Scorsese's most acclaimed film, shares a bill with Luchino Visconti's 1960 family epic, "Rocco and His Brothers." "Murder by Contract" shares a bill with "Taxi Driver." "Mean Streets," the director's 1973 breakthrough film, is paired with Bernardo Bertolucci's 1964 debut film, "Before the Revolution." "Raging Bull" (1980), Mr. Scorsese, pairs many of the movies that stimulated his cinematic imagination with works of his that they influenced. "Mean Screens," which runs through June 27, was organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the cinema studies department of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
It is among 34 films (plus music videos and a television episode from "Amazing Stories") in a new series, "Mean Screens: Martin Scorsese at the Movies," which opens today at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center.
"Murder by Contract" (1958) stars Vince Edwards as a hired assassin who sets up the murder of a government witness, who proves to be a very elusive target. I even tried to put a clip of it in 'Mean Streets' but had to take it out because it was too long." When I saw it again years later, I was overwhelmed by the severity of the style, which was dictated by the budget. Afterward we talked about it on the street for days. That film had nice color, but when 'Murder by Contract' came on the screen, it was surprising and lean and purposeful, and not like anything my friends and I had seen. "The film it was playing with when I saw it was 'The Journey,' by Anatole Litvak, with Yul Brynner.
SCORSESE FILMS MOVIE
"It's an example of an American B movie that is 100 times better than the film it played with on a double bill," the director recalled in a recent telephone interview. MARTIN SCORSESE was a teen-ager when he first saw Irving Lerner's B-movie melodrama "Murder by Contract," one of many obscure Hollywood films that left a searing impression on him.
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