Martin Scorsese names two movies that teach “everything about filmmaking”
It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that one could learn an awful lot about filmmaking solely from watching the filmography of Martin Scorsese. After all, across five decades, the New York-born director has been serving up some of the most critically acclaimed audio-visual narratives in a style uniquely his own.
Many of Scorsese’s movies find thematic similarities, including masculinity, the criminal underworld, nihilism and exploration of God and faith, but they are often linked by the director’s trademark production techniques, including slow motion and freeze frame and an unashamedness of direct capturing graphic violence.
While Scorsese is indeed well-admired within professional circles and by cinema fans alike, it’s also true that he looks up to a number of his favourite filmmakers for both inspiration and just for mere enjoyment. But in terms of influence, Scorsese once pointed out the two movies he believes say “everything about filmmaking.”
The Telegraph has quoted the directing icon as once saying, “I have always felt that Peeping Tom and [Fellini’s] 8½ say everything that can be said about filmmaking, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two.”
Perhaps Fellini’s 8 ½ is the better-known of the two cinematic works, the Italian director’s avant-garde surrealist comedy-drama telling of a film director who suffers from blocked creativity while trying to direct an epic science fiction movie. For Scorsese, “8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of filmmaking.”
The other film, Peeping Tom, the 1960 psychological horror-thriller directed by Michael Powell “shows the aggression of” filmmaking, “how the camera violates”. Powell’s movie, written by Leo Marks, focuses on a serial killer who murders women while recording their dying expressions on a portable film camera and compiling the footage into a snuff film for his own enjoyment.
The two movies are starkly different in tone, but they are both films about films. In that respect, it’s easier to see why Scorsese believes so much can be gained from an educational perspective from watching them, or as he puts it, “From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films.”
There’s no doubt that Scorsese himself has greatly expressed himself throughout his career, whether it be by tackling his Italian-American upbringing or examining his unique relationship with God through his Christian faith. Scorsese’s works can be of tremendous help to aspiring filmmakers, but according to the director himself, it’s worth adding 8 ½ and Peeping Tom to the watchlist.
