When you think Martin Scorsese, you probably think Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, and Wolf of Wall Street— often in that order. If you’re a little more invested in his filmography, you might think Mean Streets, Raging Bull, maybe Shutter Island. Basically, you think of Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci, suited and ready for a scrap.
But, while this image has come to dominate Scorsese’s legacy, there’s a whole separate filmography hiding in Taxi Driver’s shadow. When he’s not busy writing snappy voice overs or knocking the dust off of Joe Pesci’s shoulders, Martin Scorsese has proven himself on multiple occasions to be a very talented historical filmmaker. Year after year, works like The Last Temptation of Christ, Silence, or Kundun have demonstrated that. One movie, though, that has bridged the gap between Scorsese’s love of New York gangsters and his passion for history is the aptly titled Gangs of New York.
On the surface, Gangs of New York is a revenge story following Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) on his quest to get revenge on the man who murdered his father— notorious gangster (and connoisseur of delicatessen) William Cutting, better known as Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day Lewis). The film takes place in the Five Points, a slum which dominated much of Lower Manhattan. According to Smithsonian Magazine, legendary production designer Dante Ferretti was brought on to construct “more than a mile” of buildings, comprising “a fiveblock area of Lower Manhattan” complete with “a mansion, replicas of Tammany Hall, a church, a saloon, a Chinese theater and a gambling casino.” Oh, and two full-scale sailing vessels. Naturally.
This set design is not relegated to decoration or backdrops; Scorsese takes any and every opportunity to let the camera live in the world that Ferretti (and his legions of carpenters) built. One gets the impression that, if the studio had permitted him, Gangs would have been nothing but a documentary-style tour through the neighborhood. There are wandering tracking shots through acres of scaffolding, catacombs, and alleyways; hundreds of extras, costumed in perfectly contemporary rags and bandages, who mill about in the myriad of saloons and brothels where the story takes place. Inspired by the tenement photography of Jacob Riis, the world depicted in Gangs of New York, as far as I’m concerned, is as vivid as any other put to film in the 21st century.
Which isn’t to say that the film is perfect. Carried by a few brilliant performances (looking at you, Mr. Day-Lewis), the cast is by and large just functional. The dialogue, despite numerous moments of pristine clarity, is largely represented by broad spans of uninspired banter. Most egregious of all is the film’s editing; over-bearing slow motion, rapid cuts, repetitive angles, and the god-awful U2 montage at the very end pull you from 1863 straight to the year 2000.
And then there’s the story. The film’s narrative is difficult to pin down because it pulls itself in so many directions. Produced by the famously authoritarian (and thoroughly reprehensible) Harvey Weinstein, the script which eventually became Gangs of New York was forced through the hands of several screenwriters and script doctors— not to mention, subjected to the opinions of numerous producers. What we’re left with is Scorsese’s brilliant vision of the crucible which forged American democracy… that happens to have a pithy DiCaprio revenge flick stapled on top.
To hear Scorsese speak about the movie’s exigence, it’s difficult to imagine that the end result is exactly what he had in mind. The film is based (loosely) on Herbert Asbury’s 1927 non-fiction work The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld, which Scorsese first imagined as a feature back in 1970. His first pitch described it as a “western in outer space,” where the streets of the Five Points would serve as the stage on which the first draft of American democracy was rehearsed.
“Gradually, there was a street by street, block by block, working out of democracy as people learned somehow to live together,” Scorsese told the Smithsonian Magazine.
And that, at the end of the day, is the beautiful vision trapped within Gangs of New York. Hidden in the cracks of this otherwise rote tale of gangs and revenge is a different, better movie, trying to force its way out: a movie about the blood in the melting pot, the bodies in the streets, and every other mean, nasty thing that took place to give democracy a fighting chance against the corruption and prejudice that has defined the United States since its inception.
“If democracy didn’t happen in New York,” Scorsese said, “it wasn’t going to happen anywhere.”
“A Monday washing, New York City, 1900” by trialsanderrors is licensed under CC BY 2.0.