Amph The Films Of Martin Scorsese: Scorsese and Dicaprio Reunite for "The Wolf of Wall Street"

From the London Times:

Martin Scorsese: 'The movie that plays in my heart'

"The director Martin Scorsese explains why Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's British classic 'The Red Shoes' is so special, and reveals that it inspired other film-makers including Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg

Friday, 15 May 2009

Taking a break from post-production on their new film "Shutter Island", Martin Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker will be in Cannes today for a screening of the restored version of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "The Red Shoes".

I saw The Red Shoes (1948) aged nine or 10. My father took me. Seeing it that first time was an overwhelming experience for me. My father, who worked in the garment district in New York, certainly wasn't an educated man but he did like films. For some reason, he took me to see The Red Shoes. I certainly don't think he was a ballet enthusiast. I believe that the film had picked up an audience here in America. Everyone was talking about it and so he wanted to see it.

My father liked the film very much too. We always used to talk about it. He liked it for its sense of mystery in terms of the character of Lermontov (the driven ballet impresario played by Anton Walbrook) and the kind of mystical endeavour of art that it showed. I don't say he said that. But there was something inevitable about what these people were doing. On his level, he would talk about the wonderful film it was and that it was a good show. It was obviously very different from many of the musicals that were coming out of America at the time in that the nature of the story had a very dark element to it. This was something unique, especially served up in such a beautifully made and crafted way. I don't think my father understood the impact the film had on me at the time until years later, when he met Michael Powell. We all became sort of a family, my mother and father and Powell.

Over the years, I have been told that I am like Lermontov. I maybe tend to agree. I really don't know. There is something about the Lermontov character and the world that he controls that is, I guess, the pool that I go back to for sustenance. It has to do with the mystery of art ? the mystery of the passion to create and the darker side which can can take over. I think that will always be fascinating to me. It could very well have been an inspiration for the types of characters I tend to gravitate toward in the types of pictures I make.

The first word that comes to mind about Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes is "radiant," particularly in the way she was lit in the film and the angles used in her close-ups. The combination of actor/dancer seemed so natural for her. The nature of her physical build said so much about the character, even just a glance from her or a close-up.

There is something about the use of colour and the impact of the movement in the frame. It is to do with the high drama, even melodrama, within the lives of the characters and how seriously they took what they were doing. It was also their actual journey in creating something and the difficulty they faced. You could really feel the work that was being done by these dancers and by Lermontov and by the Marius Goring character (the young composer.) It made it very visceral.

The colour, the way the film was photographed by the great Jack Cardiff, stayed in my mind for years. The film would be shown every Christmas on American television in black and white, but it didn't matter ? we watched it. Even though it was in black and white on TV, we saw it in colour. We knew the colour. We still felt the passion ? I used to call it brush-strokes ? in the way Michael Powell used the camera in that film. Also, the ballet sequence itself was like an encyclopedia of the history of cinema. They used every possible means of expression, going back to the earliest of silent cinema.

I met Michael Powell through (the publicist) Michael Kaplan, who had worked with Stanley Kubrick and was beginning to work with Robert Altman. I and others had been asking about Michael Po

 

Thanks for that Zaz. That was fascinating and informative.

I love reading about Scorcese's passion for film and the whole history of how he was influenced by the Red Shoes and Powell. Both are true artists.

I saw the film for the first time a few months ago and I was blown away. It's definitely a special film.

 

Omigod, yes. The colour photography is amazing, and Shearer must be one of most extraordinary camera subjects *ever.* (Powell had a definite *thing* for redheads!) Love to be a fly on the wall at the screening...big screen *and* restored!

 

Thursday Night

5:00pm [Comedy] Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
A widow dreaming of a singing career ends up waiting tables in Phoenix.
Cast: Kris Kristofferson, Ellen Burstyn, Diane Ladd, Billy Greenbush Dir: Martin Scorsese C-112 mins, TV-MA [Letterbox] [Close Captioned] [Email Remind Me]

7:00pm [Documentary] Scorsese on Scorsese (2004)
Director Martin Scorsese discusses his career and film clips in an interview.
BW-86 mins, TV-MA [Letterbox] [Close Captioned] [Email Remind Me]

8:30pm [Drama] King of Comedy, The (1983)
A would-be comic kidnaps a talk-show host to win a guest shot on his show.
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott, Sandra Bernhard Dir: Martin Scorsese C-109 mins, TV-14 [Letterbox] [Close Captioned] [Email Remind Me]

