Martin Scorsese Use of Violence in Films - Movie Review Example

Each film listed here, and other films directed and produced by Scorsese, are extremely violent in content, which gives rise to the questions involving the use of violence in his films. First, whether or not Scorsese brings gratuitous violence to film, or is the violence depicted in Scorsese films necessary to accomplish the filmmaker’s goal of a total-viewer film watching experience by his use of violence in a film to convey the sense of realism to the viewer? Is Scorcese’s use of violence to create for the viewer a complete and realistic film watching experience necessary?

Can the viewer gain a sense of the violence associated with the themes without seeing the often gruesome details of the event? These are ideas and questions that this paper explores, and in so doing should provide insights into the film, filmmaking, and the director’s own ideas and comments.These are relevant questions that, once answered, help provide a context for discussing the modern filmmaker’s use of violence and what impact that film violence may or may not have on viewers, and how viewers react to it.

This research should serve to contribute to discussions on an academic level and on a social level by focusing on a single director’s vast body of work. For this reason, Martin Scorsese was selected individually, in order to narrow down the perspective to coherently discuss the many facets of filmmaking violence, and the directorial decision to include that violence. Focusing on a single director – and one whose body of work has served to be both controversial and brilliant – it becomes possible to approach the subject on a broader scale using this research as the starting point or as a contributory work to other related research subjects from a filmmaking or social or academic perspective.

Another reason that Martin Scorsese was selected as the focus of this research on film and violence is that the director has only recently been awarded Hollywood’s most prestigious award, the Oscar, for his recent work in The Departed.