4-Star Theater To Host Martin Scorsese Non-Gangster Film Retrospective

Director Martin Scorsese has helmed such gangster films as “Goodfellas,” “The Departed,” and “The Irishman.”  But just because he’s done films about organized crime does not mean he deserves to be known only as a director of gangster films.  If the upcoming adaptation of “Killers Of The Flower Moon” does not make that point clear, perhaps the 4-Star Theater’s upcoming “Scorsese: More Than A Gangster” film series may do the job.  Running from September 2 – 24, 2023, this series of double bills will remind viewers of the surprising genres Scorsese has worked in throughout his career.  These genres include rock documentary, literary romance, and even a children’s film.

Kicking the film series off on September 2 & 3, 2023 are two 1970s films that would leave large but different marks on American pop culture.  One film would earn its lead actress an Oscar and inspire a popular TV series.  The other would become an inductee into the National Film Registry and be an influence on both an attempted presidential assassination and a notorious Todd Phillips-directed film. 

In “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” New Mexico-based suburban housewife Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn) suddenly finds herself near penniless after her trucker husband dies.  Her plan to earn money by taking her son with her to Monterey, California and resuming her former professional singing career doesn’t quite work out as expected.  (One of the film’s most memorable lines is “Well, look at my face – I don’t sing with my ass.”)  Necessity forces Alice to take a job as a waitress at a diner in Tucson, Arizona, which eventually allows her to stabilize her life.  But her growing attraction to diner regular David (Kris Kristofferson) soon clashes with her desire to still pursue her singing dream.  The popularity of Scorsese’s film would inspire the TV series “Alice” with Linda Lavin in the Burstyn role.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Robert De Niro is Travis Bickle, the titular “Taxi Driver.”  He’s a former Marine turned cabbie who, thanks to insomnia, routinely takes 12-hour shifts where he drives anyone anywhere in 1970s New York City.  This means he’s regularly exposed to the worst humanity has to offer, from cum left over after a customer’s backseat quickie to the musings of a husband who wants to murder his wife.  Bickle’s essentially a lonely faceless man existing on the outskirts of society with zero clues on how to connect to other human beings.  His failed efforts at connection will eventually lead him to commit a horrifying act of violence.  This film has been inducted into the National Film Registry.     

The September 9 and 10, 2023 double bills can be described as “portraits of strugglers: New York City edition.”  Tying both nights together is a film featuring Scorsese’s take on the boxing film.  Other films shown this weekend include a film that launched a Sinatra classic and a biographical portrait of Scorsese’s parents.

“Raging Bull” recounts in film noir style the anti-heroic life of real-life middleweight boxing champion Jake La Motta  (Robert De Niro).  On one hand, La Motta wants to win the championship title on his terms without bowing to the mob.  On the other hand, La Motta’s volcanic jealousy regarding his pretty wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) continually threatens to destroy his marriage.  La Motta’s hunger for winning the middleweight championship may mean taking dives both physical and moral.  

“New York, New York (September 9)” sees Scorsese inspired by classic Hollywood musicals, particularly “A Star Is Born.”  Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro) is a brashly aggressive saxophone player.  Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli) is an aspiring USO singer.  The two musicians meet on V-J Day, fall in love and try to build their careers.  But Jimmy’s aggressiveness towards his co-workers and even Francine threatens to sink their relationship and their careers.   Viewers will recognize Frank Sinatra’s famed rendition of the film’s title song.  However, Minnelli sang it first, as Kander and Ebb (“Cabaret”) wrote the song specifically for this film.  

In “Italianamerican (September 10),” the director interviews his mother Catherine and his father Charles in their Elizabeth Street apartment in New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood.  The conversation touches on such subjects as their upbringing, post-World War II life in Italy, and being poor Sicilian immigrants struggling to succeed in America.  As an added bonus, the viewer will learn Catherine Scorsese’s meatball recipe.

Steven Prince, the subject of “American Boy: A Profile Of Steven Prince (also September 10),” may be best known to moviegoers as the “Taxi Driver” seller of guns (among other things) Easy Andy.  But he is also Scorsese’s friend, confidante, and a raconteur in his own right.  This film captures an evening where Prince tells stories about his life.  Two of Prince’s stories wound up getting used in the films “Pulp Fiction” and “Waking Life.”  

The King Of Comedy

Comedy may be the theme of the double bill on September 14 & 16, 2023.  But in Scorsese’s hands, the results are far different than the genre’s usual pleasant amusements.

“The King Of Comedy” may have been a box-office bomb at the time of release.  But Scorsese wound up getting the last figurative laugh decades later thanks to the film’s unnervingly accurate skewering of celebrity obsession.  Robert De Niro plays film anti-hero Rupert Pupkin, a loser with mental health issues.  Pupkin is also a wannabe stand-up comedian who figures an accidental encounter with famed comedian and talk show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) will translate into his big career break.  After Pupkin’s efforts to get on Langford’s show get continually rebuffed (despite his constant thinking that he and Langford are colleagues and friends), the celebrity in his own mind hatches a plan to finally get the big showbiz break he craves…by kidnapping Langford.

Incidentally, this writer will appear in person to introduce “The King Of Comedy” at its September 16, 2023 screening.    

