I watched three movies that Martin Scorsese directed for my Formal Film Study including Shutter Island, The Taxi Driver, and Goodfellas. There were many similarties and differences between the three. As far as the style of the films goes, I thought that The Taxi Driver and Shutter Island both had a dark feel. The colors and lighting in these two films were darker giving off an unsettling feeling whilst the style of Goodfellas was more upbeat. The colors in Goodfellas were brighter and there were more shots during the day time then there were at night making the picture brighter. I chose these three films because they were all made in different decades. Shutter Island was made in 2010, Goodfellas was made in 1990, and The Taxi Driver was made in 1976. All three have different genres too. Shutter Island is a psychological thriller, Goodfellas is a gangster film, and The Taxi Driver is a drama. Shutter Island was a very complex and thrilling story that reminded me of other films made in the 2000's like Inception. Goodfellas is a true American gangster story that I think is similar to others like the Godfather. I have never quite seen anything like The Taxi Driver and i thought it was a very intriguing movie. In the movies Goodfellas and The Taxi Driver, there is a voice over of the main characters' voices. I thought this was a nice effect because it makes you feel closer to the main character. All three films had somewhat of an anti-hero main character. This is a 70's film quality that Scorsese seems to use alot. There werent many speacial effects in The Taxi Driver and Goodfellas besides in the scenes of violence. I would say there were alot more used in Shutter Island which is expected because it's a much more modern film. I think that all three of these films have alot to say about American culture. Goodfellas shows a man who thought he had acheived his American Dream through gangster activity and ended up losing all he had and living a boring life in the suburbs. I think the underlying message there is that your whole life can change in a very short period of time. The Taxi Driver is trying to provide perspective. It shows life in America from a Taxi Drivers point of view which I think is a cool experience. It was so interesting to see all the things they encounter while working. Shutter Island wasn't a movie that said a lot about todays culture but I think it portrayed a lot of the old techniques used in mental hospitals in a negative way to show how poorly patients used to be treated.
I think something that Martin Scorsese does best is violence. Each film has a perfect touch of violence. I would say the most violence is in the film Goodfellas and the least is in the Taxi Driver. These two films have more straight forward violence with the use of guns while the violence in Shutter Island is more thrilling and horrific violence. The violence in all three films is so realistic from the dead body in the trunk in Goodfellas, to the horrific burning body in Shutter Island, to the massacre at the whore house in The Taxi Driver. Scorsese's use of violence is speacial to him because he has had personal experience with it with is reflected in his films According to Charles Breiner, "Mr. Scrosese grew up in a neighborhood where violence was simply a way of life. One of Scorses’s film professors “hammered away at his students with his anti-Hollywood aesthetic. ‘don’t reach for the revolver right away,’ he repeated again and again… He had never had a student like Scorsese. Guns were what he knew. ‘Everyday I grew up in the Lower East Side someone had a gun,’ he (Scorsese) says ‘It was like second nature.’”2One night Scorsese was riding around with some friends in a car. Only five minutes after he got out to walk home, the car was shot at, killing those still in it. A scene which would haunt Scorsese and become the climax of his breakthrough film Mean Streets. When Scorsese portrays a life full of violence, Scorsese in many ways is portraying the only life that he knew. After graduating from NYU film school, Scorsese began his long and influential career."
Martin Scorsese also has great use of lighting in his films. The use of dark lighting and shadows in Shutter island really reflected the mystery in the film. The dark nighttime lighting in The Taxi Driver reflected the main character's dark personality. And the bright and colorful lighting in Goodfellas does a nice job of juxtaposing the violent acts of the gangsters. Overall I think Martin Scorsese is a fantastic director. I could tell that a lot of time and work went into each movie which I appreciated a lot. Now I'm not surprised at all that he is referred to as one of the best directors of all time.
