The Washington DC Area Film Critics Association, or WAFCA, of which I’m a member, announced the winners of its 2011 awards this week. The Best Director prize went to a familiar name: Martin Scorsese. It’s unlikely to be the only accolade he gets this season for his latest film, “Hugo.” In fact, another critics group has just honored Scorsese, though it wasn’t for his work directing the 3-D film. Instead, it was for his lifetime’s body of work. The Broadcast Film Critics Association named Scorsese the second recipient of its Music+Film Award, which they’ll present to him Jan. 12 at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. The ceremony, the 17th annual, will air simultaneously on cable channel VH1.
The BFCA says the award “honors a single filmmaker who has touched audiences through cinematic storytelling, and has heightened the impact of films through the brilliant use of source and original music.” That certainly sounds like Scorsese. What other contemporary directors are known almost as much for their musical choices as their cinematic ones? Quentin Tarantino? He received the first Music+Film Award, presented this past January.
Most Americans know the best of Scorsese’s films, such as “Goodfellas,” “Raging Bull” and “Taxi Driver.” Not all of them are aware, though, that the feature filmmaker is also a documentarian, with a specific focus on music. He made “The Last Waltz,” a concert documentary about the Band, the Bob Dylan doc “No Direction Home,” and, most recently, the HBO film “George Harrison: Living in the Material World.”
“Shine a Light,” a film about a Rolling Stones concert, is also a Scorsese picture. He’s famously a fan: Their song “Gimme Shelter” appears in no fewer than three Scorsese films — “Goodfellas,” “Casino,” and “The Departed.”
He’s also savvy enough to hire very talented composers to score his films. He’s worked numerous times with the Band’s Robbie Robertson, the late Elmer Bernstein, and Howard Shore, who wrote the music for “Hugo.”
I spoke to Shore in 2007, when Scorsese was named a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. “He’s very astute, he’s got great ears,” Shore said. He always welcomes a gig from Scorsese — it’s creatively fulfilling for a film composer, he said, to work with a director who understands music.
Scorsese is above all a storyteller, of course. His stories are, primarily, about various aspects of the American experience. Patricia Finneran, then-director of the American Film Institute’s local Silverdocs documentary film festival and now with the Sundance Institute, pointed out that even Scorsese’s music docs are about more than music. Of “No Direction Home,” she said, “He captured not just Bob Dylan, but the whole era. Though his life and music, you understand that period in American life.”
Scorsese is rightfully being honored by the BFCA, but he didn’t win the top award from WAFCA. The D.C. critics group named “The Artist” the best film of 2011. The silent film about the silent film era hasn’t opened in the District yet; it’s slated to be released on Christmas Day. George Clooney’s performance in “The Descendants” earned him the best actor nod from WAFCA, while Michelle Williams’ channeling of Marilyn Monroe in “My Week with Marilyn” nabbed her the best actress award.
Kelly Jane Torrance is The Washington Examiner movie critic. Her reviews appear weekly and she can be reached at [email protected].
