Movies recommended by Martin Scorsese
11 movies

Martin Scorsese's 11 Favorite Horror Films

Martin Scorsese revealed his favorite horror movies of all time during an interview. This list features mostly films from the 20th century and some movies are modern classics. Enjoy!
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Martin Scorsese revealed his favorite horror movies of all time during an interview. This list features mostly films from the 20th century and some movies are modern classics. Enjoy!
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Parasite

All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
“This morning I got a letter from Martin Scorsese,” Bong told journalists. “I can’t tell you what the letter said because it’s something personal. But towards the end he wrote, ‘You’ve done well. Now rest. But don’t rest for too long.’ He continued by saying how he and other directors were waiting for my next movie.”
Movies recommended by Martin Scorsese
6 movies

"Irishman" cinematic inspirations

Movies that influenced Scorsese to film "The Irishman."
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Movies that influenced Scorsese to film "The Irishman."
Movies from Martin Scorsese

The Young and the Damned

A group of juvenile delinquents lives a criminal, violent life in the festering slums of Mexico City, among them the young Pedro, whose morality is gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
“I’ve been obsessed with slow-motion since I first saw films. I guess for me, the slow-motion dreams in Los Olvidados are something that stayed with me for a long time,” Scorsese said.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

The Flowers of St. Francis

In a series of simple and joyous vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of the People’s Saint: humility, compassion, faith, and sacrifice. Gorgeously photographed to evoke the medieval paintings of Saint Francis’s time, and cast with monks from the Nocera Inferiore Monastery, The Flowers of St. Francis is a timeless and moving portrait of the search for spiritual enlightenment.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
This Rossellini movie and Europa ’51 are two of the best films about the part of being human that yearns for something beyond the material. Rossellini used real monks for this movie. It’s very simple and beautiful.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Faces

Middle-aged suburban husband Richard abruptly tells his wife, Maria, that he wants a divorce. As Richard takes up with a younger woman, Maria enjoys a night on the town with her friends and meets a younger man. As the couple and those around them confront a seemingly futile search for what they've lost -- love, excitement, passion -- this classic American independent film explores themes of aging and alienation.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
[Director John] Cassavetes went to Hollywood to shoot films like A Child is Waiting and Too Late Blues, and after Too Late Blues he became disenchanted. Those of us in the New York scene, we kept asking, ‘What’s Cassavetes doing? What’s he up to?’ And he was shooting this film in his house in L.A. with his wife Gena Rowlands and his friends. And when Faces showed at the New York Film Festival, it absolutely trumped everything that was shown at the time. Cassavetes is the person who ultimately exemplifies independence in film.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Europe '51

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is tacked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
After making The Flowers of St. Francis, Rossellini asked, what would a modern-day saint be like? I think they based it on Simone Weil, and Ingrid Bergman played the part. It really takes everything we’re dealing with today, whether it’s revolutions in other countries or people trying to change their lifestyles, and it’s all there in that film. The character tries everything, because she has a tragedy in her family that really changes her, so she tries politics and even working in a factory, and in the end it has a very moving resolution.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Dial M for Murder

An ex-tennis pro carries out a plot to have his wife murdered after discovering she is having an affair, and assumes she will soon leave him for the other man anyway. When things go wrong, he improvises a new plan—to frame her for murder instead.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
When discussing the creation of Hugo, Scorsese referred to this Hitchcock film as an example of other directors who have tangled with 3-D over the years. In its original release most theaters only showed it in 2-D; now the 3-D version pops up in theaters from time to time.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Citizen Kane

Newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Orson Welles was a force of nature, who just came in and wiped the slate clean. And Citizen Kane is the greatest risk-taking of all time in film. I don’t think anything had even seen anything quite like it. The photography was also unlike anything we’d seen. The odd coldness of the filmmaker towards the character reflects his own egomania and power, and yet a powerful empathy for all of them–it’s very interesting. It still holds up, and it’s still shocking. It takes storytelling and throws it up in the air.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Caught

