March 25, 2026
SIFF, Festa Italiana, and Greg Olson Productions Present
MARTIN SCORSESE
GoodFellas (1990) The legendary British director Michael Powell (1905-1990) was Scorsese’s hero, as an artist and a man. The cinematic magician who harmonized fantasy and reality (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, The Tales of Hoffmann) and outraged the UK with his harrowing Peeping Tom — which lost him his career — was embraced by Scorsese. Scorsese recognized Peeping Tom as a masterpiece, led the international rediscovery of Powell’s genius, and welcomed the elderly Powell to his extended New York creative family, where he married Scorsese’s editor-collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker. Scorsese believed in Powell’s visionary powers. Raging Bull was supposed to be in color. Powell said it should be in black and white, so Scorsese gloriously made it that way. Scorsese was intrigued by Nicholas Pileggi’s Mafia book, but Marlon Brando told him, “Don’t do another gangster picture. You’ve done Mean Streets, you did the gangsters in Raging Bull. You don’t have to do that.” Michael Powell read the GoodFellas script and Scorsese recalls, “Michael said, ‘This is wonderful. You must do it. It’s funny and no one’s ever seen this way of life before. You must do it.’ So I did it.” Martin Scorsese: The movie is kind of an attack on the audience. I wanted people to get infuriated by it I wanted to seduce everybody into the movie and into the style. And then just take them apart with it. I wanted to make a kind of angry gesture. Anger gets me working. I have to get sometimes upset with myself or a situation before I can really start working, think clearly. I get emotionally involved with everything, and over the years it became funny — over the top — like grand opera. Except when it’s not. At age twelve a priest told me I was so serious, carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, but that’s my way. GoodFellas is an indictment, Things are messed up, organized crime, why does it work? What is in our society that it works so well and operates on such a grand scale? Major gangsters aren’t usually convicted. I have no idea why. They are stunningly arrogant. Just straight ahead. Want. Take. Simple. There are moments, especially when you work with very gifted actors like I’ve been blessed to work with, when certain scenes come together in the cutting. The music hits, and the camera moves perfectly, and the actors are in there, its — well, it happens in the cutting. That moment, that’s what makes it worth it. I envisioned the film as it it was one long trailer, where you just propel the action and you get an exhilaration, a rush of the lifestyle. The trick was to ignore the danger, make it a rollicking road movie, everyone having a great time. At one point Henry Hill says, “You only have it for maybe ten years.” These people are like gods, and gods fall. Thanks to Los Angeles film professor and author John Trafton for his film essay. Our film essayist and collaborator Tova Gannana’s poem Reservoir is published in next week’s The New Yorker March 23 Spring Issue. Greg Olson Productions is sponsored by Inn at the Market.
MAESTRO OF CINEMA
Directed by: Martin Scorsese Screenplay by: Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese from Pileggi’s book Cinematography by: Michael Balhaus Music curated by: Martin Scorsese
THE PLAYERS: Robert De Niro as James “Jimmy” Conway Ray Liotta as Henry Hill Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito Catherine Scorsese as Tommy’s Mom Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill Paul Servino as Paul Cicero Frank Sivero as Frankie Carbone Tony Darrow as Sunny Bunz Mike Starr as Frenchy Frank Vincent as Billy Bats Chuck Low Morris Kessler