Will watching “After Hours” fill you with the desire to move to New York City?  Judge for yourself.  When word processing specialist Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) meets Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette) for a date, the chemistry between them leads Paul to later visit Marcy in her downtown apartment.  But the untimely loss of a $20 bill foreshadows a long insane night where Paul encounters such craziness as a plaster of paris bagel, nighttime subway fare hikes, and a nutbag of a Mister Softee truck driver.    

For the September 17, 2023 double bill, see Scorsese go literary with adaptations of two notable novels.

“The Age Of Innocence,” an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel, takes viewers to  1870s New York City and high society’s Belle Epoque world.  Handsome and wealthy attorney Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is planning to marry the delicate May (Winona Ryder).  In the meantime, he agrees to help May’s cousin Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), who’s fled Europe and a disastrous marriage to a cruel Polish count.  But Countess Ellen’s social protectors want Archer to dissuade the fugitive countess from suing for divorce lest the scandal embarrass them.  That task becomes more difficult when the lawyer falls in love with the countess.   

Art that pisses off Christian conservatives is art that is worth checking out.  “The Last Temptation Of Christ” adapts Nikos Kazantzakis’ controversial novel of the same name.  The film may travel the well-worn territory of recounting the life of Jesus Christ (Willem Dafoe) and his relationship to Judas (Harvey Keitel).  However, Dafoe’s Jesus isn’t the perfect sin-free being revered by Christian fundamentalists.  Instead, he’s a flawed mortal sinner warring with his heaven-sent duties.  His ability to perform miracles don’t really impress him, and Judas here is a good man who’s just following orders.  Imagine Christian fundamentalists’ heads exploding at a sequence where Jesus fantasizes about having sex with Mary Magdalene.

Hugo

The double bill on September 21 and 22, 2023 finds Scorsese in thriller mode.   

“Shutter Island” adapts Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name.  The titular island is the remote home of the Ashecliffe Hospital For The Criminally Insane.  In 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) have come to the hospital to investigate the disappearance of murderess Rachel Solando (Patricia Clarkson), who somehow escaped from her cell.  But Teddy’s inquiries soon get complicated by disturbing dreams, the hospital’s dodgy rehabilitation methods, and a massive storm.  Can the answer to a cryptic riddle in Rachel’s cell provide the key to the mystery?

“Cape Fear,” on the other hand, is both an adaptation of a John D. MacDonald suspense novel (“The Executioners”) and a remake of the 1962 version starring Robert Mitchum as the story’s villain.  Years ago, attorney Sam Bowden’s (Nick Nolte) burial of exculpatory evidence led to sex offender Max Cady’s (Robert DeNiro) spending 14 years in prison.  Now Cady’s out, and he wants payback.  Aided by a family inheritance, the ex-convict sets out to slowly stalk and destroy Bowden and his family.  To stop Cady and protect his family, just how far outside the law will Bowden go?

Film history and preservation gets celebrated on September 23, 2023’s double bill.  In a way, it’s a nod to the director’s wonderful World Cinema Project, which has devoted itself to preserving significant films from around the world.

In “Hugo,” Scorsese adapts Brian Selznick’s children’s novel The Invention Of Hugo Cabret.  Orphaned Hugo Cabret is a self-taught 12-year-old mechanic in 1931 Paris.  He wants to realize his late father’s (Jude Law) dream of making an automaton found in a museum work again.  Until then, the boy spends his days maintaining the clocks in the Gare Montparnasse railway station…and hiding in the station’s walls to escape the clutches of the crabby Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen).  Hugo’s attempt to steal parts from a toy store to repair the automaton brings him into the orbit of surly store owner Georges (Sir Ben Kingsley) and his goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz).   With Isabelle’s help, the boy will learn the automaton’s secret and Georges’ ties to early cinema.  (It doesn’t appear the version being screened by the 4-Star is the 3-D version of “Hugo.”)  

Readers who know the 4-Star Theater will precede its “Hugo” screening with some selected Georges Melies short films may grumble about having the Scorsese film’s surprise be spoiled.  Another viewer complaint may concern the “primitiveness” of Melies’ special effects.  However, Melies’ work should be measured against the reality of trying to make cinematic visual effects in a time “Star Trek”’s Spock would call one of “bearskins and stone knives.”

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story

Scorsese has directed rock concert films before (e.g. “The Last Waltz”).  But the film series’ conclusion on September 24, 2023 delivers a very unconventional entry in the genre.   

“Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story”  is partly a chronicle of the first leg of Dylan’s notorious 1970s concert tour.  Rolling Thunder deliberately stuck Dylan’s huge troupe of musicians, poets, and other mischief makers in small venues.  Was the revue an artistic mirror reflecting the post-Watergate soul of America?  Was it intended to create raw material for Dylan’s experimental epic “Renaldo and Clara?”  Or were these concerts something else entirely?  Scorsese complicates matters by repeatedly blurring fact and fiction through such devices as interviewing people who were never on the tour and are actually composites of existing people.  There’s no second film on this double bill, just a live musical performance by an unknown artist(s) occurring before the film’s screening.

Whether catching an old favorite Scorsese flick on the 4-Star screen or playing catch up with a previously unseen Scorsese movie, this film series offers viewers chances to see the bigger picture of Scorsese’s directorial abilities.

(This writer will appear in person to introduce “The King Of Comedy” at its September 16, 2023 screening.)

(For further information about the films in the series and to order advance tickets, go here.)