Martin Scorsese names his favourite actors from his youth
Cinema in the 20th century was made up of an array of innovative voices in the industry, including Steven Spielberg who sparked the beginning of the modern blockbuster with the release of Jaws in 1975, Francis Ford Coppola who pioneered a new style of filmmaking in the 1970s and Martin Scorsese, whose partnership with writer Paul Schrader led to some of the most revered films of the era.
Emerging to popularity following the release of Mean Streets in 1973, Scorsese went from strength to strength in the most experimental decade for American cinema. Next came the romance flick Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1974, followed by his debated masterpiece Taxi Driver two years later, and something completely different in the form of the music documentary The Last Waltz in 1978.
Inspired by the likes of Orson Welles, Roberto Rossellini and Jean Renoir in his youth, Scorsese would become so prolific in the industry that his own films would go on to inspire his future peers. Not without a lack of fans, everyone from the Barbie director Greta Gerwig to the Safdie brothers, who have similarly helmed a number of New York stories, was raised on the craftsmanship and creativity of Scorsese.
But what about the director himself? In his own youth, what were the films and who were the movie stars that he turned to for inspiration?
In his extensive list of favourites, he picks out classics such as Akira Kurosawa’s powerful existential drama Ikiru, starring Takashi Shimura, Yasujirō Ozu’s family drama Tokyo Story, Alfred Hitchcock’s crime flick Dial M for Murder and many more.
Elsewhere, he cites the 1946 war drama as the beginning of his filmmaking journey, stating in an interview with Criterion: In My Voyage to Italy, the documentary that we made about Italian cinema, we started with this picture. For me, it really was the beginning. I saw it for the first time on television with my grandparents, and their overwhelming reaction to what had happened to their homeland since they left at the turn of the century was just as present and vivid for me as the images and the characters”.
Continuing, he beams: “I was experiencing the power of cinema itself, in this case made far beyond Hollywood, under extremely tough conditions and with inferior equipment. And I was also seeing that cinema wasn’t just about the movie itself but the relationship between the movie and its audience”.
As for the director’s favourite actors of his youth, Scorsese cites the Indian actor Sabu and the American stage and movie star Victor Mature.
An iconic star of Indian cinema, Sabu is known for such roles as Abu in the three-time Oscar winner The Thief of Bagdad and The Young General in the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film Black Narcissus. Meanwhile, Mature was perhaps best known for his work on stage before transitioning to the silver screen, where he starred in classic movies like Henry Hathaway’s 1947 film Kiss of Death and 1953’s historical romance The Robe.
