The Proposal
Preliminary outline
Martin Scorsese's wanted to be an altar boy and even studied to be a priest. My father was a Hindu priest who married a Methodist, however I don't remember a single conflict over any religion in my household. My dad loved religiously-themed films such as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. When we saw The Last Temptation of Christ, we were silent after it ended. It kind of leaves you speechless. The next day, we saw it again. While many of Scorsese's films are filled with tough guys, killers and raging bulls, they rage because some defective gene in them makes them incapable of accepting love from a woman.The men see them as either virgins to be protected or whores to be violated. I will attempt to wonder, why? I argue that all his films are intensely Catholic, dealing with themes of daily sin and redemption and the role of women in his films reflects his religious beliefs. I say our religious beliefs, or lack thereof, influence the way we treat people in our lives as well.
Academic articles.
Redeemed in Blood: The Sacramental Universe of Martin Scorsese, Blake Richard, A, Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol.24, no. 1, pp. 2-9, Spring 1996
Richard A.Blake is an ordained priest and he teaches courses in film history and criticism. He's the co-director of the film studies program at Boston College. Primarily a film historian, I chose Blake because he continues to review movies for magazines like America, a national opinions journal. Most of his writings center around religious themes and images within mainstream cinema.
Martin Scorsese and His Young 'Girl': Female Objectification in Who's That Knocking at My Door? Everts, Desiree E.,VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 159-65, Spring 1997.
This article focuses on what's considered to be Scorsese's breakthrough film, one of his earliest works, “Who's That Knocking at My Door?” It focuses on how the role of the 'girl' is seen from a primarily male lens. Scorsese's portrayal of sex and power structures within identity and society at large is examined.
The Urban Inferno: On the Aesthetics of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Weinreich, Martin,
P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies, vol. 6, pp. 91-107, Dec 1998
Weinrich has worked for Danish television as a director of ten short films, as a producer, writer and director. He studied filmaker Lars von Trier at the Department Scandinavian Language and Literature at the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Aarhus. He talks about modernity, urbanity and modernism as well as the homogenous and the heterogeneous nature of New York City, where most of Scorsese's films are based in.
Religion, popular film and cultural conflict: The case of Martin Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ, Riley, Thomas Robin, Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 59, no. 12, pp. 4311, June 1999.
Thomas Robin Riley considers the cultural process where the Scorsese film, the Last Temptation of Christ generated controversy and upheaval within segments of U.S. Society in the 1980s. Riley claims that the filmpresented a unique cultural circumstance whereby deeply seated views about sacred matters came to the surface. It provides insights into the nature and role of religion in secular culture.
The Catholic Imagination in Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, Garbowski, Christopher,
Journal of Religion and Film, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 23 paragraphs, Oct 2001. Garbowski examines the role that Scorsese's Catholic Italian-Amerian upbringing influences his documentary on The Band's last concert, aptly titled, The Last Waltz, echoes of The Last Supper and The Last Temptation of Christ, his previous film, exists within the framework of a rock show.
Books:
Connelly, Marie Katheryn. Martin Scorsese: An Analysis of His Feature Films, With a Filmography of His Entire Directorial Career. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Compagny, 1993. Connelly provides a comprehensive overview of the films directed by Martin Scorsese throughout his career. It's a useful backdrop for comparison between his level of Catholicism in his different films.
Scorsese, Martin. Scorsese on Scorsese. London: Faber and Faber, 1989. It would be useful to glean from the man himself, reasons or motivations for his religiosity in his films. His autobiography details everything from the start of his love for the cinema. It happened when his parents would take him to the movies because as asthmatic child he was unable to play outdoors with the neighborhood kids. They rest is history.
Gigi Durham, Meenakshi and Kellner, M., Douglas. Media and Cultural Studies, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Durham and Kellner provide a comprehensive look into media theory as well as it's relationship to cultural studies. A useful reference to understand the significance of mas media such as film.
