The Journal Meets… Hugo director Martin Scorsese
The master filmmaker talks about cinema old and new as he releases his new 3D movie Hugo.
In more than 40 years as a filmmaker, Martin Scorsese has become a legendary figure in American cinema.
Raging Bull, The Aviator, The Departed, Taxi Driver, the list of classics goes on, and he shows no sign of stopping. His new film, Hugo, is a dream-like tale set in a Paris train station, where a young orphan boy named Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) lives within the walls of the station, making sure the clocks run and trying to mend a broken clockwork robot that will unlock the secrets to his past, and that of a heart-broken old man (Sir Ben Kingsley).
The film is a love letter to cinema referencing the first silent movies, and film obsessive Scorsese spent most of his childhood captivated by the silver screen. “Movies, for me, were for a long period of time a refuge,” he revealed.
“Because of asthma - it was 1944 or '45 - I was not allowed to do any sports or anything like that, or go near anything green, or go near animals, so I was taken to the movie theatre very often. I saw many films in the 40s, and became enamoured of the western genre in particular because everything I couldn’t do was up on the screen.”
It may surprise those familiar with the director’s more famous work that he has made a family movie, but the 69-year-old said that the film’s theme of cinema history is important to pass on to the younger generation. “I do think it’s important to make younger people aware of what came before in every aspect of every art form, it’s exciting to do that with children and the younger generation,” he said. “It can happen very often if you’re working with young people and working with students, I do get a kind of regeneration.”
It may also surprise die hard Scorsese followers that he is shooting his new film in the oft-maligned 3D format, and plans to do so in the future. “It is something I’d like to take into my future films. I just happen to be a great admirer of it. That thrill of the imagination and somehow seeing those first 3D, stereoscopic images has that, and I’m making my last connection to childhood imagination, it’s that feeling, and so I’ve been fascinated with 3D all my life.”
Does he believe 3D is here to stay? “I don’t see any reason, if it’s used appropriately for the story, why not?”
Hugo is released in the UK on Friday, December 2.
