The seven movies Leonardo DiCaprio would watch forever: “Over and over again”
Few actors have been afforded the sort of career luxury Leonardo DiCaprio has been. Not subjected to the doldrums of dingy independent theatres or poorly written sitcoms, DiCaprio has been a constant of the silver screen since his very first project.
He is the modern definition of a true film star, and with the landscape of the medium facing an undeniable crossroads, he could perhaps be the last. In being that figure, he represents a lineage of cinema legacy that stretches back to some of the first and greatest ever films.
His modern day relationship with the great Martin Scorsese, which has made the likes of The Wolf Of Wall Street and The Departed, seems to be somewhat of a natural follow on from the director’s great relationship with Robert De Niro. The man who was perhaps the definitive silver screen star before DiCaprio.
But it was a natural progression for Scorsese as a director to move his working relationship forward with someone like DiCaprio, for he had built his entire artistic identity and understanding on the work of the director. He has never been shy about professing his love for Scorsese and De Niro’s shared work, especially their 1976 classic.
“The one that really moved me the most was Taxi Driver, I think,” DiCaprio once explained. “I remember watching it at 15 years old and being transfixed with Travis Bickle because I was locked into this character and I felt such incredible empathy towards him. I understood him, I understood his loneliness, and then he deceived me. And at the point he deceived me, I said, ‘Who is this guy that I’m watching? Who is this person?’ And I was identifying with him. I was with him on this whole journey. And all of a sudden, this is not the person that I thought he was. And to me, it’s just really the greatest independent film ever made. It really is.”
So it was unsurprising that when DiCaprio was recently asked to name some films he could watch over and over again, Taxi Driver was in the mix. But it wasn’t the only Scorsese film included in his list, no Goodfellas came in alongside it which again, comes as no surprise, given DiCaprio once said it’s “one of those movies that whenever it comes on television, there goes my next few hours.”
These two pillars of modern cinema are likely choices for DiCaprio, whose career flourished off the back of their legacy. But his additional choices go to show that DiCaprio isn’t just posturing as a film buff. No his understanding of the medium and his subsequent greatness, is deep rooted in a thorough understanding of cinema history and the films that created it.
Alongside Scorsese’s films was another contemporary classic in The Big Lebowski, but from there it delved into the historically high-brow. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has a special place in DiCaprio’s heart, as well Bicycle Thieves, Tokyo Story, Vertigo, which were all filmed and released in the mid-century, where the tropes of modern cinema weren’t yet established. It is a clear case that the makings of a modern icon, truly exist in the understanding of the historic.
