A Companion to Martin Scorsese

A Companion to Martin Scorsese is a comprehensive collection of original essays assessing the career of one of America’s most prominent contemporary filmmakers. The first reference of its kind, this book contains contributions from influential scholars in North America and Europe. The essays use a variety of analytic approaches to study all aspects of Scorsese’s work, from his earliest films to his place within the history of American and world cinema. They consider his work in relation to auteur theory, the genres in which he has worked, his use of popular music, and his recent involvement with film preservation. Several of the essays offer fresh interpretations of some of Scorsese’s most influential films, including Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York , and Hugo . Others take a broader approach and discuss the representation of violence, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender, race, and other themes across his work. With insights that will interest film scholars as well as movie enthusiasts, this is an important contribution to the scholarship of contemporary American cinema.

Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction: Artistic Solutions to Sociological Problems by Aaron Baker Part I The Pious Auteur 1. “How Scorsese Became Scorsese: A Historiography of New Hollywood’s Most Prestigious Auteur”  Marc Raymond 2. “Smuggling Iconoclasm: European Cinema and Scorsese’s Male Anti–Heroes” Giorgio Bertellini and Jaqueline Reich.  3.  “They Were More Than Movies to Me’: Italian Films, New York City Television, and the  Work of Martin Scorsese”  Laura Ruberto 4.   “The Imaginary Museum: Martin Scorsese’s Film History Documentaries” Robert P. Kolker 5. “Images of Religion, Ritual, and the Sacred in Martin Scorsese′s Cinema”   David Sterritt Part II Social Contexts and Conflicts 6. “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Italianamerican: Gender, Ethnicity and Imagination” Aaron Baker 7. “Mobsters and Bluebloods: Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence in the Perspective of his Italian American Films” Robert Casillo 8. “Off–White Masculinity in Martin Scorsese’s Gangster Films” Larissa M. Ennis 9. “Irish American Identity in the Films of Martin Scorsese” Matt Lohr 10. “Issues of Race and Ethnicity in Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues and Boardwalk Empire” Jon Cavallero Part III Form and the Filmmaking Process 11.  "We Cannot Burn Mick Jagger": Martin Scorsese & the Music Documentary Michael Brendan Baker 12.   “Martin Scorsese Rocks” Giuliana Muscio 13. “Music as Cultural Signifier of Italian/American Life in Who’s That Knocking at My Door and  Mean Streets” Anthony Cavaluzzi 14. “When Marty Met Bobby: Collaborative Authorship in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver” R. Colin Tait 15.  “No One Will Sleep”:  Scorsese’s Landscape of Mortality” Murray Pomerance 16.  “Border Lines: Boundaries and Transgression in the City Films of Martin Scorsese”  Brendan Kredell Part IV.  Major Films 17. Mean Streets as Cinema of Independence, Stefan Sereda 18. “Taxi Driver and Veteran Trauma” Michael D. High 19. “Filming the Fights:  Subjectivity and Sensation in Raging Bull (1980)” Leger Grindon 20. “The Last Temptation of Christ: Queering the Divine” Dan Cutrara 21. “The Cinematic Seduction of Not A ‘Good Fella’”  Bambi Haggins 22. “Hugo and the (Re–) invention of Martin Scorsese” Guerric DeBona Index

Aaron Baker is Associate Professor and Area Chair of Film and Media Studies within the English Department at Arizona State University. His research focuses on sports culture, film authorship, and the representation of race, ethnicity, and gender in American cinema. He is co–editor of Out of Bounds: Sports, Media and the Politics of Identity (1997), and the author of Contesting Identities: Sports in American Film (2003) and Steven Soderbergh (2011).