Internet sources:
Kafka on the Screen: Martin Scorsese's After Hours, Marion Faber, http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0042-062X(198623)19:2%3C200:KOTSMS%3E2.0.CO;2-Q& A discussion on how texts translate to the screen with a comparison to Kafka. Scorsese has adapted Nikos Kazantzakis's Last Temptation of Christ to the screen and it is interesting to see the process unfold and how some things may be lost in translation and some things could not be found in any other form or medium.
Death, Medicine, and Religious Solidarity in Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, Hammond, David and Smith J.Beverly, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/logos/v007/7.3hammond.html The article discusses Scorsese's use of medicine in his film about an ambulance driver, Bringing Out The Dead, as a metaphor for religion and is surprised that the metaphorization of religion in modern society has not been erased.
The Chicago Sun-Times review of Raging Bull under Roger Ebert's Great Films section http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980510/REVIEWS08/401010354/1023
I learnt about many of Scorsese's early work from Roger Ebert's Pulitzer-prize winning Great Films section in the Chicago Sun-Times. Ebert has also written a biography of Scorsese with a foward written by the director himself.
Martin Scorsese by A.O. Scott http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=43803 A review of Scorsese's Bringing out the dead by New York Times film critic A.O. Scot for online magazine, Slate.
God Among Directors http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scorsese/index.shtml A website with links to Scorsese articles, and screenplays to his films.
Neon magazine http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scorsese/faq/scorsese1.txt An article in British film magazine Neon in 1998 about the making of Taxi Driver and how writing the screenplay saved Paul Schrader from committing suicide.
Roger Ebert's article on Scorsese's film, Goodfellas, in his Great Films section of the Chicago-Sun Times
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20021124/REVIEWS08/211240301/1023
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert's article on why he chose Scorsese's first major film, Mean Streets, to be included in his category of Great Films.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19731002/REVIEWS/301010321/
Roger Ebert's review of Scorsese's early work, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19741201/REVIEWS/401010303
Rogert Ebert's review of Scorsese's Oscar-winning return to the crime genre, The Departed.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070705/REVIEWS/70705002/1023
Martin Scorsese's wanted to be an altar boy and even studied to be a priest. My father was a Hindu priest who married a Methodist, however I don't remember a single conflict over any religion in my household. My dad loved religiously-themed films such as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. When we saw The Last Temptation of Christ, we were silent after it ended. It kind of leaves you speechless. The next day, we saw it again. While many of Scorsese's films are filled with tough guys, killers and raging bulls, they rage because some defective gene in them makes them incapable of accepting love from a woman.The men see them as either virgins to be protected or whores to be violated. I will attempt to wonder, why? I argue that all his films are intensely Catholic, dealing with themes of daily sin and redemption and the role of women in his films reflects his religious beliefs. I say our religious beliefs, or lack thereof, influence the way we treat people in our lives as well.
Academic articles.
Redeemed in Blood: The Sacramental Universe of Martin Scorsese, Blake Richard, A, Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol.24, no. 1, pp. 2-9, Spring 1996
Richard A.Blake is an ordained priest and he teaches courses in film history and criticism. He's the co-director of the film studies program at Boston College. Primarily a film historian, I chose Blake because he continues to review movies for magazines like America, a national opinions journal. Most of his writings center around religious themes and images within mainstream cinema.
Martin Scorsese and His Young 'Girl': Female Objectification in Who's That Knocking at My Door? Everts, Desiree E.,VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 159-65, Spring 1997.
This article focuses on what's considered to be Scorsese's breakthrough film, one of his earliest works, “Who's That Knocking at My Door?” It focuses on how the role of the 'girl' is seen from a primarily male lens. Scorsese's portrayal of sex and power structures within identity and society at large is examined.
The Urban Inferno: On the Aesthetics of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Weinreich, Martin,
P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies, vol. 6, pp. 91-107, Dec 1998
Weinrich has worked for Danish television as a director of ten short films, as a producer, writer and director. He studied filmaker Lars von Trier at the Department Scandinavian Language and Literature at the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Aarhus. He talks about modernity, urbanity and modernism as well as the homogenous and the heterogeneous nature of New York City, where most of Scorsese's films are based in.
