Martin Scorsese Joins Letterboxd and List Companion Films for His Filmography

Martin Scorsese caused a storm yesterday when the American auteur joined Letterboxd, an app that movie watchers use to log movies they've watched. While the memes have been plentiful, it is wonderful to see Scorsese join another Gen Z-heavy app (the filmmaker made an appearance on his daughter Francesca Scorsese's TikTok to show how well he knows Gen Z lingo) because it shows that Scorsese knows how to stay relevant in the modern culture.

Now on Letterboxd, Scorsese has found his young audience and is taking the chance to share some wisdom and cinema history with them.

In a list created by the filmmaker titled "Companion Films," Scorsese writes, "I love the idea of putting different films together into one program. I grew up seeing double features, programs in repertory houses, [and] evenings of avant-garde films in storefront theatres. You always learn something, see something in a new light, because every movie is in conversation with every other movie. The greater the difference between the pictures, the better."

Scorsese continues writing, saying that he has been asked over the years to pair his films with the ones that inspired him. While he states that "inspiration" and "influence" are not accurate terms for this list he created, he does say that these companion films capture the spirit of his related projects.

Here is a slide show of companion films to Scorsese's filmography, created by the legend himself.

'Killers of the Flower Moon'

There are quite a few films that influenced Scorsese's latest Western epic, Killers of the Flower Moon.

To kick off the list, Scorsese credits The Heiress as being a source he turned to when discovering how to create and examine the relationship between Leonardo DiCaprio's character and Lily Gladstone's.

Scorsese also looked to The Heiress for its emotional brutality. The complicated relationships between the characters drive the story forward, motivating the characters to do the unspeakable acts that they believe to be the right thing to do.

Other films that Scorsese turned to for Killers of the Flower Moon include:

• The Last of the Line (1914)
• The Lady of the Dugout (1918)
• Blood on the Moon (1948)
• Red River (1948)
• Wild River (1960)

Credit: Ernest Shipman

'The Lady of the Dugout'

Source: Letterboxd