Martin Scorsese needs no introduction. He is, many critics would agree, the greatest living American film director. For more than half a century, his work has been protested, misinterpreted, imitated and canonized. Rebecca Miller’s documentary miniseries Mr. Scorsese examines his life and career, and even though it runs just shy of five hours, it can’t cover everything.
If you’re a fan, you’ll likely know most of the biographical details presented here. That Scorsese grew up in the hardscrabble Little Italy of the 1940s. That, as an asthmatic little kid, he retreated into and became obsessed with the movies. That he had aspirations of being a priest until he discovered rock ‘n’ roll and rebellion, and that he became a star film student at NYU.
Scorsese’s background—stringently Catholic, steeped in casual mob violence—has long inflected his work, and early films like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver made him a cause celebre in 1970s New Hollywood. But even after critical adulation and commercial success, Miller’s series shows us that Scorsese still has to contend with studio interference and shifting critical attitudes.
If you’re a Scorsese completist, you may not learn much that’s new as far as his filmmaking is concerned. But what Miller does well is illustrate how changes in Scorsese’s personal life have long overlapped with changes in his body of work, even from the beginning. He remarks that his childhood spent indoors, watching healthier kids playing in the New York streets below, is what’s to blame for his high-angle shots. He also talks about how the mob violence, including from his mobster uncle, permeates his filmography: Think of how many of his movies have children reckoning with the violence around them, and deciding to either fall into it or reject it.
For a director whose work has been overwhelmingly male, it’s the women in his life who provide the most eye-opening insights here. Miller talks to Scorsese’s three daughters, two of his ex-wives, several of his childhood friends and collaborators, including his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Through them, we better understand Scorsese as a partner, friend and parent, and what we hear isn’t always flattering. Isabella Rossellini, his third wife, talks about how often he would fly into a rage and destroy a room, like Charles Foster Kane. His daughter Domenica says that she felt closest to him when he directed her in The Age of Innocence. Sharon Stone discusses how, on the set of Casino, she had to strong-arm Scorsese into giving her as much attention as her co-stars Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.
Scorsese himself talks about some of his most reprehensible protagonists with a surprising amount of empathy, and we realize that he relates to their shortcomings, their desires, their sins. He still seems to grapple with that, and he has channeled his fears about his own potential for violence into his work.
Streaming bio-docs like Mr. Scorsese have perhaps run their course in terms of innovation, but this one gets you excited about Scorsese’s work, no matter how familiar you are with it. Just the other night, I popped GoodFellas, my favorite Scorsese film, into the Blu-ray player and got the same rush I always do. You might find yourself doing the same.
Nathan Weinbender is one of the film critics heard on Spokane Public Radio’s Movies 101, Friday evenings at 6:30 PM and Saturday afternoons at 2 PM on SPR News (KPBX).