Media Studies A2 Have Scorsese's gangster films become too violent - Essay Example

He has been producing films since the 1970's - his most recent one is The Departed (2006). His films are notorious for reflecting New York's life, which imply organized crime and violence. Violence has always been a part of the gangster film genre. Already films like Scar face from 1932 highly contained violence in the plot as well as The Maltese Falcon from 1941. This key issue has maintained over the last decades and I would like to analyze whether the genre has become too violent, regarding to Martin Scorsese film repertoire.

I further try to examine if this is a natural progression, because of what is happening to the modern society and as a result to the Films or if this is attributable to Martin Scorsese only. I am going to start with analyzing three films of Scorsese spread over nearly 30 years, to pinpoint this trend. I am therefore going to analyze a couple of main scenes from the films The Departed (00's), Goodfellas (90's) and Mean Streets (70's), which reflect three decades of his work. All three films are considered to be great gangster films.

The first scene to be analyzed is from Mean Streets from 1973. The whole film contains a couple of fighting scenes but only two in which you can actually see blood. Also, there are two shoot-outs and in total two people die. The USK for Mean Streets is 18. The iconography in the mean streets is overtly religious. Perhaps the only more religious movie Martin Scorsese has made is the last temptation of Christ. The search of Charlie for redemption perhaps shows a simpler time when good was good and bad was bad.

Charlie had no doubt where he stood in this equation. The scene I am analyzing is the end of the film which suggests that it can be seen as the main scene of the film. One of the main character gets killed in this part of the film and the fact that this is likely to be the main scene of the whole film gives the impression that these 53 seconds of violence are the climax of the film and hence the climax of violence as well. There was certain clarity in this film on the morality which was again perhaps a reflection of the timesIn goodfellas, the ante on the violence is definitely raised.

There is the Murder of the Innocent Spider and the brutal murder of Billy Batts. And the murder of Billy Batts is Jarring. First Billy Batts is beaten up, thrown in the trunk of the car, then stabbed later and then buried. And while it is graphically shocking it is done extremely nonchalantly as if it is commonplace. None of the actors were widely known yet for their acting of gangster roles in 1973 so there were no suggestions that the film may contain high violence as Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel or David Proval (main actors) were not associated with brutality in films at that time.

It starts off with three main characters driving in a car. You can hear the sound of squealing tyres and another car appears in the dark. A man is holding a gun out of the window. One of the passengers gets shot and you can see the blood coming out of the victim. However the lighting is very low and you can barely see any details. The car then crashes. The lighting plays a major role in this scene as it "censors" the whole villainy. The narrative of the film is mainly four men acting as loan sharks.

The murders have a storical background which fit into the