Martin Scorsese
The wiki's first person hub: the filmmaker as walking film archive — personal context made visible.
- director
- new-hollywood
b. 1942, New York. Asthmatic kid in Little Italy who watched instead of played; NYU; Mean Streets (1973); then, improbably, a Warner Bros women's picture — Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) — because Ellen Burstyn screened Mean Streets and hired him. Asked what he knew about women, he reportedly answered: "Nothing. But I'd like to learn" (Criterion — At Home in the World).
This is the hub note for Scorsese material. Everything Scorsese-related links from here.
Films noted
- Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) — and its centrepiece for this wiki, Alice — the prologue.
Why he matters to the wiki
Scorsese is the standing case for the Personal context force: a director whose movie-memory is the visible material of his style. The prologue of Alice is the thesis exhibit — childhood rendered as the films that furnished it (The $85,000 backdrop) — but the habit runs everywhere: genre knowledge deployed as feeling, camera moves quoted like scripture. He operated inside the brief New Hollywood window when studios funded that sensibility (Biskind; Commerce).
Sources for this person
Scorsese on Scorsese (1989) — his own account, film by film. Burstyn — Lessons in Becoming Myself (2006) — the collaboration from the star's side. Biskind — Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998) — the era, gossip included.