SCORSESE, MARTIN

born Nov. 17, 1942, Flushing, Long Island, N.Y., U.S. American motion-picture director, writer, and producer who depicted harsh, often violent aspects of American culture in many of his films. Scorsese was a frail, asthmatic child who grew up in an Italian-American neighbourhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His early interest in film returned after he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood, and he went on to earn undergraduate (1964) and graduate (1966) degrees in filmmaking from New York University. After editing several films for other directors and directing two modest features of his own, Scorsese won critical attention with Mean Streets (1973), which examines the conflict between church and street life in an Italian neighbourhood of New York City. This film was typical of his work in its realistic detail and its naturalistic, partially improvisatory performances. The following year Scorsese explored an altogether different subject in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, which follows a recently widowed woman and her son across the West in a loose, episodic journey of self-discovery. With Taxi Driver (1976) Scorsese aroused controversy because of his use of graphic violence in the story of a psychopathic cab driver's loneliness and salvation in New York City. Scorsese's next film, New York, New York (1977), explored the troubled romantic relationship between a young jazz saxophonist and a female vocalist in the decade after World War II. In a change of pace he made The Last Waltz (1978), a documentary film of a rock band's breakup and final concert. Raging Bull (1980), one of Scorsese's finest films, chronicles the violent public and private life of a boxer based on the real-life prizefighter Jake La Motta. The King of Comedy (1983) depicts an aspiring stand-up comedian who kidnaps a television star in order to achieve the fame that obsesses him. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), based on a novel by Nkos Kazantzaks, scandalized many Christians in its depiction of Christ as tormented and unsure of his role as the Messiah. Scorsese returned to more familiar subject matter in GoodFellas (1990), a realistic depiction of the amoral and violent lives of three New York mobsters. Scorsese was one of the most consistently original American filmmakers of the late 20th century. Several of his films starred Robert De Niro in a collaboration that became one of the most fruitful director-actor partnerships in the history of cinema.