The movie Martin Scorsese was too scared to complete: “I remember getting up and walking out”
Martin Scorsese is perhaps equally famous for his encyclopedic taste in cinema as he is for the films he has directed, known for a forensic approach to cinephilia that seeps into his own work. Each and every project is littered with references to other auteurs that Scorsese admired, displaying a deep reverence towards the cinematic figures that came before him and all the emerging filmmakers that are revolutionising the medium.
From the style of Powell and Pressburger to the influence of Alfred Hitchcock and Joanna Hogg, Scorsese allows it all to merge with his own style as it evolved over the years, perfecting his creative palette through his diverse taste in cinema. During the production of his 2010 film Shutter Island, he encouraged his actors to study B-movies from the 1940s to inform the tone of his psychological thriller.
Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, follows Teddy Daniels while he investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, becoming plagued by strange visions and a mysterious doctor. It is gripping and disorienting, with Scorsese taking us through a web of secrets, lies and hidden clues as the audience attempts to discover the truth up until the very last scene. When describing the story, the writer revealed that he saw it as a “homage to B-movies and pulp”, with Scorsese being the perfect director to adapt the story with such an incisive understanding of the genre.
When the director began working with DiCaprio and Ruffalo, he immediately began creating his infamous movie list for the actors to watch, encouraging them to watch films such as Cat People, Isle of the Dead, The Seventh Victim, and I Walked with a Zombie to educate them on the roots of the genre.
But there was one film in particular from this era that terrified Scorsese, perhaps inadvertently becoming an influence on the unique fear captured in Shutter Island, with the director saying, “I discovered them [the above movies] in the 1950s. There was a small theatre on Second Avenue that would show third, fourth or fifth-run movies. Isle of the Dead was the one. I was ten or 11 when I saw it – the scene towards the end where the woman who’s been buried alive comes out, and she’s appearing in the forest at night, she’s wearing a shroud, and you never know where she’s going to appear and who she’s going to kill. I remember getting up and walking out of the theatre because it was so terrifying – and you didn’t see anything!”
Isle of the Dead was directed in 1945 by Mark Robson, taking place on a Greek Island during the 1912 war where people are quarantining due to the spreading of the plague. However, while they assume they are safe, an old woman suspects that another woman in the group is a vampiric demon.
It has a gritty and chilling atmosphere that, in many ways, reflects the isolation and eeriness of the setting in Shutter Island, which is another testament to the many hidden layers within Scorsese’s work and his expansive love for film.