10:30pm [Crime] Goodfellas (1990)
A young man works his way up through the New York City mobs.
Cast: Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Lorraine Bracco Dir: Joseph Reidy C-145 mins, TV-MA [Letterbox] [Close Captioned] [Email Remind Me]

1:00am [Crime] Mean Streets (1973)
A small-time hood must choose from among love, friendship and the chance to rise within the mob.
Cast: Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, David Proval, Amy Robinson Dir: Martin Scorsese C-112 mins, TV-MA

 

A Scorsese night without either Taxi Driver or Raging Bull is like . . . well, actually that just speaks for itself.

 

Scorsese to Direct Children's Book

 

Martin Scorsese on "Shutter Island"

 

My problem with the Shutter Island trailer, which I suggest no one watch if they want to see the movie, is that it immediately made me think "oh, crap, I bet I know how this one ends." And then I was curious enough to read the book and, yep, that's how it ends. The trailer more or less gives the ending away, or at least the trailer that I saw. I'm sure they could have hidden the ball just a little bit better.

But to me this is a case of a film's commercial potential potentially destroyed by its marketing, sort of what might have happened to the Sixth Sense if the trailer had clued everyone in to Bruce Willis being a ghost.

 

Read something in the papers today saying "Shutter Island" is basically a B film...do you agree?

(I think they mean in conception and plot, not execution and casting)

 

But that was the whole idea of a B movie, AFAIK -- the execution, the casting, obviously these were affected by the low budgets. The old B-movies didn't necessarily have flimsy plots or far-fetched twists, either. Some did, but not all of them. It's true that the movie is inspired in some aspects by things from some B movies.

The thing is, there's a lot of stuff being done today that in the old days would have probably been done as a B movie, like Jurassic Park, or even the Indiana Jones movies.

I think one reviewer said that if Shutter Island had been done back in the Golden Age of Hollywood, maybe Kirk Douglas would have had the Leonardo DiCaprio part, and Burt Lancaster the Mark Ruffalo one. That's pretty much an A-list cast for its time.

I don't agree with calling big-budget movies being made today "basically a B film", because that doesn't take into account the huge difference in what the studios put into their different projects. I would agree with pointing out some similarities, though.

 

After all this time, I don't think terms like "B" movies applies anymore. That came from an earlier era when there was a clear delineation between lower budget, low brow movies and bigger budget studio films. It's all a mishmash now.

 

Well, it's not just the trailer. The movie forecasts pretty much the same information in its first ten minutes.

 

I've seen plenty of recent B movies.

Alas.

 

i wasn't so quickly clued in as other people. maybe i stay with fiction for longer because that is what one does in films, surely, suspend disbelief?

in that way i thought it worked very well. i found it unsettling to think about it retrospectively and find that i had ignored obvious clues.

on the imdb board people are talkin of a slow reveal which i would have to agree with. when the doctor provides an explanation, it is the first time that i have believed something proposed by a doctor in an insane asylum

 

anyone else think dicaprio was miscast?

 

From Slate:

"Aging Bull"

 

I find the article fascinating, even if I don't all the way agree. The Departed was amazing, a great movie, excellent acting, great direction, etc..Shutter Island was flawed, yes, but it was a pretty good film. The twist is a little convoluted, but the movies been so great up to that point, you don't care. I really didn't like The Aviator, overlong and boring in many stretches.

 

that's pretty damning i really haven't seen so many of his films. i don't warm to them easily. i find these types of article nearly never really helpful.

 

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio team up for "The Wolf of Wall Street"

 

But he's doing Silence first, apparently. Which is good news, although The Irishman with De Niro, Pesci, Pacino and Keitel sounded more tantalizing.

 

Silence sounds great. But I'm kind of thrilled about The Wolf of Wall Street too, because it sounds like it might actually let DiCaprio play to his strengths again. I mean, he's not bad at the whole 'tortured' thing. But he's at his best playing slick, amoral, charming con artists. Sounds like Wolf might be more of that.

 

As in "Catch Me If You Can". Yes.

 

I agree. He seems to be really good at playing the amoral bastard.

 

Casting for Scorsese's "Furious Love"

 

I'd like to see Natalie Portman and Clive Owen. I would accept no one else in either role.