What's the Rumpus? #1 - Beat on the Brats

At the apex of this hirsute revolution were directors Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Among the films these two knocked out during this time were: Mean Streets, Godfather I & II, The Conversation, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull. Along with films by the likes of Robert Altman, Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich, these films typified the “American New Wave” – mature, personal, countercultural projects that saw directors working with almost unbridled creative freedom. But alas, it could never last; New Hollywood combusted in spectacular fashion and, from the ashes, the megabucks McBlockbuster hack factories re-asserted their grip, wrestling artistic control from the bearded artisans and handing it over to focus groups, marketing executives and test card retards.

 

In the three decades since Raging Bull, both men have struggled to remain relevant in the blockbuster age, with Scorsese’s Goodfellas probably the only of the two’s films to have hit the heady heights of their 70s output. That’s not to say that both men floundered; between them, they made some interesting films during the 80s (notably The King of Comedy, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, and After Hours) but their failures at the box office made them marginal figures, not to be trusted with hefty budgets. Coppola suffered worst; the extravagant failure of One From The Heart saw his Zoetrope dream in tatters, whilst The Cotton Club and Tucker... fared no better. The 90s saw him retreat into semi-retirement, focusing on his vineyards, funded by low- risk, glossy studio pictures like Dracula and The Rainmaker, which just about kept him in grapes and berets. Scorsese’s fortunes were also mixed; post-Goodfellas, he called the shots on big studio fare such as the Cape Fear remake but found his more off-kilter choices such as Age of Innocence and Kundun met with half-decent critical notices but disappointing box office numbers. Whenever his fingers were burned, Scorsese returned to well-trodden ground, with Casino and Bringing Out The Dead ostensibly just louder remakes of both Goodfellas and Taxi Driver respectively.

 

The 21st century finds these two former giants at a curious point in their careers. Scorsese finally has a best director Oscar on his mantelpiece (which the more cynical critics out there like to refer to as his Lifetime Achievement gong) for The Departed: a film so ludicrous it’s almost a parody of his previous work. Coppola had not directed for a decade until 2007’s experimental failure, Youth Without Youth.

 

The pair’s most recent films offer contrasting accounts of where each man stands creatively. Scorsese’s Shutter Island has been a big box office hit but despite offering a stylistic nod to classic chillers of the Val Lewton school, it remains a shallow, if serviceable, piece of Hollywood fluff. On the other hand, Coppola’s most recent effort, Tetro, is an intimate black and white drama set and shot in Argentina. Tetro is undeniably a Coppola film; dealing with his preoccupations of familial rivalry, jealousy and unfulfilled creative potential whilst never feeling like it is going over old ground. It certainly has a sense of the operatic about it too, an opulent grandeur that is unmistakably Coppola. On the flip side, Shutter Island feels like it could have been directed by anybody.

 

Tetro is by no means a perfect film, the aforementioned taste for the operatic occasionally strays into the melodrama, but it is no doubt a deeply personal piece, quietly ambitious in every sense and certainly Coppola’s best film since Apocalypse Now. Watching Tetro, it is apparent that he is channeling the bearded spirit of New Hollywood into his new work. Scorsese on the other hand, appears to have given up the ghost completely.