Research

Martin Scorsese's America (Ellis Cashmore) (2009)

Link- http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mJ-58uKdE7IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Martin+Scorsese's+America&hl=en&sa=X&ei=63HMUYHNEe2I7AaH8oDgCw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA

I have decided to look at this book as part of my research as it gives context behind Scorsese's characters, and the ideologies behind the nature of his films. With this, better understanding can be gained as to why his films are set in such a manner, and why characters are shown in a certain light ('tough guy', violent etc. within these societies and settings.

Quote: "Two writers have offered their own ways of characterizing Scorsese's America: as an obsessive society and one that is endlessly collapsing and restoring itself, always in the grip of violent change". (page 3)

Quote: "Gentle psychopaths, tortured lovers, and avaricious gangsters share space with vengeful malefactors and woebegone wannabes, in what David Bromwich calls the 'Scorsese Book of the Disturbed'. They are united only by the compulsive resolution that fires their pursuits and by the unbreakable spirit that eventually condemns them". (page 4)

Quote: "It sounds like a world of misfits. But it's not: everyone in America is an obsessive in one sense or another. Everyone fusses over things that would either amuse the Dalai Lama or make him despair: like goods, revenge, or public acclaim. Everyone wants to be a winner of some kind. Success is a very American preoccupation." (page 4)

Quote: "Richard Blake, in 2005, captured the uneasy relationship by likening the director to a torturer: "Scorsese has peeled back the eyelids of his audiences and forced them to watch the sordid, cruel realities of urban life that most of us would rather not see." (page 7)

Quote: "Mean Streets and Taxi Driver contain a reality of urban America that I don't think we'd seen before, " says Patricia Finneran, director of the American Film Institute's Silverdocs festival (quoted by Kelly Jane Torrance). There are any number about grimy, unstable city life with its ubiquitous violence. But Scorsese offers an unusual angle of vision - through the eyes of existential anti-heroes accountable to no one, not even themselves, segueing from disorganization to utter derangement." (page 10)