Martin Scorsese ist New Yorker durch und durch. Der 1943 geborenen Filmemacher wuchs in Manhattans Little Italy auf. Während viele Regisseure die Stadt als Schauplatz für ihre Filme nutzen, konnten nur wenige die Metropole so zum Leben bringen wie der Italo-Amerikaner. Fast die Hälfte seiner Werke spielen hier, oft im zeitgenössischen New York, wie sein Meisterwerk ‚Taxi Driver‘ oder ‚Wolf of Wall Street‘, andere im 19. Jahrhundert wie ‘Zeit der Unschuld‘ oder ‚Gangs of New York.’
Hier eine chronologische Liste von Scorsese-Filmen, deren Handlung sich zumindest zu einem wesentlichen Teil in New York abspielt.
Who’s that knocking at my door (Wer klopft denn da an meine Tür?) – 1967
‚Mit : Harvey Keitel, Zina Bethune, Ann Collette
A humble beginning of sorts for Scorsese, Who’s That Knocking at My Door is seriously lacking compared to the majority of Martin Scorsese pictures that would follow. But it was a student film released when Scorsese himself was still only in his 20s, and it isn’t a terrible exploration of a simple premise that revolves around some drama between a young couple living in New York City.
So, that New York City setting was established just about from the very start of Scorsese’s directorial career, so that’s kind of interesting to see. The city looks cool in black and white, and having a time capsule of the area in the 1960s is also neat. Plus, this was Harvey Keitel’s feature film acting debut, and he’d go on to have a pretty strong working relationship with Scorsese going forward.
Mean Streets (Hexenkessel) – 1973
Mit: Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, David Proval
You can see Who’s That Knocking at My Door as something of a warm-up for Mean Streets, which also starred Harvey Keitel and saw Scorsese really come into his own as a filmmaker. Both films have somewhat rambling plots and a focus on characters more than story, but there’s more style, vibrancy, and grit to Mean Streets. All that stuff’s what makes it compelling.
Also, Mean Streets was the first of many Scorsese films to have Robert De Niro star in a prominent role, and it was his first real crime/gangster movie, too (unless you want to count the fairly forgettable Boxcar Bertha). The streets of New York City do indeed seem mean in this film, but that harshness, authenticity, and chaos are captured immensely well, and the film still has a certain degree of power 50+ years later.
‚Taxi Driver‘ (1976)
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks
Alongside After Hours and Bringing Out the Dead, Taxi Driver succeeds in making New York City look like a kind of nightmarish place to try and survive in. The central character here is an immensely troubled man named Travis Bickle, and he is continually disgusted and angered about the things he sees around him, especially when he works late at night driving a taxi.
There’s a psychological unraveling, followed by a lashing out at society; particularly those areas of it Travis has especially pressing issues with. Taxi Driver asks difficult moral questions and puts viewers in the head of a very disturbed main character. Even if you were to get outside his head, spending time in this film’s depiction of New York City isn’t exactly a whole lot nicer. It’s a bit of a feel-bad film all around, really.
‚New York, New York‘ (1977)
Starring: Liza Minnelli, Robert De Niro, Lionel Stander
While it’s low down ranking-wise, New York, New York is actually pretty damn good, or at least a good deal better than some give it credit for. Of course, given the title, much of the film takes place explicitly in New York, with the story being a romantic drama of sorts that goes through some very rough patches in the years following World War II.
It’s a dark almost-musical about the entertainment industry, pursuing one’s passions, and navigating a relationship that seems doomed to fail, almost right from the start. New York, New York is long, challenging, and unwaveringly bleak, but it really comes alive during some of its more spectacular sequences, and the intensely naturalistic performances given by Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro are also excellent.
‚Raging Bull‘ (1980)
Starring: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty
Raging Bull isn’t contained to a New York City setting for the whole of its runtime, but things begin in New York and end in New York, and quite a bit of it between those two points is in the city, too. It’s a dark sports movie about famed boxer Jake LaMotta, with the boxing sequences being especially brutal in showcasing the violence inherent in a surprisingly normalized sporting event.
But it’s the non-fighting sequences in Raging Bull that end up being the most harrowing, given they explore LaMotta’s family life falling apart, with his vicious anger being the source of some horrific domestic violence and psychological abuse. Raging Bull is never an easy watch, but it is so immensely powerful that it’s easy to appreciate as not just one of Scorsese’s best efforts, but maybe even one of the very best films ever made.
‚The King of Comedy‘ (1982)
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard
Things are starting to get truly excellent now, and they’re only going to get better. Most other filmmakers could only dream of having their best film be as good as The King of Comedy, but with Scorsese, it’s comparatively “mid-tier” when stacked up against the other classics he’s made. Emphasis has to be on “comparatively” there, because mid-tier Scorsese is still an A-grade movie.
