MARTIN SCORSESE: ‘CINEMA IS GONE’
Few today are making movies with the scope and ambition of “Silence” – a fact, he grants, that makes him feel like one of the last of a dying breed in today’s film industry.
“Cinema is gone,” Scorsese says. “The cinema I grew up with and that I’m making, it’s gone.”
“The theater will always be there for that communal experience, there’s no doubt. But what kind of experience is it going to be?” he continues. “Is it always going to be a theme-park movie? I sound like an old man, which I am. The big screen for us in the ’50s, you go from Westerns to ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ to the special experience of ‘2001’ in 1968. The experience of seeing ‘Vertigo’ and ‘The Searchers’ in VistaVision.”
Scorsese points to the proliferation of images and the overreliance on superficial techniques as trends that have diminished the power of cinema to younger audiences. “It should matter to your life,” he says. “Unfortunately the latest generations don’t know that it mattered so much.”