Religion, popular film and cultural conflict: The case of Martin Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ, Riley, Thomas Robin, Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 59, no. 12, pp. 4311, June 1999.
Thomas Robin Riley considers the cultural process where the Scorsese film, the Last Temptation of Christ generated controversy and upheaval within segments of U.S. Society in the 1980s. Riley claims that the filmpresented a unique cultural circumstance whereby deeply seated views about sacred matters came to the surface. It provides insights into the nature and role of religion in secular culture.
The Catholic Imagination in Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, Garbowski, Christopher,
Journal of Religion and Film, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 23 paragraphs, Oct 2001. Garbowski examines the role that Scorsese's Catholic Italian-Amerian upbringing influences his documentary on The Band's last concert, aptly titled, The Last Waltz, echoes of The Last Supper and The Last Temptation of Christ, his previous film, exists within the framework of a rock show.
Books:
Connelly, Marie Katheryn. Martin Scorsese: An Analysis of His Feature Films, With a Filmography of His Entire Directorial Career. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Compagny, 1993. Connelly provides a comprehensive overview of the films directed by Martin Scorsese throughout his career. It's a useful backdrop for comparison between his level of Catholicism in his different films.
Scorsese, Martin. Scorsese on Scorsese. London: Faber and Faber, 1989. It would be useful to glean from the man himself, reasons or motivations for his religiosity in his films. His autobiography details everything from the start of his love for the cinema. It happened when his parents would take him to the movies because as asthmatic child he was unable to play outdoors with the neighborhood kids. They rest is history.
Gigi Durham, Meenakshi and Kellner, M., Douglas. Media and Cultural Studies, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Durham and Kellner provide a comprehensive look into media theory as well as it's relationship to cultural studies. A useful reference to understand the significance of mas media such as film.
Internet sources:
Kafka on the Screen: Martin Scorsese's After Hours, Marion Faber, http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0042-062X(198623)19:2%3C200:KOTSMS%3E2.0.CO;2-Q& A discussion on how texts translate to the screen with a comparison to Kafka. Scorsese has adapted Nikos Kazantzakis's Last Temptation of Christ to the screen and it is interesting to see the process unfold and how some things may be lost in translation and some things could not be found in any other form or medium.
Death, Medicine, and Religious Solidarity in Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, Hammond, David and Smith J.Beverly, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/logos/v007/7.3hammond.html The article discusses Scorsese's use of medicine in his film about an ambulance driver, Bringing Out The Dead, as a metaphor for religion and is surprised that the metaphorization of religion in modern society has not been erased.
The Chicago Sun-Times review of Raging Bull under Roger Ebert's Great Films section http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19980510/REVIEWS08/401010354/1023
I learnt about many of Scorsese's early work from Roger Ebert's Pulitzer-prize winning Great Films section in the Chicago Sun-Times. Ebert has also written a biography of Scorsese with a foward written by the director himself.
Martin Scorsese by A.O. Scott http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=43803 A review of Scorsese's Bringing out the dead by New York Times film critic A.O. Scot for online magazine, Slate.
God Among Directors http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scorsese/index.shtml A website with links to Scorsese articles, and screenplays to his films.
Neon magazine http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scorsese/faq/scorsese1.txt An article in British film magazine Neon in 1998 about the making of Taxi Driver and how writing the screenplay saved Paul Schrader from committing suicide.
Roger Ebert's article on Scorsese's film, Goodfellas, in his Great Films section of the Chicago-Sun Times
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20021124/REVIEWS08/211240301/1023
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert's article on why he chose Scorsese's first major film, Mean Streets, to be included in his category of Great Films.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19731002/REVIEWS/301010321/
Roger Ebert's review of Scorsese's early work, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19741201/REVIEWS/401010303
Rogert Ebert's review of Scorsese's Oscar-winning return to the crime genre, The Departed.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070705/REVIEWS/70705002/1023