It was Leonora Eames' childhood dream come true. She had married Smith Ohlrig, a man worth millions. But her innocent dream became a nightmare once she realizes the truth about her husband - he is power mad and insane! Since he will not grant her a divorce, she leaves her life of luxury on Long Island and goes to work as a receptionist in an impoverished doctor's office in NYC's lower east side. After Smith deceives her into a temporary reconciliation, Leonora becomes pregnant. By the time she realizes she is expecting, she and one of the doctors, Larry Quinada (James Mason), have fallen in love. But she is again lured backed to her wealthy husband to give her child financial security. Her sadistic husband is hell-bent on keeping her and her child prisoner. What will happen to Leonora?
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
There are certain styles I had trouble with at first, like some of Max Ophuls’ films. It took me till I was into my thirties to get The Earrings of Madame de…, for example. But I didn’t have trouble with this one, which I saw in a theater and which is kind of based on Howard Hughes [protagonist of The Aviator].
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Cat People

After years of separation, Irina and her minister brother, Paul, reunite in New Orleans in this erotic tale of the supernatural. When zoologists capture a wild panther, Irina is drawn to the cat -- and the zoo curator is drawn to her. Soon, Irina's brother will have to reveal the family secret: that when sexually aroused, they turn into predatory jungle cats.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Simone Simon plays a woman who fears that she might turn into a panther and kill. It sounds corny, but the psychological thrills that directors Jacques Tourneur got out of his measly $150,000 budget make this a fascinating movie, with amazing lighting.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Cape Fear

Sam Bowden witnesses a rape committed by Max Cady and testifies against him. When released after 8 years in prison, Cady begins stalking Bowden and his family but is always clever enough not to violate the law.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
As he once explained to Steven Spielberg over dinner in Tribeca, one of Scorsese’s fears about directing a remake of this film was that, “The original was so good. I mean, you’ve got Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, it’s terrific!”
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Born on the Fourth of July

The biography of Ron Kovic. Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, he becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country he fought for.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Produced by Universal Pictures under Tom Pollock and Casey Silver, this Tom Cruise movie (directed by Oliver Stone) was an example of how that studio “wanted to make special pictures,” says Scorsese.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

The Band Wagon

A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
It’s my favorite of the Vincente Minnelli musicals. I love the storyline that combines Faust and a musical comedy, and the disaster that results. Tony Hunter, the lead character played by Fred Astaire, is a former vaudeville dancer whose time has passed, and who’s trying to make it on Broadway, which is a very different medium of course. By the time the movie was made, the popularity of the Astaire/Rogers films had waned, raising the question of what are you going to do with Fred Astaire in Technicolor? So, really, Tony Hunter is Fred Astaire–his whole reputation is on the line, and so was Fred Astaire’s.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

The Bad and the Beautiful

Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Vincente Minnelli directed this film about a cynical Hollywood mogul trying to make a comeback. It stars Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, and Dick Powell.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Arsenic and Old Lace

Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Scorsese is a big fan of many Frank Capra movies, and this Cary Grant vehicle is one of several that he’s enjoyed with his family at his office screening room.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Apocalypse Now

At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
This Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece is from a period when directors like Brian DePalma, John Milius, Paul Schrader, Scorsese and others had great freedom–freedom that they then lost.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

An American in Paris

Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
This Vincente Minnelli film, with Gene Kelly, picked up the idea of stopping within a film for a dance from The Red Shoes.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

America America

A young Anatolian Greek, entrusted with his family's fortune, loses it en route to Istanbul and dreams of going to America
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
Drawn directly from director Elia Kazan’s family history, this film offers a passionate, intense view of the challenges faced by Greek immigrants at the end of the 19th century.
Movies from Martin Scorsese

All That Heaven Allows

Two different social classes collide when Cary Scott, a wealthy upper-class widow, falls in love with her much younger and down-to-earth gardener, prompting disapproval and criticism from her children and country club friends.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
In this Douglas Sirk melodrama, Rock Hudson plays a gardener who falls in love with a society widow played by Jane Wyman. Scandale!
Movies from Martin Scorsese

Ace in the Hole

A frustrated former big-city journalist now stuck working for an Albuquerque newspaper exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career, but the situation quickly escalates into an out-of-control media circus.
Martin Scorsese
Director, Screenwriter
This Billy Wilder film was so tough and brutal in its cynicism that it died a sudden death at the box office, and they re-released it under the title Big Carnival, which didn’t help. Chuck Tatum is a reporter who’s very modern–he’ll do anything to get the story, to make up the story! He risks not only his reputation, but also the life of this guy who’s trapped in the mine.