By Gaia Giordani. Cover image: Iulia Ecaterina for I’M Firenze Digest.

Martin Scorsese, an iconic figure in the world of cinema, is often celebrated as a master painter of New York’s vibrant culture. Renowned for his Caravaggio-style compositions in films like Goodfellas, he excels in intertwining narratives with light and dramatic chiaroscuro techniques. This four-time Oscar winner recently shared a fascinating insight: the inspiration for his unforgettable cinematic moments originates not from his visual observations but from his auditory experiences. 

During a special Masterclass held by Museo Nazionale del Cinema on October 8, he delighted the audience at the cinema Massimo in Turin with many anecdotes about his long career as a director that are related to music.

Scorsese explained how music can be a great source of inspiration for those who work with visual representation, art, storytelling, and other media such as cinema.

“Music has changed the rhythm of my life,” explained the Maestro, as he mentioned that most of his visual intuitions have been influenced by sounds. “For me, the creative impulses, since I was 4 or 5 years old, have been represented by music.” 

He talked about how, as a child in the mid-40s, he would listen to his father’s jazz records over and over. “Listening to them, I created in my mind an abstract image inspired by the rhythm and movement of that music. It happened to me every time I listened to any kind of music, like Beethoven, the music from TV shows, or an aria from opera, especially the music that I heard in movies.”

Creating Vivid Narratives: Music as a Visual Tool

“I lived on the Lower East Side, and out of the open windows of buildings, he would play rock, swing, rock ‘n’ roll. Elvis, Little Richards… from the third floor, I looked down to the street where I lived, where there was a lot of violence, and that, for me, was a soundtrack of the reality in which I lived. On the Bowery where I lived, there were many alcoholics who threw their bottles: I associated the music coming out of the windows to the scene I saw in the street as if it were the soundtrack of a film.”

A Journey Through Sound: Scorsese’s Musical Influences

Scorsese explained that the soundtrack for Mean Streets is made up of his favourite songs by authors he loves so much. “While listening to Jimi Hendrix, I saw in my mind the movements of the machine, the scenes build up, and the characters come to life. I’m relying on music to describe the characters in my films.” 

The Soundtrack of Real Life: A New York Story

In Taxi Driver, he felt that the protagonist Travis (played by a young Robert DeNiro) did not seem like a person who listened to music. Scorsese wanted to depict a very lonely, isolated character. With the soundtrack, composed by Bernard Herrmann, he then tried to describe this loneliness.

Iconic films and their musical foundations

For The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Scorsese chose Peter Gabriel to create the soundtrack. Gabriel involved international artists from different genres and styles, all connected by a rock theme. “I thought it would be interesting to represent the dualism between the body and the soul of the protagonist in the film through the music. I thought, “Let’s rock out!” And when you least expect it, suddenly the drums and the guitar come in… We combined the sacred and the profane – that was the idea.”

Scorsese chose The Passion of Matthew by Bach as the soundtrack for Casino (1995). “This film is about the tragedy of sinners. But they also have souls, and this violence is accompanied by the glory of Bach that resonates for them,” Scorsese explained. “Why not?”, asks the teacher, looking at an undefined point in the back of the room, beyond the cameras and lights pointed at him.
Once again, Scorsese amazes us by putting together seemingly incompatible elements from which true creativity emerges.

Disclaimer: quotes by Scorsese in this article have been edited and paragraphed for clarity from the Masterclass he gave on October 8 at Cinema Massimo in Turin.