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Finally: an Oscar for Martin Scorsese
- Posted at 11:44am
- 11 March 2009
- by AndrewCollins-RT
Only a very bad fella who lived on a particularly mean street would have denied Martin Scorsese his well-earned Oscar moment in 2007, when, after half a lifetime as one of American cinema's presiding greats, he finally won best director – and a standing ovation.
Having expanded upon the formative Italian-American influences of his upbringing in Queens, he's created a broad-ranging, exquisitely crafted portfolio spanning documentary, costume drama and religious epic. To see the statuette handed to him by contemporaries Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas was to see movie justice done.
What a shame it was for The Departed (Sunday 15 March, Channel 4), a distinctly average gangster movie remarkable only for the fact that Scorsese relocates his usual wiseguy eco-system from New York to Boston. (It won best picture, too, beating Clint Eastwood's far superior Letters from Iwo Jima (Friday Sky Screen 2.) So it was the wrong film, but Scorsese's long-running Oscar drought was starting to look embarrassing. "Could you double-check the envelope?" he joshed from the podium.
Scorsese's first modern classic, the rough-and-ready Mean Streets (1973), wasn't even recognised by the Academy. The more palatable Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore had scooped best actress for Ellen Burstyn, but no nod for Marty.
Five best director nominations followed – Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ (Saturday 14 March, Sky Indie), GoodFellas (Tuesday 17 March, Sky Action/Thriller), Gangs of New York (Monday 16 March, Channel 4), The Aviator – but not a sniff of glory.
What a loser he was turning out to be. If he'd made a film even less distinguished than The Departed, he still would have won in 2007. The goodwill was backed up like a blocked pipe.
This is not to suggest that the decision was corrupt, simply an understandable and perhaps even subconscious gesture of collective guilt. There is a precedent. Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for best director five times to no avail and had to make do with the honorary Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award. Howard Hawks, similarly overlooked for Sergeant York in 1942 and never nominated again, was given an honorary Oscar in 1975, aged 79, and retired.
Steven Spielberg had already accepted the consolatory Thalberg award before Schindler's List ended his 20-year wait in 1994. Stanley Kubrick won an Oscar for the special effects on 2001: a Space Odyssey, but never for his day job as a director.
Actors often have to wait, too. Paul Newman for The Color of Money, Henry Fonda for On Golden Pond. Some argue that Kate Winslet got the right Oscar for the wrong film (The Reader) this year, having put in better work elsewhere. The overriding theme – which will have been cold comfort for Marty for 34 years – is that the work of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is anything but a science.
The Oscars Scorsese should have won:
Mean Streets (1973)
No nomination
Winner: George Roy Hill, The Sting
Taxi Driver (1976)
No nomination
Winner: John G Avildsen, Rocky
Raging Bull (1980)
Winner: Robert Redford,
Ordinary People
The King of Comedy (1983)
No nomination
Winner: James L Brooks,
Terms of Endearment
GoodFellas (1990)
Winner: Kevin Costner,
Dances with Wolves
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