Martin Scorsese
American filmmaker (born 1942)
A director's score is the sum of their films' composite canon scores — methodology.
- Born
- November 17, 1942 · Queens
- Nationality
- United States, Italy
- Work
- film director, film actor, film producer, screenwriter
- Movement
- New Hollywood
The critic who got to direct
Most great filmmakers are artists who happen to know film history. Scorsese is a film historian who happens to direct — and that is the whole engine. No one else has managed to be simultaneously the most restless formal stylist in American movies, the most reliable commercial director of his generation, and the man who founded The Film Foundation in 1990 to keep everyone else's prints from rotting. The scholarship isn't a hobby beside the work; it is the work's method.
Little Italy to New York University
Born in Flushing, Queens on November 17, 1942 to Charles and Catherine Scorsese and raised in Manhattan's Little Italy, he was an asthmatic child kept out of sports and parked in movie theatres instead — an origin story almost too neat to be true. He entered a preparatory seminary, failed out after a year, and took his degrees at NYU instead: a bachelor's in English in 1964, a master's in 1968. There he found Haig P. Manoogian, the teacher he later called his "most precious gift" and to whom he dedicated Raging Bull (1980) "with love and resolution." Mean Streets (1973) announced the partnership with Robert De Niro; Pauline Kael called the film "a true original of our time, a triumph of personal filmmaking." Taxi Driver (1976) took the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Then the cocaine years after New York, New York (1977) nearly ended him — by the standard account it was De Niro, at his hospital bedside, who talked him into the boxing picture that saved his life. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) drew international protest and lost him the Oscar again; the statue only came for The Departed (2006), his sixth directing nomination, at an age when most auteurs are being embalmed by retrospectives. He kept going anyway: Silence (2016), The Irishman (2019), Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
What the numbers say
Our library ranks Scorsese #1 among all directors — 45.09 points across 28 films, the largest aggregate body of work in the database. That is a different shape of greatness from, say, Godard, who carries 39 films to Scorsese's 28 and still lands at #3 with 38.44: Scorsese's total is built on genuine peaks, not on breadth alone. Goodfellas (1990) sits at #6 overall (6.33, cited by 19 of our sources), Taxi Driver at #7 (6.25), Raging Bull at #13 (5.71) — and note that Raging Bull draws the most citations of any Scorsese film, 20, while scoring third. The critics' consensus favours it; the aggregate favours Goodfellas. My reading is that Raging Bull is the film canon-makers vote for and Goodfellas is the one everyone actually watches, and the composite score is honest enough to show the gap.
The rest of the curve is the real surprise. The Departed, his Oscar film, lands at #104; Casino (1995) at #1384; The Age of Innocence (1993) at #1303 — a chilly masterpiece that our sources have never quite forgiven for lacking guns. A director with three films in the top 15 and two dozen scattered far below is not being underrated; he is being sorted.
Where to start
Goodfellas if you want the velocity, Taxi Driver if you want the sickness, Raging Bull if you want to see what the medium can do to a face. Then The Age of Innocence, which is the same film about a different kind of violence.
Films in our library, ranked
Ranked by composite canon score across 20+ authoritative lists, awards and polls — our ordering, with every placement citing its evidence on the film's page.
