The movie that got Martin Scorsese through shooting ‘Goodfellas’: “I’d never seen anything like it”
While there are a few directors who see filmmaking as a means to an end and a money-making scheme, others, like Martin Scorsese, pour their heart and soul into filmmaking. Whether it’s a long shoot to secure his vision or a philanthropic pursuit to keep independent cinema alive, Scorsese is dedicated to cinema in all its forms. In other words, he’s a man who clearly loves his job—especially considering he’s still going strong at 82.
However, even the most dedicated directors have been tested by their previous jobs. After all, it’s a lot of pressure to oversee the entire filmmaking process. And it seems Scorsese’s classic Goodfellas put him through the wringer in this regard. Speaking to The New York Times about it in the 1990s, the legendary filmmaker explained, “It turned out to be another one of those 90-day shoots. It just never ends. The torture never ends.”
Surely, any fan of the mob classic will be completely unsurprised by this revelation. Not even because it’s common knowledge but because its frenetic, stylised vision is one that could have only been created with great effort. Scorsese wanted to adapt the true mafia story of Nicolas Pileggi’s book Wiseguys with plenty of movement that runs throughout the film and begins to spiral out of control at the end—just as gangster Henry Hill’s life did. There was extensive narration, quick edits, freeze frames and various locale switches. It was a film that was intended to be overwhelming, and seemingly, the production process was too.
Deep into filming, Scorsese was clearly feeling the exhaustion and pressure. In the interview, he spoke about finding it difficult to watch contemporary films while editing, as they only made him question himself. But old films? They seemed to have the opposite effect. As with any cinephile, all it took was the right film to reinspire him and keep him going with what many consider Scorsese’s magnum opus. He explained, “I was very, very tired. And I bought a print of Man With a Movie Camera. It’s a Dziga Vertov. Russian. And I said, Well, I never saw a Vertov thing. It was a Sunday. I said, So let’s just do homework. And I’d never seen anything like it. And I couldn’t wait to get back to work in the morning.”
Ah, there’s nothing like a good old experimental Soviet film to set you straight. Man With a Movie Camera was directed by pioneering Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov, who used a wide range of filming techniques to make the silent 1920s film. Using multiple exposures, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, match cuts, jump cuts, split screens, and more, Vertov and his brother Mikhail Kaufman explored urban life in the Soviet Union—specifically Moscow, Odesa and Kyiv. With no actors, it focused on Soviet workers and how the ‘man behind the camera’—Kaufman himself—captured them day and night. The only ‘characters’ in the film are the cameraman, the film editor and a personified Soviet Union.
While it was panned at the time due to its avant-garde nature, in 2012, the British Film Institute voted it the eighth greatest film ever made. And, more importantly, it kept Scorsese inspired while shooting Goodfellas. Even its experimental approach can be spotted in the fast-paced style the filmmaker developed for the movie, proving that sometimes the answers to our creative problems lie in the past and not in our peers.
