Martin Scorsese was lauded with the Berlin Film Festival‘s honorary Golden Bear on Tuesday night, celebrating a lifetime of achievement in cinema. As he accepted the award, Scorsese — whose most recent film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is currently up for 10 Oscars — reflected on his career thus far and even teased a return to the festival “in a couple years.”
Scorsese was introduced by German director Wim Wenders, who is also Oscar-nominated for his latest feature, “Perfect Days.” Wenders told a hilarious story, complete with a photo slideshow, about one of his earliest interactions with Scorsese at the Telluride Film Festival in 1978, where he came upon the director and his then-girlfriend Isabella Rossellini on the side of the road with a flat tire.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Martin Scorsese did manage to take off the flat tire,” Wenders said to roaring applause. “But much to his dismay, we all realized that his bloody rental car did not have an extra tire, which was a real bummer — the whole effort had been in vain.”
As the slideshow flipped to an old-school selfie of Wenders, Scorsese and Rossellini in Wenders’ car, he said: “Proof that a young German director, equipped with a panoramic camera, rescued his American colleague and his future wife from a dreadful fate.”
After Wenders’ opener, Scorsese began his speech by discussing the history of the Berlinale and how it has impacted him as a filmmaker, specifically recalling the 1968 festival, when Brian De Palma won the Silver Bear for “Greetings.”
“It was a very important event and it was a real turning point for all of us — for Brian, of course, and by extension all of us who were working low-budget in America at the time, particularly not in Hollywood. Low-budget, independent pictures were quite rare in America at the time, and it helped open the way for filmmakers like Jim McBride and Phil Kaufman, for myself,” he said. “It gave a stature in a sense that the studios started to take us seriously … It paved the way for me meeting up with Bob De Niro and casting him in ‘Mean Streets.’ And 10 years later, I would come to Berlin for the first time with ‘Raging Bull,’ opening night 1980 and then back again with the Rolling Stones for ‘Shine a Light,’ and then again with ‘The 50 Year Argument.’”
Scorsese went on to say that film festivals are where he has met his community of fellow filmmakers, Wenders included.
“Watching each other’s pictures, complimenting each other, arguing with each other, going down our own paths. I mean, what else can one do when you become obsessed with an art form?” Scorsese said. “When you live it, when you have to be on your own. That’s the lonely part, but it’s so important to remember that, even though it’s lonely, that you’re part of a community. And that community of people is driven by an obsessive love with this art called cinema.”
Scorsese added that “the work that we do individually is part of an ongoing, ultimately endless conversation” before teasing that he may make his return to the Berlinale sooner than later.
“I really feel that I’ve been blessed to have taken part in that conversation for most of my life now,” he said. “And as for looking back on my work, I can’t … partly because I really do seem to keep wanting to make pictures. So maybe I’ll see you in a couple years, I hope with another one.”
