Paul Newman’s favourite Martin Scorsese movie: “It wiped me out”
Paul Newman is one of the most infamous movie stars from the golden days of Hollywood, with leading performances in the groundbreaking Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and The Verdict. With an indefinable star quality and all-American charm, the actor rose to fame in the film business while also charting a career on the race tracks, with a surprising blend between both career paths before merging them together with the film Cars in 2006.
However, in addition to exploring the world of animated fiction, the actor has also been a big part of the New Hollywood movement, working with directors like George Roy Hill, Sidney Lumet, and Martin Scorsese.
Newman starred in Scorsese’s 1986 film The Colour of Money, which follows a former pool hustler who decides to return to the game, working with a new young man (played by Tom Cruise) to create a partnership. The pair get into a charged disagreement and end up meeting many years later as opponents.
While his later work develops a different quality, Scorsese is perhaps better known for his early output during the 1970s and ‘80s. The likes of Taxi Driver and Mean Streets have been praised for changing cinema as we know it and daringly pushing the technical boundaries of the medium forward. After working with the esteemed auteur, Newman revealed his favourite film made by the director.
Raging Bull, released in 1980, follows the life of Jake LaMotta, a boxer whose life and knack for violence inside the ring slowly starts to bleed into his personal life. The director had built a fierce partnership with Robert De Niro, with the duo being renowned for their breakout film Taxi Driver, which stole the hearts of critics and won the Palme d’Or at the prestigious Cannes Festival.
Scorsese followed up the success of Taxi Driver with New York, New York, which was seen as a critical and commercial flop, something that devastated the director. After this, he was under an insurmountable amount of pressure to resurrect his reputation, leading to a dizzying and brutal commentary on masculinity and violence. The screenplay for Taxi Driver concerns itself with many similar themes, which is unsurprising given that Paul Schrader wrote both stories, revealing a keen interest in dissecting this particular psyche.
It is largely regarded as one of his greatest films, with Newman describing the impact it had on him: “I saw Raging Bull the other night, and it wiped me out. I sat down and wrote [Martin] Scorsese and [Robert] De Niro, and I never do that.” The idea that the actor wrote to both artists to express his love of the movie is a very touching one that makes their eventual partnership seem very fitting.
While The Colour of Money is one of the less well-known works in Scorsese’s filmography, it expands on his unique cinematic palette, allowing him to develop what he does best and eventually leading to his modern masterpieces, such as Goodfellas, Casino, and Gangs of New York.
