Francis Ford Coppola’s favourite Martin Scorsese movie: “His towering achievement”
The ‘New Hollywood’ era gave rise to a cavalcade of filmmakers who’d go on to become known as all-time greats, but if there’s such a thing as the Mount Rushmore of the period, then those heads would likely belong to Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas.
That’s not a slight on Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, Mike Nichols, John Cassavetes, William Friedkin, or any of the countless other names who helped permanently change the face of cinema during a game-changing time of upheaval for the industry, but those four mentioned above made the biggest impact.
Interestingly, though, they did it in completely different ways. Coppola embarked on one of the most impressive directorial runs ever when he helmed The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now consecutively and won five Academy Awards for his troubles, while Scorsese quietly went about amassing a filmography populated by several of the finest features captured on film.
Spielberg and Lucas, meanwhile, were the populists who instigated a paradigm shift. Without those two breaking new commercial and technological ground through the likes of Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Jurassic Park, things would look markedly different today.
Needless to say, Coppola wasn’t entirely thrilled that his protege, Lucas, dedicated virtually his entire professional life to Star Wars at the expense of trying anything that even remotely resembled American Graffiti again. He and Scorsese were in the same boat by disavowing themselves of vapid blockbusters and effects-driven tentpole releases, even if one fared better than the other in the long term.
Scorsese suffered through a couple of lean periods, but he didn’t shoot himself in the financial foot several times over like Coppola did. The friendship, mutual respect, and deep-lying admiration between the two Italian-American auteurs has never wavered, not that it prevented the latter from naming one of the former’s movies as the pinnacle of his career, bar none.
“I have several favourite Martin Scorsese films, actually,” Coppola informed Esquire. “I love Mean Streets, The King of Comedy, Who’s That Knocking at My Door? But Raging Bull stands as his towering achievement. I think it’s in this film that he orchestrates all the elements – the conception, the acting, the images, the style – into something that tells a particular story and then goes beyond that.”
Putting on his analytical hat, Coppola explained that “the purpose of art is to illuminate our times and the things that are important to us,” something he believes Raging Bull achieved “seemingly effortlessly as few films ever attempt, much less do.” Scorsese has delivered his fair share of classics, but the brains behind The Godfather can’t see past the tragic tale of Jake LaMotta.
