Martin Scorzese

 His grandparents were Sicilian.  They  migrated to the U.S.A. and settled in  New York City’s Little Italy. He attended (frequentò)  cinemas more than sports fields because of his asthma (asma), and showed  a great passion for painting and comic strip drawing (disegnare vignette). Martin hoped to become either (o) a painter or a movie actor, but because of his religious feelings he  decided to become a Catholic priest –  priests were respected alsoby crime bosses in his neighbourhood. At  14, he began studying at theological college, but, in the  1950s he was seduced /sedotto) by rock and roll and was expelled from the seminary. So, Scorsese returned to his first love, movies. He graduated (si laureò)  in 1964 with some movies that caught the eye (colpirono) of director Roger Corman, who took Scorsese under his wing (prese sotto la sua ala)  together with Francis Ford Coppola. Scorsese began to collaborate with Harvey Keitel,  then a theatre actor. Scorsese’s legend started in  1973 with  Mean Streets, an autobiographical tale of a group of young Italian-Americans  in NYC; the actors were  Harvey Keitel in the leading role and Robert De Niro as the unstable Johnny Boy. The following year, Scorsese made Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More, a portrait  of a woman and  domesticity.  In 1976 Scorzese shot Taxi Driver with  De Niro in the role of a disturbed Vietnam veteran and taxi driver, and Jodie Foster as a teenage prostitute. Scorzese won the first Oscar as best director in 1980 for Raging Bull, based on the autobiography of boxer Jake La Motta, again starring De Niro. Other five nominations got The Color of Money, starring Tom Cruise and Paul Newman. The Last Temptation of Christ was  finished n 1988, accused of blasphemy. In 1990 he released the Italian-American gangster film GoodFellas with De Niro and Ray Liotta;  in 1991 Cape Fear was a commercial film that  launched the career of Juliette Lewis. In 1991 Scorzese shot The Age of Innocence, based on Edith Wharton’s novel about high society in 19th century.  Other successes were  Casino(1995) with  Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci; Gangs of New York (2000) about Irish immigrants to New York in the 19th century, which started a series of collaborations with actor Leonardo DiCaprio who triumphed again with The Aviator, (2004) about  Howard Hughes’s life;   The Departed, a crime story set in South Boston; Shutter Island a detective sent to investigate  in a mental asylum and  Hugo, based on the children’s historical book The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2011)