The director’s new BFI season championing hidden gems of British film, hot on the heels of his Powell and Pressburger documentary, reveals some of the inspirations of a film-making great and passionate fan
This weekend, the BFI Southbank in London begins a season of films entitled Martin Scorsese Selects Hidden Gems of British Cinema. Among the treats that caught my eye are a terrific Terence Fisher double bill (1948’s To the Public Danger and 1952’s Stolen Face), Roy Ward Baker’s Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), John Hough’s The Legend of Hell House (1973) and a rare nitrate-print screening of Alberto Cavalcanti’s dark 1942 gem, Went the Day Well?
The fact that a director whose own extraordinary CV includes Taxi Driver (1973), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Casino (1995), Gangs of New York (2002), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and, just last year, Killers of the Flower Moon should curate such a season may seem remarkable. But Scorsese has always been a film fan as much as a film-maker, and the movies he has championed over the years are every bit as important to him as those he has made.
