The one director Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese agree is the greatest of all time: “He was unparalleled”
Even though he’s got four Academy Awards for filmmaking, you wouldn’t necessarily call Clint Eastwood one of the greatest directors of all time. On the other hand, you can’t bring up the subject and expect anyone to take it seriously without mentioning Martin Scorsese.
Eastwood is a good director who’s occasionally been great, but his body of work pales in comparison to Scorsese’s. The acting icon who became a directorial legend has been one of the most consistent, prolific, and reliable behind-the-camera talents in cinema history, but he’s always preferred substance over style.
Of course, Scorsese has both in spades, and the one thing they do have in common is that they’ve continued making impressive pictures into their 80s, and beyond, in Eastwood’s case. Visually, narratively, and aesthetically, they’re basically apples and oranges, but there’s one notable thing they have in common.
Scorsese would never be able to make The Outlaw Josey Wales or Unforgiven, mostly because he’s always been afraid of the western, just like Eastwood wouldn’t be able to make Goodfellas or Taxi Driver. They’re defined by markedly different films, but they’re united in their adoration for the iconic figure who, in their shared estimation, is the best to ever do it.
“Anyone would be flattered to be spoken of in the same breath as John Ford,” Eastwood told the Directors Guild of America. “I remember seeing Stagecoach as a kid when it first came out. Ford had an influence on me subconsciously, and I watched his films in a dark theatre with my knees up on the chair in front of me, sometimes twice in a row.”
It may not have been intentional, but the erstwhile ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan acknowledged that Ford’s “influence is like osmosis.” Scorsese, meanwhile, has been enthralled by the eye-patch-wearing tyrant’s work since The Searchers, which he’s called one of the most important movies he’s ever seen.
“John Ford is the only director who could make a western that was about America, about morality, about people, and about myth, at the same time,” he rapturously reflected. “He was unparalleled.” It wasn’t just The Searchers and westerns, though, with Ford being the first filmmaker who made Scorsese aware of cinema’s inner workings, setting him on a path to becoming an all-timer in his own right.
Never mind that he’s the only four-time winner of the ‘Best Director’ Oscar, which places him in a pantheon of his own, but without Ford, there would be no Eastwood or Scorsese. That might sound like an exaggeration, except that it’s fully supported by both of them.
The director inspired a young Eastwood and defined the genre he’d eventually become the biggest star of, while it was he who opened Scorsese’s eyes to what unfolds behind the screen before a movie makes its way to cinemas, which isn’t a bad legacy to leave behind, and Steven Spielberg’s name didn’t even come up until now.
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