The most disappointing movie of Martin Scorsese’s career: “It could have been better”
It’s quite reassuring to know that some of the most acclaimed filmmakers in the world have still made movies that they aren’t proud of. The truth is, not every film you are going to make, no matter how star-studded or well-planned, is going to be a hit. For Martin Scorsese, pressure was high following the incredible success of Taxi Driver, which won him the Palme d’Or at Cannes, resulting in his next attempt earning considerably less acclaim.
Scorsese cemented his place in the industry with Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, which represented a new era for Hollywood—more violent, with complex character studies that were nihilistic in tone. Scorsese led the charge for his generation of filmmakers, standing alongside the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma as boundary-pushing figures.
Becoming known for crime dramas, Scorsese then surprised people with his next project, New York, New York, a musical rom-com. The filmmaker tried not to stray too far from the reputation he’d built up, once again casting Robert De Niro in a leading role and setting the movie in his beloved New York, but still, having Liza Minnelli perform musical numbers wasn’t exactly what critics were expecting from Scorsese’s next endeavor.
The filmmaker has always loved musicals, though, citing The Band Wagon as his favourite from Vincente Minnelli, Liza’s father. Thus, it shouldn’t have been surprising that Scorsese would attempt the musical genre at some point in his career – it’s just interesting that he tried it so early on. His gamble didn’t pay off as well as he’d like, and the film only grossed $16.4million against a budget of $9m, while critics had mixed opinions.
Scorsese’s attempt at a musical was, in part, to challenge himself. “I wanted to try a different way of working, where, for once, everything wasn’t set in my head in advance … to push it to the edge just to see how far I could go,” he told the Washington Post. Unfortunately, with the lack of success, Scorsese found himself grappling with drug addiction and eventual divorce, sending him into a pit of despair that he couldn’t seem to find a way out of.
“’New York, New York’ [was] a different situation. I was dissatisfied with the film. Though it has some nice things in it, it could have been better if I had been more disciplined at the time. But what the hell, why pull back on a film that you’re suffering to make? On every film you suffer, but on some you really suffer. It’s not a matter of integrity … or maybe it is, I don’t know. But you think, gee, I wanna make it this way and that’s the point. It’s important sometimes to take a stand on these things,” Scorsese explained.
Luckily, it was De Niro’s interest in a biography on boxer Jake LaMotta that would bring Scorsese back from the brink. He eventually agreed to read the book and then he began working on a film that would become Raging Bull, earning him a ‘Best Director’ nomination at the Oscars.
