Martin Scorsese's Divine Comedy: Movies and Religion - Hardcover

O'Brien, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1350003271 ISBN 13: 9781350003279

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018

Synopsis

Catherine O'Brien draws on the structure of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy to explore Martin Scorsese's feature films from Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967-69) to Silence (2016). This is the first full-length study to focus on the trajectory of faith and doubt during this period, taking very seriously the oft-quoted words of the director himself: 'My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.' Films discussed include GoodFellas, The Last Temptation of Christ, Taxi Driver and Mean Streets, as well as the more recent The Wolf of Wall Street.

In Dante's poem in 100 cantos, the Pilgrim is guided by the poet Virgil down through the circles of Hell in Inferno; he then climbs the steep Mountain of the Seven Deadly Sins in Purgatory; and he finally encounters God in Paradise. Embracing this popular analogy, this study envisions Scorsese as a contemporary Dante, with his filmic oeuvre offering the dimensions of a cinematic Divine Comedy.

Drawing on debates at the heart of religious studies, theology, literature and film, this book goes beyond existing explorations of religion in Scorsese's work to address issues of sin and salvation within the context of wider debates in eschatology and the afterlife.

About this title

About the Author

Catherine O'Brien is Co-director of the Centre for Marian Studies, UK, and was Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and French at Kingston University, UK. She is the author of The Celluloid Madonna (2011) and Women's Fictional Responses to the First World War (1997), and co-editor of Sacred Spaces/Forbidden Places (2000).

Review

Catherine O'Brien goes beyond merely suggesting that Scorsese was influenced by Catholicism as a child to demonstrate the many ways Catholicism permeates the mise-en-scene, plot, character development, and even editing of his films. There is an immanent theology at work in his films, and O'Brien is an able guide through their cinematic layers.
S. Brent Plate, Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Hamilton College, USA, and author of Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World (2017)

An enriching and innovative inter-disciplinary study, this book draws on debates at the heart of religious studies, theology, eschatology, literature and film. This is an imaginative book which is keen to do something different to existing scholarship on Scorsese.
Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies, University of Kent, UK

Passionate, lively, and well researched, Catherine O'Brien's book synthetically mines Martin Scorsese's oeuvre -- unpacking with particular aplomb his own Divine Comedy-ripe admission to being, as an artist, "both gangster and priest.
Sheila J. Nayar, Associate Professor of English and Communication Studies at Greensboro College, North Carolina, USA

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1350003271
• ISBN 13: 9781350003279
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224