Week Five Q&A

Auteur Cinema, the Film Generation, Godfather II

Martin Scorsese as a fish. Yay.

Coppola's Zoetrope Studios was similar to Roger Corman's AIP only in that Zoetrope was modelled after Corman's example. In creative output, in budget and in ultimate critical success the two studios had little in common. American International Pictures made low budget youth oriented films, as well as exploitation films. Zoetrope studios was also charged (by Warner Bros. ) to make films catering to the youth market, but instead Coppola fostered protege relationships with others of the film school generation within the studio, producing and co-scripting their films. Ultimately Zoetrope became known for expensive critical hits, such as The Godfather, American Graffiti, and Apocalypse Now.

Martin Scorsese, when contrasted with others of his generation, such as George Lucas and Steven Spielburg, certainly seems to get the short end of the stick. Scorsese flip-flopped between narrative commercial films and the world of documentaries while Lucas and Spielburg were building media empires. Despite this, Scorsese has consistently been the author behind his own films; Lucas mostly abandoned directing after the first Star Wars film, and Spielburg has struggled throughout his career to gain critical, rather than commercial praise. Scorsese also has largely been free from compromising 'his art for commercial liability.' Even his commercial studio films share common elements; the immigrant experience, violence, religious guilt. Cook suggests that in the early eighties Scorsese 'was not longer a player in the New Hollywood' because his films  opened against the gigantic blockbusters of his peers; New York, New York opened against Star Wars ( a pattern to be repeated in 1993 with  The Age of Innocence and Jurassic Park); and because the 'sadomasochistic violence' in some of his films alienated audience.