Table Of ContentThe Films of Martin Scorsese, 1978–99
Also by Leighton Grist
THE FILMS OF MARTIN SCORSESE, 1963–77: Authorship and Context
The Films of Martin
Scorsese, 1978–99
Authorship and Context II
Leighton Grist
University of Winchester, UK
© Leighton Grist 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-4039-2035-5
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First published 2013 by
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Aum dakshane Ganeshaya namah
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 Evolving Authorship, Developing Contexts: ‘Life Lessons’ 1
2 Scorsese and Documentary: The Last Waltz 21
3 Masculinity, Violence, Resistance: Raging Bull 39
4 Back to Travis #1: The King of Comedy 68
5 Adventures in Reagan and Bush Sr’s USA: The Color
of Money and GoodFellas 90
6 Yuppies in Peril: After Hours and Cape Fear 122
7 Religion, Blasphemy and the Hollywood Institution:
The Last Temptation of Christ 153
8 Style, Narrative, Adaptation: The Age of Innocence 183
9 Power and the Look: Casino 212
10 Cinema of Transcendence, Cinema as
Transcendence: Kundun 243
11 Back to Travis #2: Bringing Out the Dead 272
12 Conclusion: ‘Of course, there’s less time …’ 301
Notes 311
Bibliography 326
Index 339
vii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Faculty of Arts Research and Knowledge
Exchange Committee at the University of Winchester for granting the
sabbatical that enabled the final drafting of this book. Thanks also to
the Faculty’s Head of Research, Inga Bryden, who has been supportive
of this project throughout its long development, and to my colleagues
in the School of Media and Film, but especially a clutch of ‘old stagers’ –
Imruh Bakari, Paul Carter, Laura Hubner and Fran Mason.
Two people are due special thanks: my good friend and colleague
Michael Walker, who has been steadfast in his help and advice, and my
wife Rita, who has been an unstinting source of patience, understanding
and good humour, and who is as well a damn fine proofreader.
I would like to dedicate this book to my father, Wyndham Grist,
who passed away during its writing. Known as ‘Pop’ to his family, he
gifted me many things – a politics, a slow heartbeat, a football team to
support – but also a love of cinema and cinema going, and the hours
spent together in Rhondda Valley picture houses are among my best
memories. This one’s for you, Pop.
Parts of this book have been previously published. Much of the analy-
sis of Raging Bull in Chapter 3 appeared in ‘Masculinity, Violence,
Resistance: A New Psychoanalytic Reading of Raging Bull’, in Atlantis,
vol. 29, no. 1 ( June 2007). Some of the material on The Last Temptation
of Christ in Chapter 7 appeared in ‘Protest as Reaction, Reaction as Text:
The (Con)Textual Logics of The Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion
of the Christ’, in Eric Christianson and Christopher Partridge (eds), Holy
Terror: Understanding Religion and Violence in Popular Culture (London:
Equinox, 2010). A shorter version of the analysis of ‘Life Lessons’ in
Chapter 1, as well as some points regarding The King of Comedy, After
Hours, The Age of Innocence and Kundun, appeared in ‘“You a Graffiti
Artist?”: The Representation of Artists and the Visual Arts in the Film-
Making of Martin Scorsese’, in Steven Allen and Laura Hubner (eds),
Framing Film: Cinema and the Visual Arts (Bristol: Equinox, 2012).
The cover still is courtesy of the Ronald Grant Archive and Universal
Pictures.
viii
1
Evolving Authorship, Developing
Contexts: ‘Life Lessons’
I
This book is a follow-up to The Films of Martin Scorsese, 1963–77:
Authorship and Context. Covering all of the Scorsese-directed feature films
released between 1978 and 1999, and making supplementary reference
to Scorsese’s other work, it centres, like its predecessor, on a series of
theoretically attuned textual analyses. Once more, these analyses are
articulated in relation not only to Scorsese’s authorship, but to a range of
informing contexts – industrial, institutional, generic, historical and/or
cultural – that reflect back upon, and differently inflect, both Scorsese’s
authorship and, implicitly, the issue and potentiality of film authorship
in general. Hence, again, the book’s subtitle: authorship and context.
Near indivisible from the propounding of film authorship, auteur-
ism is a critical practice that seeks to obtain meaning from a group of
films through the examination of stylistic and thematic elements that
can be related to mainly a single creative figure, usually their director.
Reciprocally, for most auteurist approaches not only is a film more
likely to be of value if it is controlled by its director, but for a director
to be considered an auteur – or author – his or her work has to show
a stylistic and, above all, thematic consistency. As a critical practice,
moreover, auteurism has exhibited an acceptance and integration of
challenges and contradictions seemingly undermining of its valid-
ity and, through this, sought to position itself on a firmer theoretical
grounding. More especially, there can be charted a movement away
from a common Romantic essentialism to an acknowledgement of
material factors that would appear to mitigate against the possibility
of the ascription of individual authorship within what is, particu-
larly when considering commercial film industries like Hollywood, a
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