The directing duo Martin Scorsese compared to being “bathed in colour”
When we think of the 1960s, we often think of the developments in music and fashion first. British bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones invaded the airwaves, and clothing for both men and women became much more playful and experimental. The decade welcomed change and progression, with hippies spreading their peaceful doctrine in America and students protesting in France. The civil rights movement and second-wave feminism gained steam; people were simply fed up with the traditionalism that defined their parent’s generation – things had to be done differently.
This ethos extended into cinema. As attitudes became less rigid, on-screen censorship eased, with the Hays Code eventually getting scrapped in 1968. From then on, it seemed as though filmmakers dealt in a currency of taboo topics and spoke a purely experimental language, taking influence from European and avant-garde cinema. One of the key filmmakers to emerge from this period was Martin Scorsese, who still maintains the crown as one of cinema’s most fluent craftsmen.
He released his first feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, in 1967. Yet, it was movies like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver which helped Scorsese establish himself as an incredible talent. Since then, he’s directed more acclaimed movies like Raging Bull and Goodfellas, most recently releasing Killers of the Flower Moon in 2023.
For years, Scorsese has always cited a certain filmmaking duo as the reason for his love of the medium – Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The pair started directing movies in the ‘30s, with their first collaboration coming in 1939 with The Spy in Black. Some of their most iconic productions were The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, and A Matter of Life and Death.
Scorsese was captivated from the moment he first saw one of their films, which was The Thief of Baghdad when he was just a few years old. The duo’s use of colour was mesmerising, bringing a sense of otherworldliness to each film, no matter the genre. The Taxi Driver director frequently found himself getting lost in each film, citing The Red Shoes as his favourite.
He once told Criterion, “I’ve said and written so much about this picture over the years; for me, it’s always been one of the very greatest ever made,” continuing, “Every time I go back to look at it—about once a year—it’s new: it reveals another side, another level, and it goes deeper.”
He also loves Black Narcissus, based on Rumer Godden’s novel of the same name, which follows a group of women in a convent as they are enticed by sexual desire. He told Sight and Sound, in reference to the 1947 film, “When I saw their work on screen, it was like being bathed in colour, it was palpable.”
The pair have had such a significant influence on Scorsese that they even became friends, with Powell eventually marrying Scorsese’s long-time editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. Scorsese borrowed many elements of the duo’s style for his own movies, such as close-ups and the use of bright colours. When Powell watched Mean Streets, his one complaint, according to Scorsese, was that he used “too much red.” The filmmaker humorously remarked, “‘Too much red?’ It’s all over his films, and that’s where I’d got it from!”
