine
The documentary does not hide anything from the dark years of the filmmaker. After the commercial failure of New York, New York (1977), Martin Scorsese falls into cocaine. Sharing accommodation with The Band’s Robbie Robertson, the two men fell into a self-destructive spiral.
“We were looking for something. We were trying to find a muse, I guess. The joke is always to say: ‘It helps me work better’ (silence). Meanwhile, you’re dead!” confesses Scorsese.
An overdose almost proved fatal. Emergency hospitalized, bleeding from the mouth, nose and eyes, the director received a visit from Robert De Niro. The latter allegedly told him: “What do you want to do? Do you want to die? Don’t you want to see your daughter grow up and get married?”
Then De Niro asked him to direct raging bulla project that he has been carrying out for years. The film earned him an Oscar nomination and De Niro won the statuette for best actor.
· “Is this a movie just for your little group of kids?”
Although notable, significant female roles remain rare in Martin Scorsese’s filmography. Let us quote among others: Ellen Burstyn in Alice is no longer here (1974), Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder in The time of innocence (1993) or more recently Lily Gladstone in Flower Moon Killers (2023).
A greater affinity with her favorite actors that is not lost on Sharon Stone. in the filming of Casino (1995), the Ginger McKenna interpreter says that on the first day of filming, furious at seeing that Martin Scorsese was spending all his time with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, she arrived in her trailer. “And I don’t exist? Is this a movie just for your little group of boys?” he would have said. Before demanding to have breakfast with him every morning. Which Scorsese accepted without batting an eyelid.
· Scorsese had always rejected documentaries
It took Rebecca Miller five years to make this rare complete documentary series about Martin Scorsese. A clear success that, beyond the biographical summary, captures the spirit of the filmmaker, his humor and his wit, thanks to the interventions of very close people such as his childhood friends, until now little questioned. Until now, Marty had always rejected documentaries.
If Rebecca Miller had already met the director, she convinced him with a simple letter, detailing her “cubist” approach. The filmmaker’s words are compared with the interventions of his family, his collaborators, his childhood friends and the archives of the time.
However, their two profiles are opposite. Martin Scorsese built his career without being in the industry when Rebecca Miller comes from the inner circle. Visual artist, actress before becoming a documentary filmmaker, director of The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) and Maggie has a plan (2015) has everything of a “daughter of”: her father is the famous playwright Arthur Miller and her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, who also takes part in the episodes.
Source: BFM TV
