The summer before I went to college, a much-admired older boy loaned me a copy of Scorsese on Scorsese, a book-length interview concerning Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and other pictures from the director’s early oeuvre. I had seen none of those movies. Yet, the volume was a revelation, not only because of its aroma of exciting adulthood but because its aesthetic principles had previously lain beyond my grasp. The house in which I had been raised was literate but not artistic. Martin Scorsese’s way of talking and thinking about his work opened a door that I badly wanted to see beyond. 

Those happy weeks came back to me as I watched Mr. Scorsese, Apple TV’s masterful new docuseries of the auteur’s filmography and life. Directed by Rebecca Miller, wife of occasional Scorsese collaborator Daniel Day-Lewis, the series is a worthy summing-up of one of the great careers in cinematic history. Among those participating are Scorsese mainstays Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, who, between them, starred in 15 of the director’s movies (and counting). Steven Spielberg provides forthright commentary, as do Brian De Palma, Spike Lee, Ari Aster, and a host of other Hollywood peers.