Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective

Since his emergence in the early seventies, Martin Scorsese has become one of the most respected names in cinema. Classics such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas are regularly cited as being among the finest films ever made. Born in New York City in 1942 to Sicilian-American parents, Scorsese spent much of his childhood absorbing the sights and sounds of Little Italy from the balcony of his family's tenement apartment - music blaring, drunks brawling and neighbourhood kids playing stickball. A lifelong asthma sufferer, he took no part in his friends' games and instead fell in love with cinema at an early age, crafting intricate storyboards for as-yet-unmade Westerns and Roman epics. This long apprenticeship paid off in 1962 when Scorsese was accepted onto a film course at New York University and immediately attracted attention with a series of quirky and technically accomplished student shorts. Having made his breakthrough with the gritty Mean Streets (1973), Scorsese outgrew