Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio in 1999. Photo: AP
There's nothing worse than when a long-cherished passion project ends up being a disaster. It can be a frustrating experience, but that's exactly what happened to Martin Scorsese while filming Gangs of New York. The film he had been wanting to make since the seventies was a star-studded, hugely expensive epic unlike any he had made before, and it was produced by one Harvey Weinstein, with whom Scorsese butted heads throughout filming: rumor has it that the released version, still 167 minutes long, is about an hour shorter than the director's preferred version.
On screen, it is often impossible to tell when the organized chaos ends and the behind-the-scenes machinations begin, as the characters are in a constant state of frenzy and activity. Although the film ultimately proved to be quite successful financially and was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Director for Scorsese and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, who earned a win for his outstanding performance as the film's antagonist Bill «The Butcher» Cutting, it doesn't count as one of the director's best films because it's too compromised and messy to achieve greatness.
What he did do, however, for which every film fan should be grateful, was bring Scorsese together with the actor who would become his muse in the latter part of his career, Leonardo DiCaprio.
Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of the film «Gangs of New York» Photo: Alamy
During the filming of Gangs of New York, DiCaprio was close to losing his credibility as an actor. Since he first came to attention in the early 1990s with acclaimed roles in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and This Boy's Life, he has been hailed as one of the most exciting leading men of his generation, with double success «Romeo»; Juliet and, of course, Titanic turned him into the world's biggest heartthrob, a man who combined artistic credentials with pin-up good looks.
However, his once unerring choice of projects has faltered following the incomparable success of James Cameron's naval epic. The swashbuckling epic The Man in the Iron Mask was dull, as was Danny Boyle's adaptation of Alex Garland's cult novel The Beach. DiCaprio turned down starring roles in everything from American Psycho to Attack of the Clones; Before he turned 30, rumors began to circulate that DiCaprio, like many other talented but easily distracted actors, was on the verge of calling it quits.
When Scorsese cast him in the lead role of Amsterdam Vallon, a young man seeking revenge for the death of his father, it was widely believed that DiCaprio's presence in the film — along with the presence of Cameron Diaz as his love interest, pickpocket Jenny — was required on Weinstein's part to have a lucrative name in the lead role to ensure the film's massive $97 million budget had a chance to break even.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro on the set of “Killers of the Flower Moon” Photo: Alami
There were rumors, which were never confirmed or denied, about scandals occurring on the set between Scorsese and DiCaprio due to the latter's lateness to the set. When the film was finally released, it was Day-Lewis' performance that caught all the critics' attention; DiCaprio's Amsterdam was widely considered too inexperienced, with trade publication The Hollywood Reporter writing that «he doesn't look like a streetwise tough guy.» Many might have expected the two men to go their separate ways, with DiCaprio moving toward a less demanding mainstream and Scorsese returning to the sprawling crime films that made his name and reputation.
However, casting DiCaprio in Gangs of New York was not just a commercial requirement, but was based on the personal recommendation of another great Scorsese muse, Robert De Niro, who starred opposite DiCaprio in This Boy's Life. As Scorsese recalled during the Cannes press conference for Killers of the Flower Moon, the duo's sixth collaboration, «[De Niro] said, 'You should work with this guy sometime.' It was just an accident. But within the line, something like this — a recommendation of that time, the early 1990s — is not accidental. He says it casually, but he says it rarely. He rarely made recommendations.»
While DiCaprio's performance in Gangs of New York is good but not exceptional, he and Scorsese almost immediately reunited to make The Aviator, a biopic directed by Howard Hughes. It was a completely different picture from Gangs, an epic mainstream drama that not only became Scorsese's highest-grossing film to date, grossing over $210 million, but also earned DiCaprio a nomination for his first Oscar for Best the male lead for his role. playing the role of Hughes.
He probably deserved this victory. Although Day-Lewis, in his first collaboration with Scorsese, played him entirely behind the scenes, his steely, controlled performance, in which he captures Hughes' mania and genius in equal parts, was dangerous to watch. Not even Cate Blanchett's Oscar-winning performance as Katharine Hepburn could steal the picture from DiCaprio, who shed the boyishness that characterized his previous roles and, at just 30, proved he could thrive under Scorsese's tutelage. As the director puts it: “We developed a closer relationship when we made The Aviator. And towards the end there was something like a maturity that happened to him, not exactly, but in some scenes it really worked for us.»
