An introduction to Martin Scorsese: A Journey
[In the following excerpt, Kelly considers the influence of Scorsese's religious upbringing on his films.]
Every Catholic school child learns the difference between a sign and a symbol. A sacrament is a sign that effects what it signifies. It is not like something else, it is something else. The language which defined the sacraments and mysteries of the faith came from St. Thomas Aquinas, who based his theology, as well as his theories of art, on Aristotelian philosophy. As James Joyce said, the "sensualist" Aquinas won out over more Platonic theologians. Christ's presence in the sacrament of the Eucharist was not symbolic; it was real. The Church held onto this doctrine against attacks from every direction. The bread and wine were not props in some reenactment of the Last Supper meant to remind the congregation of Jesus. Jesus was not thought into being. He was there. Nor did his presence depend on the worthiness of the priest. If the priest was ordained and the words, actions, and elements were there licitly, Christ really became present and offered himself as food. At his first communion, Scorsese received the host and Jesus became part of him. A sense of wonder and mystery marked the child who took religion seriously.
At a very early age, he imbibed a sacramental view of the world. He believed that transcendent moments could be reached through material means—the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the waters of baptism, and the oils used in the ordination of priests.
Another reality surrounded and permeated the world of the senses. That supernatural reality could be reached through the things of nature. Jesus, in whom the union of the natural and supernatural reached perfection, was himself "the Sacrament of the Encounter with God." As a child, Scorsese saw the sacraments as the way to this deeper, more profound, truer world of the spirit. He began to see the artist as one called to a similar task—to arrange the elements of experience until they became signs, effecting what they signified.
The transformation that happened in the Eucharist was called transubstantiation. Scorsese would have learned this word by the third grade. It meant that when the correct form—in this case the words of consecration said by the priest—combined with the proper matter, bread and wine, the substance changed. The objects might remain the same—the bread and wine looked like bread and wine—but the essence was transformed; it was made radiant.
The priests of the imagination—Joyce in his writing, Scorsese in his films—can also be agents of transformation. They create moments of epiphany by finding the visual arrangement of parts that reveal an objects's potential significance, its radiance. And that, too, is a kind of transubstantiation. The image of a yellow taxi emerging from the swirling smoke at the start of Taxi Driver comes immediately to mind. But the Joycean quality of Scorsese's work goes beyond such individual images. Scorsese finds his stories and characters in limited, confined worlds—Little Italy, Forty-second Street, a fight ring, a bandstand—close to his own background, just as Joyce's Dublin provided material enough for a lifetime. Scorsese chooses, as Joyce did, to explore this material on a level beyond the rational. He seeks to signify rather than to explain, to create moods and moments rather than to build from conventional plots and structure. This approach requires the audience to respond from the soul as well as the mind, and accept the diffuse and emotional quality of such a response. The effect of Joyce's language cannot be pinned down through analysis. Neither can Scorsese's images be summed up in verbal equivalents. In a sense, both men want their works experienced on a spiritual level.
For a Catholic schoolchild in the 1950s, every soul was a cosmic battleground on which the forces of God and the devil contend. It did not matter whether that soul belonged to you or to a failed hood, a street-corner kid, a driven musician, a prizefighter, housewife, prostitute, or taxi driver; in the drama of salvation each one was as important as the Pope himself. When Scorsese says Jake La Motta's story in Raging Bull is about redemption, he speaks in a way that is second nature to him. If Scorsese's characters concern themselves with the existence of God, guilt and expiation, and man's ultimate end, that is because Martin Scorsese grew up discussing these things with friends over Chinese food.
Scorsese's characters define and seek redemption in different ways. But all want to go beyond the narrow role that a materialist society assigns them. Murray finds transcendence by "living good"; for J.R. in Who's That Knocking, salvation lies in a "pure love"; and Charlie, a later development of the same character in Mean Streets, wants to be saved by saving Johnny Boy, who would be happy just to exist. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver thinks that if he sweeps away the garbage, he will be cleansed. Music and the road seem the way of redemption for the members of The Band in The Last Waltz, for Alice in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and for Jimmy Doyle in New York, New York. Women like Francine Evans (New York, New York) and Teresa (Mean Streets) will be saved if they can love without destroying themselves. Jake La Motta in Raging Bull tells himself that if he can stand up to all the punches, his redemption will be assured. Rupert Pupkin wants simply to be the "King of Comedy," Eddie Felson (The Color of Money) wants to recapture his pool-playing excellence, and Paul Hackett (After Hours) just wants to get uptown.
