Scorsese’s list of top 15 movies was published by the British magazine “Sight & Sound” which had been asking acclaimed filmmakers every decade since 1952 to provide their personal rankings, gazeta.pl wrote.
As part of the last issue, among the films of such outstanding artists as Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa or Federico Fellini, the US filmmaker ranks “Ashes and Diamonds” (1958) by Andrzej Wajda third among his favorite films.
The website notes, however, that the movie’s standing should not come as a surprise, as Scorsese has spoken highly of Wajda’s productions for years, particularly of “Ashes and Diamonds.”
In the full-length documentary about the Polish master “Wajda and You" (“Wajda i Ty”), the American spoke with great fascination about both his Polish peer and the trend of the Polish Film School.
“The film that made the biggest impression on me was “Ashes and Diamonds”. When I saw it in 1961 when I was studying at Washington Square College (now New York University), I began to believe that at some point I would be able to make films myself,” Scorsese said as quoted by gazeta.pl.
The creator of “Taxi Driver” confessed that he watched “Ashes and Diamonds” many times because he attended every possible screening in the US.
The film evoked many difficult emotions in him and he was moved by the performance of the actors, in particular Zbigniew Cybulski playing the part of protagonist Maciek Chełmicki, the website said.
“The movie was a revelation to me. It presented the tragedy of a destroyed country, the destroyed western civilization, the tragedy of people who survived and had to face the new system, rejecting it, fighting it but with a sense of defeat,” Scorsese was quoted as saying.
The two directors had the opportunity to meet several times. During the last meeting in 2011, Wajda gifted Scorsese with an original storyboard from the last scene of “Ashes and Diamonds” in which Chełmicki dies tragically, gazeta.pl wrote.
The first and the second spots in Scorcese’s ranking were represented by Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) and Federico Fellini’s “Eight and a Half” (1963), respectively.
(mo)
Source: gazeta.pl