Renowned film director Martin Scorsese was born in Flushing, Queens on November 17, 1942.

The son of an immigrant clothes presser, he was raised in a tenement in New York’s Little Italy. He was a sickly youth, besieged by asthma, pleurisy, and other physical handicaps, which excluded him from sports, thus depriving him of close association with other kids in his tough neighborhood. After grade school he flirted with the idea of the priesthood, even studying at Cathedral College, a junior seminary. After one year he dropped out to pursue his childhood love — the movies.

He enrolled at New York University’s Film School, getting a B.S. degree in film communications in 1964 and an M.A. in the same field in 1966. While in school he made a number of prize-winning student shorts, including What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963) and It’s Not Just You and Murray (both 1964), and The Big Shave (1967), which won prizes at film festivals.

Scorsese stayed on at NYU’s film department as an instructor through 1970 and during his tenure on the faculty directed his first feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door? (1966). A small-scale production about an Italian-American youth, the film was originally titled I Call First, and like several of Scorsese’s future films, it had autobiographical undertones and emphasis on character study rather than dramatic plot.

His second feature film, Boxcar Bertha (1972), was a blood-and-gore sequel to Robert Corman’s Bloody Mama. It was a minor exploitation flick, but it gave the young director the opportunity to work within the Hollywood system and paved the way to his phenomenal rise in the coming year.

Mean Streets (1973) was Scorsese’s first significant film. It was set almost entirely in Little Italy, the scene of the director’s own youth, and starred Brooklyn-born Harvey Keitel as a young Italian-American at odds with his seedy environment. Again the emphasis was on character development rather than conventional plot line, and the visual style characterized by restless, jittery camera movement reflecting the tension of city life, elements that would later find a more elaborate and striking expression in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976).

In the 33 years since Taxi Driver, Scorsese has forged one of the most celebrated careers in film and has repeatedly used his native New York as a setting for his projects. His films include Raging Bull (’80), New York, New York (’77) and The King of Comedy (’83), The Last Temptation of Christ (’88), GoodFellas (’90), Cape Fear (’91), The Age of Innocence (’92), Casino (’95), Bringing Out The Dead (’99), Gangs of New York (’02) and The Aviator (’04). Scorsese’s film The Departed, released in 2006, is one of his most critically acclaimed and most commercially successful films to date. Scorsese won what many thought was an overdue Best Director Oscar for the film, which also picked up the Best Picture trophy, as well as Best Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Over the years, Scorsese has also worked on documentary film projects, such as ItalianAmerican, a documentary portrait of his parents released in 1974, and No Direction Home, about singer /songwriter Bob Dylan (’05), which won an Emmy award.

Not only does he direct, but he was an actor in Cannnonball (’76), Pavlova, ‘Round Midnight (’86), Dreams (’90), Guilty by Suspicion (’91) and others. Before her death, his mother Catherine Scorsese often acted in his films and films of others as well.

In 2005, he received the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his contribution to film and in 2007 he was honored by the Kennedy Center.

— V. Parker and P. Neidl

Questions? Comments? Sound off to the Editor

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2009 All materials posted on BrooklynEagle.com are protected by United States copyright law. Just a reminder, though -- It’s not considered polite to paste the entire story on your blog. Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph,( 40 words) then post a link to the rest of the story. That helps increase click-throughs for everyone, and minimizes copyright issues. So please keep posting, but not the entire article. arturc at att.net