Temptation comes from the fallen world outside and from the passions within. Somehow lust and pride and jealousy are more palpable than grace. But in Scorsese's films his characters do steal sacramental moments—Johnny Boy and Charlie in the Russian Orthodox graveyard, Francine and Jimmy in the snow, Iris and Travis at breakfast.
Raging Bull closes with a parable from the New Testament. Jesus cures a blind man, but the Pharisees tell the man that he has been cured by a sinner. The formerly blind man says, "I don't know if he is a sinner or not a sinner. All I know is I was blind and now I see." This same cure figures prominently in The Last Temptation of Christ. The story comes from a very long description in the Gospel of St. John. There are dialogues between Jesus and the people, Jesus and the blind man, the Pharisees and the blind man's parents, the Pharisees and the blind man, that start to sound like a comedy routine. One point of debate is, Why is he blind? Who sinned? Was it the man or his parents? Neither, Jesus says, and proceeds to cure him. Offended by the miracle, the Pharisees castigate the parents. "Don't bother us," the parents say. "Talk to him. He's of age." Finally the man has enough. "I was blind," he says, "and now I see." Obviously there's more going on here than simply a story about physical sight.
Scorsese follows this passage from St. John at the end of Raging Bull with "Thanks Haig," a tribute to his N.Y.U. teacher. Haig Manoogian, as Scorsese says, made him "see value in my own experiences." This "seeing" allowed Scorsese to comprehend and ultimately to make a sacrament of experience—a sign that affects what it signifies. Matter is mysterious. Under the right circumstances it can even become the body of Christ.
Scorsese's Italian-American background did not encourage introspection the way Joyce's Dublin, full of the "agen bite of inwit," did. But the theological concepts he learned from the Irish nuns and Italian priests at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral stretched his mind, challenged his imagination.
None of this is to deny the negatives of Catholic education, especially pre-Vatican II. Certain failures of both the system and of individuals, especially with regard to sexuality, the dignity of women, and social justice, are undeniable. But I am speaking of early days, when the imagination is pliant, the nuns like you, the priests are friendly, and your parish is a place like Old St. Pat's, proud of its history.
Every Scorsese film yields moments of transcendence, but the viewer must be open, must take part. If Scorsese had presented a merely symbolic Jesus—so neutral that any interpretation could apply—there would have been no controversy. But the Jesus on the screen in the crucifixion scene of The Last Temptation of Christ is graphically present. We see the blood. We hear the pounding of the nails. The world tilts, the suffering of Jesus becomes so palpable that we must experience it in and of itself. The pain is too immediate to be a symbol or concept. A man is dying and he is Jesus. Scorsese had said at the Venice Film Festival press conference, "I wanted him to be a character you cared about when he died."
Scorsese, with his sacramental background, could not portray Jesus, or any of the characters in his movies, as projections of his own mind. He looks to reality. He arranges the material hoping for that moment of transcendence. The accidents remain the same, but the essence changes, and we go through the flickering image to the soul of another person. Why else do artists struggle but to make present reality, to bring us a step closer to unapproachable light?
But the sacraments are meant to create and affirm the community. Scorsese takes the matter of images, music, performance, and imposes a form on it. He adjusts the elements. The image attains its radiance. We apprehend its truth. A Scorsese movie grips us, pulls us beyond ourselves and enlarges our view, and somehow brings us closer together.
The question arises, Why does Scorsese expend such energy on prodigals? Why Jake La Motta, Johnny Boy, Eddie Felson, Lionel Dobie, and Henry Hill? One answer may be found in the parables (which also have a prominent place in The Last Temptation of Christ). "What shepherd, having a hundred sheep, would not leave the ninety-nine to search for one that is lost? What woman, having ten pieces of silver, and losing one, does not light the lamp and sweep the floor to find it?," Jesus asks. He goes on to tell the story of a dissolute son who disgraces and leaves his family. When he returns out of desperation, willing to become a servant in his father's house, his father instead embraces him and orders a great feast. This annoys the more conventionally good older brother. "But he was lost," the father says, "and now he's found." Scorsese films reveal a similar sort of compassion….
Scorsese's films are made for those described by Isaiah, who in burning sands search for the Holy Way. Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, The Last Temptation of Christ—indeed, all of Scorsese's movies—are for those with a journey to make.
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