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  When Martin Scorsese was young, he painted a pair of eyes on the wall of his room. At the time, Martin, who aspired to the Catholic priesthood, conceived of the symbol in almost entirely religious terms. But those eyes, watching in the dark like a man in a theater, may also be seen as a metaphor for Scorsese himself, whose prolific career as a filmmaker and an observer of life is the wellspring from which his art flows.
Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942, to second-generation Sicilian-American parents in Flushing, Long Island, New York. The family soon moved to an almost exclusively Sicilian section of Little Italy in New York. There, life was dominated by two forces: the wise guys and the Church. The tension between the sensualist machismo of the one group and the spirit of the other impressed itself indelibly on Scorsese and later became a salient theme in his body of work.
As a result of asthma and frailty, Scorsese was ill suited to success in the world of gangsters. He thus turned to religion and planned to become a priest. He harbored the desire to pursue this calling even after he enrolled in NYU several years after failing out of the seminary. Even at the apex of his religious ambitions, though, the street toughs never ceased to interfere with Martin's ascetic impulses. The sensualism that Scorsese had partly inherited from them flowered upon his discovery of exotic women at NYU (one of whom he married) and marked the end of his priestly aspirations.
Luckily for Scorsese, who had initially studied English at NYU, film quickly filled the vocational void left by the priesthood. The event that convinced Scorsese that his obsession with film was no mere hobby was the class of Haig Manoogian, an advocate of personal filmmaking and a man whose film theory would remain a major influence throughout Scorsese's career. From that first class onward, Scorsese was determined to become a director, and the several films he made while still a student and immediately following graduation proved his ability.
Following these initial films, Scorsese made a Bonnie and Clyde knockoff called Boxcar Bertha (1972). Although not a terrible picture, Boxcar Bertha was neither a personal nor an artistic film. In the aftermath of its completion, after John Cassavettes described the film as "a piece of shit" not worthy of Scorsese's talent, Scorsese decided to undertake a project about which he cared deeply. The project, initially called Season of the Witch and then later renamed Mean Streets (1973), is Scorsese's first masterpiece. Written by Scorsese and his friend Mardik Martin at a time when the marriages of both men were disintegrating, Mean Streets is the story of an aspiring restauranteur named Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and his struggles with the spirit, sex, violence, and guilt. In addition, Mean Streets provided Robert De Niro with his first big break in the role of the reckless Johnny Boy. Moreover, the combination of Mean Streets with Italianamerican (1974), a short documentary about Scorsese's parents and the director's favorite among his films, constitutes perhaps the greatest portrayal of the Italian-American experience ever filmed.
Despite its favorable critical reception, Mean Streets was not a box office success. As a result, the director had to wait until his next picture, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), won Ellen Burstyn the Best Actress Oscar before acquiring sufficient influence to make his next great movie, Taxi Driver (1975). From his first reading of Paul Schrader's script, Scorsese passionately desired to make the film, which dealt with themes similar to those investigated by Dostoevsky in Notes from the Underground, a work Scorsese had long wanted to bring to the screen. Robert De Niro's initial reaction to the script was equally profound, as he decided to abandon a thematically similar script that he had been writing to become the picture's star. This intense personal involvement by director, star, and screenwriter came through in the passion of the finished product. Moreover, the cocaine-fueled shoot took place in the midst of a sweltering summer during a time when New York seemed, to the crew members at least, to be self-destructing. All of these elements combined to create a perfect environment for the film's investigation into loneliness, paranoia, obsession, and violence. The resulting work seared itself into the American consciousness, even going so far as to influence John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate President Reagan.
Scorsese's choice for his next major film flowed out of his desire to make a movie in every genre, as the great studio directors he idolized had once done. He chose a musical called New York, New York (1977), though the resulting film bombed. Scorsese took the failure badly, increasing his cocaine consumption to near fatal levels. In fact, he became so dependent on the substance that in 1978, when he had exhausted his supply of the drug while at Cannes, he chartered a plane to bring more of it from Paris. His campaign of self-destruction nearly succeeded in late 1978 when Scorsese arrived at a New York hospital with a near zero platelet level and blood pouring from his eyes. When he regained control of his faculties, Scorsese's second marriage was over and his child estranged.
Not surprisingly for a man who rarely acknowledged the existence of anything other than movies, Scorsese performed his rehabilitation on a film set, channeling his passionate nature away from cocaine abuse and into filmmaking. He worked on Raging Bull (1980) as if it were his last film, calling it a "kamikaze" approach to filmmaking. This story of Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), a boxer consumed with feelings of violence, is the masterpiece of both director and star. The film won Best Picture, Best Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), and Best Actor (Robert De Niro). Unfortunately, Scorsese was not named Best Director, indicative perhaps of the incompatibility of true artistry with a modern Hollywood motivated only by profit.
For nearly 10 years after Raging Bull, one project, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), dominated Scorsese's mind. For a short time during the early 1980s, it seemed that The Last Temptation of Christ might be produced without great difficulty. However, the prospect of a movie based on Nikos Kazantzakis's retelling of the Gospels drew the ire of fundamentalists, and their opposition resulted in the cancellation of the project before filming even began. The film was made only after Scorsese directed After Hours (1985), a low-budget comedy for which he won the Best Director prize at Cannes, and The Color of Money (1986), which ran under budget and for which Paul Newman finally received an Oscar for Best Actor. In many ways, The Last Temptation of Christ is the summation of Scorsese's life and art. In the movie his lifelong interest in Catholicism is fully investigated, while his profound interest in the human condition is satisfied by a focus on the mortal side of Jesus. Furthermore, The Last Temptation of Christ marks the culmination of a lifetime of watching movies based on the Gospels, many of which are quoted in the film. This comprehensive awareness highlights Scorsese's status as the James Joyce or T.S. Eliot of film, an artist whose consciousness of the tradition in which he operates is nearly unparalleled.
Martin Scorsese's career and life are far from over, and The Last Temptation of Christ is by no means a zenith from which Scorsese has subsequently declined. From Goodfellas (1990) to The Age of Innocence (1993) to the recent Bringing out The Dead (1999), Martin Scorsese continues to make beautifully crafted films about the human condition. And although the Academy has never honored him, Martin Scorsese is almost universally regarded as one of the greatest modern American directors.
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