Casino, the final part of Martin Scorsese's gangster trilogy, follows the Mafia through the 70s as it wrestles for control of Las Vegas' gaming rooms. Nick Thomas profiles the man Steven Spielberg calls America's finest filmmaker
Martin Scorsese's Casino, the Closing Night Film at this year's London Film Festival, together with Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, the Opening Night Film, form the strongest “bookends” the festival has ever had, according to its director Sheila Whitaker.
It is certainly a coup for the LFF to have secured the international premiere of Casino just days after its US release. And it is difficult to think of a film which better embodies the festival's commitment to both cinematic quality and accessibility. For while this may be a mainstream Hollywood release, the presence of Martin Scorsese as director is guaranteed to excite the most austere of cineastes.
Indeed, Scorsese's own towering personal contribution to cinema will be reflected in the presentation, prior to the screening, of a British Film Institute Fellowship. Scorsese will be present to receive the award, given at the bequest of the BFI's governors, joining a select group which includes many of his heroes such as François Truffaut and Michael Powell.
Scorsese is of course a legendary devourer of films, and deeply knowledgeable about his own country's cinematic heritage, as was shown in his recent three-hour documentary A Century of Cinema - A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies. Produced in conjunction with Channel 4 and the BFI's television production arm, and intended as a contribution to cinema's centenary celebrations, the film uses an eclectic and fascinating array of clips to illustrate the director's perspective, with Scorsese himself providing the lucid narration.
Scorsese also has a remarkably thorough knowledge of British cinema, perhaps thanks to his mentor Michael Powell, whose widow, the brilliant film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, remains one of Scorsese's key collaborators. Indeed, Powell and Pressburger's 1946 classic A Matter of Life and Death is one of the films re-released in the USA in the last few years under the banner Martin Scorsese Presents. After all, as he frequently argues, future filmmakers will learn from the past only if films are physically available to them, and Scorsese has been active, not just in getting classic films into US distribution, but in lobbying studios and governments to raise awareness of the archival crisis which still threatens much of cinema's past.
“I'm still a film student,” he told the Library of Congress in 1993. “If I'm not making films I'm watching them repeatedly, painfully aware of how much there is to learn.” His interest in cinema history then is not just that of an academic but that of a filmmaker who understands that the best learn from the past.
While he was adding the finishing touches to his documentary, he was already in in production with Casino. Based, like 1990's GoodFellas on a book by Nicholas Pileggi, Casino tells the story of Mafia involvement in Las Vegas in the 1970s. The film, according to Pileggi, forms the third part of a Scorsese gangster trilogy, following Mean Streets and GoodFellas, and features characters who are apparently “genetically incapable of doing anything straight”. This time, Scorsese's loyal hitmen Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci are joined by Sharon Stone.
Casino is based on the true story of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, employed by the mob to wrest control of Las Vegas' casinos from the Teamsters. His ruthless muscle man was Tony Spilotri, a childhood friend from Chicago. Lefty then fell in love with Geri McGee, a beautiful “chip hustler” and sometime prostitute and topless dancer. Their marriage broke down over her alcoholism and adultery. An affair with Tony, however, brought deadly results.
In Scorsese's and Pileggi's film script, these characters are fictionalized: Lefty becomes Sam “Ace” Rothstein, played by De Niro; Geri becomes Ginger, played by Stone; and Tony becomes Nicky Santoro, played by Pesci. Elsewhere James Woods plays Ginger's lover and stand-up comic Don Rickles plays Rothstein's sidekick.
Steven Spielberg recently described Martin Scorsese as America's finest active filmmaker. Even those who question that claim would have to agree that a new Scorsese film is an important event. To have the man himself in attendance, receiving a major award before on the closing night of the London Film Festival, makes for a very special night indeed.
NICK THOMAS
Casino premieres on Sunday 19 November, 19:30 Empire Leicester Square
Prod co: Universal Pictures
Prod: Barbara De Fina
Dir: Martin Scorsese
Scr: Martin Scorsese, Nicholas Pileggi
Ph: Bob Richardson
Ed: Thelma Schoonmaker
Prod des: Dante Ferreti
Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone
Running time: tbc
UK distributor: UIP
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