Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese was born in the Flushing neighborhood of New York City's Queens borough on November 17, 1942. He grew up in the Little Italy neighborhood of the city's Manhattan borough. Both of his parents, Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, worked in the Garment District. Charles was a clothes presser and actor, while Catherine was a seamstress and an actress. All four of Scorsese's grandparents were Italian immigrants from Sicily, hailing from Polizzi Generosa on his father's side and Ciminna on his mother's side. The original surname of the family was Scozzese, meaning "Scot" or "Scottish" in Italian, and was later changed to Scorsese because of a transcription error. Scorsese was raised in a predominantly Catholic environment. As a boy, he had asthma and could not play sports or take part in any activities with other children, so his parents and his older brother would often take him to movie theaters; it was at this stage in his life that he developed a passion for cinema. As a teenager in the Bronx, he frequently rented Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) from a store that had one copy of the reel. He was one of only two people who regularly rented it; the other, George A. Romero, would also become a film director. Scorsese has named Sabu and Victor Mature as his favorite actors during his youth. He has also spoken of the influence of the 1947–48 Powell and Pressburger films Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, whose innovative techniques later impacted his filmmaking. In his documentary titled A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, Scorsese said that he was enamored of historical epics in his adolescence, and at least two films of the genre, Land of the Pharaohs and El Cid, appear to have had a deep and lasting impact on his cinematic psyche. Scorsese also developed an admiration for neorealist cinema at this time. He recounted its influence in a documentary on Italian neorealism, and commented on how Bicycle Thieves, Rome, Open City and especially Paisà inspired him and influenced his view or portrayal of his Sicilian roots. In his documentary, Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy), Scorsese noted that the Sicilian episode of Roberto Rossellini's Paisà, which he first saw on television with his relatives who were themselves Sicilian immigrants, had a significant impact on his life. He acknowledges owing a great debt to the French New Wave and has stated that "the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since, whether they saw the films or not." He has also cited the works of Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Ishirō Honda, and Eiji Tsuburaya as major influences on his career. Although there was no habit of reading at home, towards the end of the 1950s, Scorsese began to approach literature, being marked in particular by The Heart of the Matter (1948) by Graham Greene, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce and Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Scorsese attended the all-boys Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, graduating in 1960. He had initially desired to become a priest, attending a preparatory seminary but failed after the first year. This gave way to cinema and consequently Scorsese enrolled in NYU's Washington Square College (now known as the College of Arts and Science), where he earned a B.A. in English in 1964. He went on to earn his MA from New York University's School of Education (now the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development) in 1968, a year after the school was founded.