The role of food in defining the characters of Martin Scorsese's films. From his first film of 1967 to "The Irishman", in theaters from November 27th
Constants are important. Especially when they seem a trivial thing that, in the end, turns out to be the key to understanding a work that is over fifty years long. This is the case of the use of food in Martin Scorsese's filmography, one of the most prolific and appreciated by the critics that returns to talk about thanks to The Irishman, the film that brings together Robert De Niro and Al Pacino who, after a brief passage in the theater, will be available on Netflix starting November 27th. A gangster story, inspired by the novel by Charles Brandt and dedicated to the death of Jimmy Hoffa, who was defined by his rival Robert Kennedy: "The most powerful man in the United States after the president". A strong, powerful film, which brings Scorsese back to the dark and cold atmospheres of the first masterpieces and which reopens a chapter never completely concluded in his works: the kitchen that remains in the background and is the glue of everything. Beyond the scene where the Jordan Belfort played by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street launches a couple of huge lobsters against some FBI agents, it is interesting to note that many of the director's films are full of extravagant restaurants, smoky rooms and diners lit only by the faint light of a neon.
The food and the characters of Martin Scorsese
On Scorsese's table there seem to be no nuances: the characters either eat like kings or eat like tramps. A double soul that is often found in the same work. In Who is knocking on my door of 1967, his first film, we can glimpse, for example, immediately one of the scenes so dear to the imagination of the director: the bar as the setting of three "bad boys" who rack their brains to find the solution to a problem. And if in Mean Streets – Sunday in church, Monday to hell (1973) Harvey Keitel boasted of a "sandwich of desires", the thought immediately runs to Taxi Driver (1976), probably his most popular film. The protagonist, Travis, immediately reveals a relationship with particular food, idiosyncratic: "May 26th. At 4 o'clock I took Betsy to the Charles Coffee Shop on Columbus Circle. I ordered black coffee and an apple pie with a slice of melted yellow cheese. I think it was a good choice. Betsy had ordered coffee and a plate of fruit salad. He could have had everything he wanted, "explains Travis at one point, played by that Robert De Niro who four years later in wild bull he would teach his wife the trick to cook the perfect steak. Attention to detail, however, focuses on Those good guys (1990) and garlic which must be treated thinly, with no margin of error.
All to pass, then, from the refined oysters swallowed whole The age of innocence (1993), eponymous adaptation of the novel by Edith Wharton, a Gangs of New York (2002), when the bars were full of sloppy people drinking draft beer and surrounding themselves with the company of beautiful women in the middle of the night. The maximum of opulence is reached, however, in The Aviator (2004), when the Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio tries to impress Hepburn by using bread as a means of explaining the mechanics of the Air Corps, passing, however, for a simpleton and nothing more. The laid table, which sees food more as a challenge to be won than as a trophy to be exhibited, is also the basis of The Wolf of Wall Street. In this sense, the scene in which Jonah Hill puts a goldfish in his mouth is memorable only to be able to prove that he is all-powerful, to be able to do whatever he wants because he is allowed. In this sense, the dishes and the table are considered as indispensable means for the construction of a character, a mirror of the integrity or undoing of the human condition that Scorsese continues to tell us through his films.
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