Martin Scorsese is one of the most seminal directors of the New Hollywood movement. Along with Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman, Scorsese helped to bring a dark, experimental, thought-provoking edge to American cinema. He started out helming B-movies as a director-for-hire, but turned his career around with a deeply personal portrait of Italian-American life in New York City: 1973’s Mean Streets.
Scorsese went on to direct a bunch more classics that rank among the greatest movies ever made, from Goodfellas. In the decades since Scorsese put himself on the map in the ‘70s, he’s earned a reputation as arguably the most legendary living filmmaker. But not all of Scorsese’s early films were as acclaimed by critics (and IMDb s) as his later hits.
Boxcar Bertha (1972) – 6.0
Scorsese’s first film of the decade is also the one that IMDb s enjoyed the least. 1972’s Boxcar Bertha is a revenge thriller set in the Great Depression, produced by B-movie legend Roger Corman (who gave many prolific filmmakers their start) and based on Sister of the Road by Ben L. Reitman. This was Scorsese’s last film as a director-for-hire before following his own com and expressing his own voice through cinema.
According to TIFF, Scorsese was inspired to make his next movie much more personal when fellow director John Cassavetes called Boxcar Bertha “a piece of s**t.” A year after the disappointment of Boxcar Bertha, Scorsese launched his auteur career with Mean Streets.
New York, New York (1977) – 6.6
1977’s New York, New York marked one of Scorsese’s biggest tonal departures (and one of his biggest box office disappointments). There’s no gangland murder or Catholic guilt in this movie; it’s a musical romance starring Robert De Niro as a self-absorbed jazz saxophonist and Liza Minnelli as a lounge singer.
The movie was criticized for pairing a nostalgic Classical Hollywood musical style with the harrowing story of a marriage crumbling. The warm, fuzzy feel of the movie was an odd choice for such a heart-wrenching story. The bitter realism of the marriage arc doesn’t gel with the romance of the music and visuals. Minnelli’s title theme, later covered by Frank Sinatra, is much more iconic and memorable than the movie itself.
The critical and commercial failure of New York, New York put Scorsese’s career in a slump just as it was getting started. A couple of years later, both he and De Niro dug themselves out of that slump with one of their most iconic collaborations, 1980’s boxing biopic Raging Bull, which earned De Niro an Oscar.
Mean Streets (1973) – 7.2
The movie that launched Scorsese’s career, Mean Streets, still holds up as one of Scorsese’s finest films. It stars Harvey Keitel as Charlie, a level-headed mafioso riddled with Catholic guilt, and Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy, Charlie’s reckless friend whose messes he always has to clean up.
Mean Streets established all the trademarks of Scorsese’s filmmaking style out of the gate: dark humor, voiceover narration, soundtrack needle-drops, etc. It also introduced audiences to Scorsese’s character-driven storytelling. He’s not as concerned with plot as he is with the emotions and insecurities and behavioral traits of human beings. Like most of Scorsese’s other films, Mean Streets is a rounded character study constructed with mostly disconnected vignettes.
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) – 7.3
After the success of Mean Streets, Scorsese was tapped to direct Ellen Burstyn in the wonderfully naturalistic dramedy Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Nearly half a century later, this is still Scorsese’s only movie with a female lead. He handled the story with care and gave Burstyn’s incredible performance enough of a spotlight to earn the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Burstyn plays a widow who hits the road with her prodigious son in a bid to become a famous singer. The predictable story doesn’t quite live up to the brilliant performances of the cast, but Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore showed audiences a softer, more sensitive side of Scorsese than they’d seen in his more famous movies.
Taxi Driver (1976) – 8.3
With Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore under his belt, Scorsese returned to the gritty crime films he was renowned for with 1976’s Taxi Driver. Along with Chinatown and The Long Goodbye, Taxi Driver helped to define the neo-noir. These movies modernized the tropes of classic post-war film noirs with an even darker, even seedier Watergate-era cynicism.
It’s an experimental, deeply cinematic “New Hollywood” take on the vigilante thriller, telling the story of a disturbed Vietnam War veteran who suffers from insomnia, drives a cab around a crime-ridden New York City, and eventually decides to arm himself and take the law into his own hands. Paul Schrader’s script is such a taut, tense, masterfully crafted character study that it’s still ed around screenwriting classes as an example of a perfect screenplay.
Travis Bickle is the ultimate antihero. His worsening psychosis keeps him at arm’s length from the audience, but his loneliness makes him universally relatable. De Niro gives one of the finest performances of his career as Travis, capturing both his isolation and his murderous rage.
