Martin Scorsese at the 'Hugo' film premiere in New York
A curious tale of clockwork, orphans, Parisian train stations and the golden age of cinema, Hugo is not an obvious Martin Scorsese project. However, particularly in the scenes where the film is a passionate tribute to those early film pioneers, you eventually decide nobody else could have made the film.
For Martin Scorsese the film represents, in a way, life coming full circle.
“Movies were a refuge,” he explains, when asked to talk about his earliest film memories. “Because of having asthma, I wasn’t allowed to do any sports or go near anything green or animals, so I was taken to the movie theatre very often and I saw many films - and became enamoured of the Western genre because what I couldn’t be near, there it was, up on the screen. And I started making my own little drawings.
“But the film that I think created the biggest impression on me about film and filmmaking, about getting the pictures to move, was The Magic Box. My father took me to see that in, I think, ‘52, I was nine or ten years old. The thing in that film the element there is not just the moving image but the obsession, the passion of the people creating it.
“Something happened when I saw that film... It’s all different now, with digital, but it’s still telling stories with the moving image.”
It’s also an opportunity to introduce the younger generation to the thrill of that golden age, something Martin is clearly enthusiastic about.
“It’s a problem of every generation, the obligation of the ones before to inform and to expose the new generation to the great art of the past.” He smiles. “The great, the good, the possibly good, the maybe not very good...
“It’s exciting to do that with the younger generation. You never know how they’ll perceive what they’ll see on the stage or on the screen. But I do think it’s important to make young people aware of what came before, in every aspect of every art form. And very often, when you’re working with young people, and mentoring, the truth is you get a lot out of it.”
Although it might seem strange that Scorsese’s first film in 3D is a tribute to silent films, the director sees it differently.
“The thing about the silent cinema you have to understand is that it was one kind of cinema. When movies started, everyone wanted sound immediately. Sound, colour – and depth. They wanted depth. The Lumiere brothers made films in 3D! They’ve been restored, I’ve seen them, they were made in the 20s but they were made. Eisenstein was working on 3D when he had his heart attack. Imagine Eisenstein films in 3D! Or Orson Welles!”
Hugo won’t, apparently, be Scorsese’s last film in 3D.
“I’m a great admirer of it. When I first saw those old Viewmasters, I was taken into another space. Tapping into that imagination of a child, which is the same thing I depend on and look for whenever we make a film, and seeing those first 3D stereoscopic images has that.
“I’ve had that fascination with 3D all my life. I don’t see any reason, if it’s used appropriately for the story, why not the same as colour? Sound? Wide screen? The colour is part of the story but we’re forgetting there’s also space. The 3D world I was trying to create was tapping back into something ephemeral, the feeling of magic, of seeing those first images when I was a child.
“But I would like to play around with 3D in the future, of that there’s no doubt. Equipment is getting far more flexible, they’re working on ideas about losing the glasses, so why not?”
Hugo is on general release now.