It was filmed in New York and follows an aspiring stand-up comedian in the city going to great lengths to become famous, with part of his plan even involving the kidnapping of an entertainer he idolizes. The King of Comedy isn’t hilarious, despite having “Comedy” in its title. The comedy here is very dark, if it even counts as comedy at all, but the film functions so well as a thriller/psychological drama that humor or not, it’s still a remarkable (and uncomfortable) watch.
After Hours‘ (1985)
Starring: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom
There are a couple of New York-set Scorsese films that might put you off wanting to visit the city, with After Hours potentially being one of them. Here, the SoHo district (in Manhattan) becomes a nightmarish world that one very unlucky man has to escape from, given he tries to go on a date there but ends up having a series of horrible misadventures.
It begins in a frenzy and ends on a very memorable note, with everything in between striking a tone between surreal, funny, and uncomfortable. After Hours is certainly a cult classic kind of movie; not exactly accessible or for everyone, but it’s the real film of Scorsese’s output that demonstrates he has a knack for making genuinely funny movies (again, not The King of Comedy, which is a banger for other reasons).
‚Goodfellas‘ (1990)
Starring: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci
There’s a sprawling nature to Goodfellas, as it plays out over many years and the action ends up occurring in a few different areas. However, many of those areas are either in New York City or within close proximity to the city, and so Goodfellas can still count itself as one of those fabled Scorsese films that emphasizes New York setting-wise.
As for the story here, it’s all about Henry Hill and his unusual experiences within mob life, and the audience follows both his highs and lows as he coasts along, unable to progress past a certain point according to the rules of the game all the mobsters play. Goodfellas is masterful stuff; funny, intense, violent, unique, entertaining, stylish, and shocking. It’s got everything you could want out of a gangster film and more. It’s just perfect.
‚The Age of Innocence‘ (1993)
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder
The Age of Innocence goes back a little over 100 years for the bulk of its story, showing New York City throughout the 1870s (and a little right at the end of the 19th century, too). It’s also a gentler and more female character-focused movie than one might expect from Scorsese, because it’s not about gangsters in New York City; rather, it’s about wealthy people and their love lives.
Well, a big focus of The Age of Innocence is also on all the strange rules that these rich people live by, and so connections can be made between the exploration of codes of conduct there and the way Scorsese explores certain rules and conventions present in the mob lifestyle. It’s also a pretty beautiful film to look at, and benefits from some excellent acting, too.
‚Bringing Out the Dead‘ (1999)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman
New York City is big and much of it’s bustling, but Manhattan is the part of the city that’s especially chaotic, and the part that’s most likely to be the most intense. It’s therefore appropriately the setting of one of Martin Scorsese’s grimmest and most relentless movies, Bringing Out the Dead, which is extremely stressful – and occasionally nightmarish – by design.
The main character here is a paramedic played by Nicolas Cage, and the film follows him as he unravels psychologically while having to work a series of continually strange and challenging shifts. Bringing Out the Dead is undeniably an acquired taste, but if you can get on its admittedly hard-to-approach wavelength, it does end up being a rewarding watch, especially as a showcase for Cage’s (sometimes) underappreciated talents.
‚Gangs of New York‘ (2002)
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz
Going back to a New York City further back in time than even the one seen in The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York has its prologue take place in 1846, while the bulk of the movie’s story takes place in the early 1860s. New York is depicted as a particularly rough, violent, chaotic, and intense area, with various forces both criminal and legit/legal fighting over control of certain areas.
All the while, Leonardo DiCaprio plays a young man out for revenge, and so everything kind of builds up and explodes into madness by the time the film reaches its especially grisly final act. It’s actually an amazing movie, or close to it. People have given it some heavy criticism over the years, but the time is right for a re-evaluation of sorts. It’s one of those rare expensive movies where you can see every dollar on screen, and in an era of movies like Snow White (2025) and The Electric State, that ought to be cherished/properly celebrated.
Where to watch
‚The Wolf of Wall Street‘ (2013)
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie
A movie that’s so New York it puts the words “Wall Street” in its title, The Wolf of Wall Street is one of Scorsese’s flashiest, funniest, most profane, and most quotable movies to date. It centers on Jordan Belfort, showing how he grew an immense personal fortune by committing fraud on Wall Street, spending his money on a series of lavish parties while becoming addicted to various substances.
By the end of it all, The Wolf of Wall Street is a pretty pessimistic movie, given Belfort gets away with most of what he did, and there’s this feeling of “Well, maybe crime shouldn’t pay, but evidently, it can.” It’s got more nuance as a crime film than some might want to give it credit for, and it’s an interesting evolution of Scorsese’s approach to crime stories. It has the style of his gangster films, but it’s all about white-collar crime instead.
