The business of making movies (especially in the studio-centric Hollywood world) is never a smooth road to travel, especially for the filmmaker primarily at the helm of the project. The process is always dollars vs. vision, success over the sake of creativity, or entertainment over relevancy. No filmmaker or director has ever been toed this fine-line more firmly on the side of artistic freedom more than Martin Scorsese; the snappy and ingenious force behind so many religious and gangster crime-focused cinematic tales spanning over fifty years, that have permanently placed the 80+ year-old on the Mount Rushmore of must-watch movie-making icons.
His name is forever tethered to the legendary multi-decade career paths of Robert De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio. His filmography is a wide-array of critical and commercial failures and yet his best-of-the-best efforts are so strong they wash away those shortcomings in retrospect. This is the focus of the latest in the Iconic Filmmaker series from author Ian Nathan (whose past efforts have included Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg); an incredibly gifted and reflective writer who painstakingly, often meticulously comprises these career-encapsulating cinematic visionaries into a singular-focused written work year-after year.
Released by White Lion Publishing, the Scorsese edition (once again packaged in a beautiful slip-cover encased hardcover release due on November 4th, 2025) collects and incredible amount of photos, promotional art and authentic behind-the-scenes perspectives that are unauthorized or endorsed by official parties, but the result seems far from it visually and subjectively to the reader. From the page once can
feel the influence of New York or the criminal allure of a gangster's life from Nathan's words just as much as those elements leaped from Scorsese through celluloid time after time.
Eloquently Nathan tracks Scorsese's early life into his early works that began stretching the director's skills, but once the author begins covering 1973's
Mean Streets the text takes off just as significantly as Scorsese's filmic impact at the time of that particular film, which served as the start of his gangster film run and proved his worth as a creative name that could elevate a project easily from obscurity to legendary. The deep, reflective dives (as always with Nathan's chapters) on the likes of De Niro heavyweights;
Taxi Driver and
Raging Bull will satiate the most die-hard of Scorsese followers regarding his classics, but at the mid-way point of the book is where the real value lies in picking this edition up. In past works (and throughout this current edition), Nathan's chapters usually incorporates more than one film and tracks a time range period of years from the filmmaker's catalogue. When the book however falls upon the time and subject of 1990's
Goodfellas, the movie is given its due with a chapter all to itself and rightfully so.
Goodfellas is the quintessential Martin Scorsese film above all others. It is the mob crime-drama that equal ranks alongside
The Godfather in cinema history to this day (even though it was not showered with the level of awards or accolades on par with Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece), but time and appreciation has elevated it to that same level. Nathan perfectly relays why that is in this chapter that explores the true story influence, the artistic choices, the technical shots, the particular casting and the dialogue of that film that has resonated for now 35 years. It's a mesmerizing read for a movie-loving loyalist.
As the book spring boards from that point it does an excellent job touching upon Scorsese's follow-up success stories with 1995's
Casino, the hollow recognition with long overdue Oscars or box-office for Di Caprio-led 2006's
The Departed,
2010's
Shutter Island and the appealing romp of 2012's
The Wolf Of Wall Street. He also admirably touches on the ones that fell short and remain under-appreciated such as 1999's
Bringing Out The Dead, or Scorsese's controversial, hard-to-watch religious epics such as 1988's
The Last Temptation Of Christ or 2016's
Silence. As the book rounds to close, Nathan offers a surprising view on 2019's
The Irishman - which begs the question on if it should be re-assessed as one of Marty's best even with it's bloated run-time, budget and streaming home.
Tackling Martin Scorsese was not likely an easy task, after all one has to balance relaying the artist and the man seamlessly together. By nature Marty is outspoken and very vocal about the state of cinema today, citing that something has been lost on exploring the human condition and the dramatic treasure-trove of fractured mentality or relationships in opposition of the money-making choice of the fantastical franchise worlds that dictate the state of the business in this current era. Nathan does not shy away from acknowledging this in the edition and with the explorative nature of his text using each film in Scorsese's arsenal, he often strengthens Marty's points on the matter when correlating all the lead characters of Scorsese's films together in a line-up (such as De Niro's mentally troubled Travis Bickle from
Taxi Driver, Daniel Day Lewis' maniacal Bill The Butcher from 2002's
Gangs Of London or Di Caprio's performance of OCD-riddled Howard Hughes in 2004's
The Aviator).
Martin Scorsese: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work is another brilliant release from Ian Nathan's series. It serves as a more breezy, shorter read than either Christopher Nolan and certainly Steven Spielberg editions of the past, but it is no less worthwhile with a competent and masterfully constructed retrospective on a giant of the industry (who shows no signs of retiring or slowing down even in his twilight years). It's a wonder as to who Nathan may choose to tackle next (having now effectively covered all of the greats with Marty's inclusion), but I for one can't wait to read the next potential offering in this excellent hardcover series designed for the eyes of historical filmmaking enthusiasts.
THE REELVISION RATING: 📽📽📽📽📽(out of 5/📽)