- 1
1990 · United States · biography, crime, thriller
BAFTA Best Film winner 1991 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #28 · Empire 500 (2008) #6
6.3319 citations - 2
1976 · United States · film-noir, drama, crime
Palme d'Or winner 1976 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1976 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #12
6.2513 citations - 3
1980 · United States · biography, drama, action
AFI 100 (2007) #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22 · Siskel's annual top 10 1980 #1
5.7120 citations - 4
2006 · United States / Hong Kong, China · drama, thriller, crime
Oscar Best Picture winner 2006 · Film Comment year-end poll 2006 #1 · Sarris's annual top 10 2006 #1
3.417 citations - 5
2019 · United States · crime, drama, biography
Film Comment year-end poll 2019 #2 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2019 #3 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2019
2.336 citations - 6
1974 · United States · romance, drama, comedy
BAFTA Best Film winner 1976 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1975 #3 · Ebert's annual top 10 1975 #3
2.196 citations - 7
2004 · United States · biography, drama, thriller
BAFTA Best Film winner 2005 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2004 · Film Comment year-end poll 2004 #12
2.065 citations - 8
1982 · United States · drama, comedy, crime
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1983 #5 · Empire 500 (2008) #87 · Sarris's annual top 10 1983 #5
1.538 citations - 9
2011 · United States / United Kingdom · drama, adventure, mystery
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2012 #3 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2011 · Film Comment year-end poll 2011 #9
1.474 citations - 10
1985 · United States · comedy
Ebert's annual top 10 1985 #2 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1986 #9 · Kehr's annual top 10 1985 #4
1.427 citations - 11
1973 · United States · drama, crime, thriller
National Film Registry (inducted 1997) · Siskel's annual top 10 1974 #5 · Empire 500 (2008) #377
1.338 citations - 12
2023 · United States · thriller, drama, crime
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2023 #2 · Film Comment year-end poll 2023 #3 · Criterion Collection spine #1302
1.293 citations - 13
1988 · Canada / United States · drama, thriller
Siskel's annual top 10 1988 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1988 #8 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies
1.285 citations - 14
2002 · United States / Italy / Netherlands · crime, drama, mystery
Oscar Best Picture nominee 2002 · Film Comment year-end poll 2002 #10 · Sarris's annual top 10 2002 #3
1.164 citations - 15
2013 · United States · comedy, biography, crime
Oscar Best Picture nominee 2013 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2014 #9 · Film Comment year-end poll 2013 #37
1.054 citations - 16
1970 · United States · documentary, musical
National Film Registry (inducted 1996) · Ebert's annual top 10 1970 #5 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies
0.996 citations - 17
1993 · United States · romance, drama
Ebert's annual top 10 1993 #2 · Siskel's annual top 10 1993 #7 · Criterion Collection spine #913
0.935 citations - 18
1995 · United States / France · crime, drama, biography
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1996 #3 · Ebert's annual top 10 1995 #5 · Empire 500 (2008) #395
0.873 citations - 19
1978 · United States · documentary
National Film Registry (inducted 2019) · Empire 500 (2008) #344 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies
0.734 citations - 20
1999 · United States / Italy · documentary
Sarris's annual top 10 2001 #1 · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
0.612 citations - 21
1986 · United States · drama, action, thriller
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1987 #10 · NYT Best 1,000 Movies
0.462 citations - 22
2016 · United States / Mexico / Taiwan, China · drama
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2017 #6
0.361 citation - 23
1999 · United States · drama, horror, thriller
Ebert's annual top 10 1999 #5 · Sarris's annual top 10 1999 #8
0.352 citations - 24
1991 · United States · horror, crime, thriller
Sarris's annual top 10 1991 #10 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
0.262 citations - 250.241 citation
- 26
2005 · United Kingdom / United States · documentary
Film Comment year-end poll 2005 #50
0.181 citation - 27
1995 · United Kingdom / United States · documentary
Sarris's annual top 10 1996 #7
0.171 citation - 28
2019 · United States · documentary
Criterion Collection spine #1062
0.161 citation
Complete filmography
All 51 directorial credits recorded on Wikidata, in chronological order; films in our library link to their canon-score page.
- 1963What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
- 1964It's Not Just You
- 1967The Big Shave
- 1967Who's That Knocking at My Door
- 1970Street Scenes
- 1970Woodstock
- 1972Boxcar Bertha
- 1973Mean Streets
- 1974Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
- 1974Italianamerican
- 1976Taxi Driver
- 1977New York, New York
- 1978American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince
- 1978The Last Waltz
- 1980Raging Bull
- 1982The King of Comedy
- 1985After Hours
- 1986The Color of Money
- 1988The Last Temptation of Christ
- 1989New York Stories
- 1990Goodfellas
- 1990Made in Milan
- 1991Cape Fear
- 1992Scorsese X 4: Four Short Films By Martin Scorsese
- 1993The Age of Innocence
- 1995A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
- 1995Casino
- 1997Kundun
- 1999Bringing Out the Dead
- 1999My Voyage to Italy
- 2001The Concert for New York City
- 2002Gangs of New York
- 2003Feel Like Going Home
- 2004The Aviator
- 2005No Direction Home
- 2006The Departed
- 2007The Key to Reserva
- 2008Shine a Light
- 2010A Letter to Elia
- 2010Public Speaking
- 2010Shutter Island
- 2011George Harrison: Living in the Material World
- 2011Hugo
- 2013The Wolf of Wall Street
- 2014The 50 Year Argument
- 2015The Audition
- 2016Silence
- 2019Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
- 2019The Irishman
- 2019The Irishman: In Conversation
- 2023Killers of the Flower Moon