When it came to the 2010 Golden Globe speeches, there wasn't much for posterity. Unless, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger's remarks about half of Avatar's revenues being used to alleviate California's budget deficit will be remembered 1,000 years from now, along with The Aviator; New York, New York; Casino; GoodFellas; The Last Temptation of Christ; The Departed; and other movies directed by Martin Scorsese.
Or at least that's what Leonardo DiCaprio claimed when paying homage to Scorsese's career. DiCaprio, in fact, put Scorsese on the same plane as Pablo Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Francis Bacon, among a few others. When the camera focused on Scorsese's face, I had the impression he was stifling a laugh. Or perhaps it was a tear. At these occasions, emotions run the gamut.
While delivering his speech, Scorsese was later self-controlled enough to remember the names of a number of major filmmakers, including Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Ousmane Sembene, Alfred Hitchcock, and Satyajit Ray. He also demonstrated a good knowledge of Hollywood history, teaching audience members, most of whom probably had never heard of Cecil B. DeMille (or Kurosawa, or Bergman, or Sembene, or Ray, or even Hitchcock, for that matter) about the man after whom his career award had been named.
More interesting were his remarks about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the work they do for film preservation. According to Scorsese, the HFPA has helped to finance the restoration of about 70 films, including Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes, Scorsese's pet restoration project.
After listening to his speech, the first thought that came to mind was: How many old movies and television shows all those wealthy, fancily dressed film & TV people at that glittering party have helped to restore?
Photo: HFPA
Thanks for also catching Scorcese's shout out to especially Sembene.
Mainstream American film culture is so insular (except when it comes to European cinema) that you’re shocked when one of its stars, acknowledge the place and contributions of African cinema.
Of course, I am really surprised by Scorsese’s behavior given his work on film restoration and support for African films, but it was nice to see it being done at a stuffy event like the Golden Globes.
Scorsese's shout-out to the late Ousmane Sembene was remarkable. I hope at least a few viewers added a Sembene film or two to their Netflix queue.
We recently watched "Xala" for the first time and found it a brilliant commentary on colonialism and corruption in West Africa, as well as a perspective on Muslim life in that part of the world.