Scorsese/De Niro

Learn more about our reDiscover season celebrating the definitive actor-director duo as we prepare for Killers of the Flower Moon this October.

At a party in the early 1970s, two men were reunited for the first time since adolescence by none other than Brian De Palma. After a night of reminiscing about friends-of-friends shared across New York's neighbourhoods, their reconnection energised their then-burgeoning careers, culminating in the film that gave them both their big break. The film was _Mean Streets_– and the pair was Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

This year's _Killers of the Flower Moon_ pushes the actor-director duo into double digits after half a century of working together. Their union has been responsible for some of the greatest, most galvanising American films ever made, and for our latest reDiscover season, Picturehouse will cherry-pick from their collaborations for an unmissable retrospective. It's a selection that proves the pair are never better than when they're together: as Scorsese himself told Deadline this year, "[De Niro] is the only one around who knows where I came from and who I am. It's all instinct between us."

The line-up

Taxi Driver

From 25 Aug
You have to love something to look at it with a critical eye. Scorsese and De Niro (not to mention screenwriter Paul Schrader) bring grungy realism to a city they love dearly in _Taxi Driver_, and in doing so, made iconic the gritty look that still defines the city for many today. At its centre is Travis Bickle: a traumatised taxi driver and a deluded one-man army against so-called degenerates in the city he roams over long sleepless nights. 'You talking to me?' is his often quoted, infamous line – a perfect portrait of a man on the edge long before 'the lone gunman' gained widespread media attention. Bickle's monologue in the mirror would go on to define the discontented lonely man, being paid homage to well beyond the borders of the USA, such as in 1995's _La Haine._

Goodfellas

From 01 Sep
If there's one thing Scorsese is best known for, besides his incredible eye for direction, it's his needledrops – and no film of his that illustrates this better than _Goodfellas_. Scorsese's love of contemporary music weaves its way through this decade-spanning mafia film: no one can forget how, in a word, cool De Niro looks in the bar when 'Sunshine of Your Love' by Cream drops, helped also by Thelma Schoonmaker's pitch-perfect editing. As we watch Ray Liotta's Henry Hill devolve into a life of excessive crime, the soundtrack devolves too, travelling from pop to psychedelic rock. Scorsese may often be reduced to a maker of mafia movies, but the skill with which he approaches the topic, under a sheen of violence and music and fashion, is often imitated and rarely surpassed.

Raging Bull

From 08 Sep
Four short years after _Taxi Driver_, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro would come together as a creative powerhouse again for _Raging Bull_. Another character study on the nature of loneliness and anger in men, Jake LaMotta, has – for many reasons – not become the figure of film-obsessed teen boys in the same way as Travis Bickle. Despite the small amount of time between the two films, the waning of New Hollywood has stripped away all punchy aesthetics, Scorsese opting for a stark black-and-white palette paired with Thelma Schoonmaker's intensely subjective editing. It's a portrait of a man who must balance acceptable versus unacceptable violence in a world that eagerly blurs the two.

The King of Comedy

From 18 Sep
Misunderstood upon release but now considered a cult classic, _The King of Comedy_ is often cited by Scorsese as his favourite collaboration with De Niro. It's a wildly different follow-up to _Taxi Driver_ and _Raging Bull_, with De Niro playing Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring – and delusional – stand-up comedian, desperate "to be a King f