The filmmaker Martin Scorsese sees as if “gazing up to a mountain top”
After attending film school in the 1960s, Martin Scorsese set about sculpting a career like no other through the mid-1970s. It was only a matter of time before he would join forces with the cinematic clique known as the Movie Brats. Alongside Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Brian De Palma, Scorsese redefined filmmaking for the New Hollywood era.
Scorsese’s major film debut, Mean Streets, arrived in 1973. Notably, the movie marked the beginning of a fruitful and long-lived working relationship with actor Robert De Niro. Mean Streets’ successful formula of gritty realism and a stark reflection of inner-city life was perfected in 1976 with the release of Scorsese’s early masterpiece, Taxi Driver.
Scorsese’s most direct and apparent influences in these formative years were from the realm of film noir and, of course, Coppola’s recent Godfather movies. However, through the 1950s and ’60s, Scorsese was a keen admirer of all things Stanley Kubrick.
Since becoming famous in his own right, Scorsese has frequently beamed admiration for Kubrick’s work. When taking part in the 2012 Sight and Sound film poll, Scorsese named some of his all-time favourite films, including Kubrick’s 1968 epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, among his selections.
In an episode of Siskel & Ebert, Scorsese also cited Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut as his fourth favourite movie from the 1990s. “When Eyes Wide Shut came out a few months after Stanley Kubrick’s death in 1999, it was severely misunderstood, which came as no surprise,” Scorsese wrote in Kubrick: The Definitive Edition in defence of the movie.
“If you go back and look at the contemporary reactions to any Kubrick picture (except the earliest ones), you’ll see that all his films were initially misunderstood,” he continued. “Then, after five or ten years, came the realisation that 2001 or Barry Lyndon or The Shining was like nothing else before or since.”
Scorsese extended his praise for the late filmmaker on another occasion, suggesting that Kubrick was simply unbeatable. “One of Kubrick’s films… is equivalent to ten of somebody else’s,” he explained. “Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountain top. You look up and wonder, ‘How could anyone have climbed that high?'”
Watch the trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey below.
