The future has passed, the past as style: Martin Scorsese's histories.

摘要

This dissertation treats Martin Scorsese's historical filmmaking as an occasion to examine the convergence of film author, historiography, and historicity in popular cinema. Its approach is multidisciplinary, drawing heavily on the philosophy of history as well as critical theory, film aesthetics, film theory, film history, and cultural studies. By examining these films as modes of historiography, this project engages with them as responses to the broader formal, philosophical, and ethical quandaries of composing audiovisual histories.;Primarily a work of interpretation, this dissertation insists upon the close analysis of film style as a means for avoiding the twin traps of literalism and culturalism in our considerations of historical filmmaking. When apprehended in literal terms, for instance, Gangs of New York is dismissed as a reckless interloper in the field of disciplinary historiography; but this study's more thorough interpretation of the film's deployment of performers reveals an unexpected preoccupation with precise, though narrowly conceived dimensions of historical experience. The Aviator and Casino share this speculative fixation upon the experience of historical actors and transitions, and a close scrutiny of their respective uses of film style broadens our frames of reference and reshapes our apprehension of the films accordingly. This study therefore argues that history is grasped, at least provisionally, in the use of style-as-trope and subsequently given meaning in the spectator's interpretations of that style.;Although this dissertation engages with a significant number of Scorsese's films, it ultimately concentrates upon those works that have escaped extended scholarly scrutiny. Chapters One and Two investigate the director's furtive documentary practice in Italianamerican, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, and Il mio viaggio in Italia. Chapters Three and Four focus upon the turn to history in Scorsese's recent large-scale dramatic films: Casino, Gangs of New York, and The Aviator. Consequently, while this project's concerns necessarily exclude some films from consideration, its principal aim is to address several previously ignored aspects of Scorsese's work as historian. It thus offers a critical revision of common understandings of the director's filmmaking while relocating it in the context of current debates on film history, theory, and criticism.