By the time the duo reunited for their third consecutive collaboration, The Departed (2006), what began as a professional comparison had blossomed into a warm friendship. “During this time, we really realized that although there is a 30-year age difference, his feelings are similar,” Scorsese recently recalled. “He’ll come to me and say, ‘Listen to this record,’ and it’s Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald. I grew up with this. He doesn't bring me anything new, but he likes it. But it's interesting. Why is he bringing this to me?
Even their most divisive fourth film together, Shutter Island, which Scorsese offered this year, which he regretted directing, saying he should have made his own religious epic instead «Silence» is full of interest, not least because of the magnetic performance of DiCaprio in the title role. as jaded US Marshal Teddy Daniels, who arrives on the island of the same name in search of secrets, including his own.
DiCaprio and Scorsese on the set of The Wolf of Wall Street Photo: Alamy
If Scorsese and DiCaprio's first quartet of films were best described as «dark,» a significant change of pace came with 2013's dark comedy The Wolf of Wall Street, starring DiCaprio as a depraved financier. and con man Jordan Belfort. . Not only was the film raucous and hysterically funny, but it allowed DiCaprio to demonstrate a hitherto unexpected talent for physical comedy, not least in the scene where Belfort picks up Quaalude and then unsuccessfully tries to park his car.
If Gangs of New York specialized in uncontrolled chaos, The Wolf of Wall Street was an exercise in controlled mania with wildly entertaining effect. And by this point, Scorsese and DiCaprio, who shared a close friendship, trusted each other unconditionally. As the director said: “In The Wolf of Wall Street, [DiCaprio] came up with outrageous things, and I pushed him. He pushed me, then I pushed him some more, then he pushed me, and suddenly everything got wild, you know?” The actor recalled: «We looked at each other and asked: 'Are we going too far?' The answer was “never.”
DiCaprio described Scorsese as a «reliable ally», with the director commenting: «Over the years, it was about learning more, improving the tools together, so to speak, and learning more from each other in the process.»
Leonardo DiCaprio, Ray Winstone, Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese on the set of The Departed Photo: Allstar/WARNER BROS < p>With their sixth collaboration, Killers of the Flower Moon, already receiving rave reviews at Cannes, it's likely that DiCaprio and Scorsese will collaborate again; Their list of unproduced projects is as long, if not longer, than the films they have produced, including the historical serial killer drama The Devil in the White City, a Frank Sinatra biopic and a film about US President Theodore Roosevelt.
What follows is an adaptation of Wager writer David Grann's best-selling non-fiction book, Killers of the Flower Moon, about the mutiny that took place on HMS Wager in 1741; the two men have acquired the rights, and the current intention is for Scorsese to direct and DiCaprio to star, although who knows if such a demanding (and expensive) project will come to fruition. However, it seems clear that no matter what happens, these two will continue to work together until one or the other of them leaves the industry.
Just as the relationship between Scorsese and De Niro was vital to both men, the working partnership between the director and DiCaprio became one of the most impressive in cinema. When it comes to their personal lives, they are completely different; Scorsese, a devout Catholic married to the same woman for almost 25 years, DiCaprio, an eco-warrior playboy, apparently never leaves the superyacht. However, it's not hard to see what each gets from the other on paper: DiCaprio has achieved creative authority through the man he publicly calls «Mr. Scorsese.» It's no surprise that when he finally won an Oscar for The Revenant, he thanked his close collaborator in his acceptance speech.
And Scorsese witnessed a remarkable turnaround in his commercial fortunes throughout the sixties and seventies: his collaborations with DiCaprio became a box office hit and allowed him to create epic mainstream films that most of his peers would kill for. to appear. With. However, this is also a reductive approach. The synergy between them is both impressive and heart-tugging, demonstrating that in a corrupt and often idiotic industry, the good guys can still sometimes win.
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