In the 1970s and 1980s, Scorsese's films, much influenced by his Italian-American background and upbringing in New York City, center on macho-posturing men and explore crime, machismo, nihilism and Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption.

In the following decades, he garnered box office success with a series of collaborations with Leonardo DiCaprio, including Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010), and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

[5] He has explored cinema in the documentaries A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy) (1999), and Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024).

[22] In a documentary on Italian neorealism, he commented on how Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1946) inspired him and influenced his view of his Sicilian roots.

"[25] He has also cited the works of Satyajit Ray,[23] Ingmar Bergman,[26][27] Andrzej Wajda,[28] Michelangelo Antonioni,[29] Federico Fellini,[30] Ishirō Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya[31] as major influences on his career.

Although there was no habit of reading at home, towards the end of the 1950s, Scorsese began to approach literature, being marked in particular by Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (1864), James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter (1948).

[42] In 1967, Scorsese made his first feature-length film, the black and white I Call First, later retitled Who's That Knocking at My Door, with his fellow students actor Harvey Keitel and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, both of whom were to become long-term collaborators.

"[48] By now the signature Scorsese style was in place: macho posturing, bloody violence, Catholic guilt and redemption, gritty New York locale (though the majority of Mean Streets was shot in Los Angeles), rapid-fire editing, and a soundtrack with contemporary music.

The film starred De Niro as the angry and alienated Travis Bickle, and co-starred Jodie Foster in a highly controversial role as an underage prostitute, with Harvey Keitel as her pimp.

[51] Taxi Driver also marked the start of a series of collaborations between Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader, whose influences included the diary of would-be assassin Arthur Bremer, John Ford's The Searchers (1956), and Robert Bresson's Pickpocket (1959).

Along with the 1987 Michael Jackson music video "Bad", in 1986 Scorsese made The Color of Money, a sequel to Robert Rossen's The Hustler (1961) with Paul Newman, which co-starred Tom Cruise.

[73] Looking past the controversy, The Last Temptation of Christ gained critical acclaim and remains an important work in Scorsese's canon: an explicit attempt to wrestle with the spirituality underpinning his films up until that point.

Scorsese's 1994 cameo appearance in the Robert Redford film Quiz Show is remembered for the telling line: "You see, the audience didn't tune in to watch some amazing display of intellectual ability.

[86] Several members of the audience including Nick Nolte and Ed Harris refused to applaud Kazan when he received the award while others such as Warren Beatty, Meryl Streep, Kathy Bates, and Kurt Russell gave him a standing ovation.

The film does not cover Dylan's entire career; it focuses on his beginnings, his rise to fame in the 1960s, his then-controversial transformation from an acoustic guitar-based musician and performer to an electric guitar-influenced sound and his "retirement" from touring in 1966 following an infamous motorcycle accident.

Scorsese returned to the crime genre with the Boston-set thriller The Departed, based on the Hong Kong police drama Infernal Affairs (which is co-directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak).

The film stars Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee, and Jude Law.

The film tells the story of a New York stockbroker, played by DiCaprio, who engages in a large securities fraud case involving illicit stock manipulation, by way of the practice of "pump and dump".

[151][152] After years of development, principal photography on Scorsese's crime film The Irishman, based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, began in August 2017, starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino.

[191][192] Frequent collaborators also include: Victor Argo (6), Harvey Keitel (6), Harry Northup (6), J. C. MacKenzie (5), Murray Moston (5), Illeana Douglas (4), Joe Pesci (4), Frank Vincent (3), Barry Primus (3), and Verna Bloom (3).

Others who have appeared in multiple Scorsese projects include Daniel Day-Lewis, who had become very reclusive to the Hollywood scene, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Dick Miller, Liam Neeson, Emily Mortimer, Jesse Plemons, John C. Reilly, David Carradine, Barbara Hershey, Kevin Corrigan, Jake Hoffman, Frank Sivero, Ray Winstone and Nick Nolte.

[193] For his crew, Scorsese frequently worked with editors Marcia Lucas[194] and Thelma Schoonmaker,[195] cinematographers Michael Ballhaus,[196] Robert Richardson, Michael Chapman and Rodrigo Prieto, screenwriters Paul Schrader, Mardik Martin, Jay Cocks, Terrence Winter, John Logan and Steven Zaillian, costume designer Sandy Powell, production designers Dante Ferretti and Bob Shaw, music producer Robbie Robertson, and composers Howard Shore[197] and Elmer Bernstein.

[205] In March 1983, Scorsese met Dawn Steel (then-junior executive at Paramount) at an annual ShoWest Convention (in Las Vegas, NV), after which the pair began a romantic relationship.

Scorsese moved from New York to live in her Sunset Plaza residence while his Last Temptation of Christ was initially in development at Paramount (Steel reportedly recused herself from her boyfriend's passion project).

[208][209] Scorsese was an opponent of the Iraq War, wearing a white dove pin to the 75th Academy Awards in 2003 and clapping for Michael Moore's acceptance speech wherein he criticized President George W. Bush and the invasion.

In an interview with Cinema Escapist in 2018, Scorsese talked about the ambitious collaboration saying, "Our first goal is to launch and conduct a thorough investigation in film archives and laboratories around the world, in order to locate the best surviving elements—original negatives, we hope—for our first 50 titles.

The movies in question are Med Hondo's Soleil Ô (1970), Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina's Chronique des années de braise (1975), Timité Bassori's La Femme au couteau (1969), and Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa's Muna Moto (1975).

[231] More recently he has executive produced the films of the Safdie Brothers, Joanna Hogg, Kornél Mundruczó, Josephine Decker, Danielle Lessovitz, Alice Rohrwacher, Jonas Carpignano, Amélie van Elmbt, and Celina Murga.

[261] Scorsese has also garnered favorable responses from numerous film giants including Ingmar Bergman,[262] Frank Capra,[263] Jean-Luc Godard,[264] Werner Herzog,[265] Elia Kazan,[266] Akira Kurosawa,[267] David Lean,[268] Michael Powell,[269] Satyajit Ray,[270] and François Truffaut.

[277] In 2021, lifelong friend George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson through the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation made a donation to NYU to establish the Martin Scorsese Institute of Global Cinematic Arts.