The Two Most Successful Martin Scorsese Films

What are the two most successful Martin Scorsese films, critically and at the box office?

Martin Scorsese has long been one of America's most celebrated film directors. With his gritty, New York dramas Scorsese built an audience that has lasted for decades, allowing the director to tackle a number of controversial and obscure subjects.

In the 80s and 90s Scorsese stretched at times and moved away from his characteristic New York character dramas to make films like The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun, and The Age of Innocence. These forays outside of his comfort zone, as good as they sometimes are,most recently led to "Shutter Island", a film that showed once again that small-scall cinema is really where the director is most comfortable. To his credit Scorsese seems to have learned what he was good at early on.

In a very telling "audio commentary" accompanying Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese recounts his early lessons in directing received from the maverick director John Cassavetes. Scorsese was encouraged to follow the classic adage and "write what you know". The years have shown that Scorsese knows New York and has an eye for the underside of ambition, the fixed gaze of obsession, and the extremes a small man will go to when the world seems set against him.

Martin Scorsese's filmography reads like a film history guidebook with numerous "must see" films from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s.

Of all Scorsese's great films, which has earned the most at the box office? Which has received the most critical acclaim?

The Martin Scorsese Film with the Greatest Box Office Success: "The Departed"

Bringing in roughly $132 million*, "The Departed" is the highest earning film in the Martin Scorsese filmography, ahead of "Shutter Island" ($128 million) and "The Aviator" ($103 million).

If you are a "Good Fellas" fan you may wonder how it compares to Scorsese's top three films. "Good Fellas" earned around $47 million in 1990.

The Martin Scorsese Film with the Most Critical Success: "The Aviator"

Though Martin Scorsese did not win the Academy Award for Best Director until 2006 with "The Departed", his films have racked up quite a few Oscars over the years, with the winningest film being "The Aviator".

Nominated for eleven Academy Awards, "The Aviator" received five Oscars in 2004.

"Raging Bull" was nearly a run-away critical success, receiving eight Academy Award nominations but only winning two (Best Actor/Robert DeNiro, Best Editing/Thelma Schoonmaker).

The most significant awards of Martin Scorsese's prolific career came from his 2006 film "The Departed."

"The Departed" won four Academy Awards and was nominated for one more. The two most significant awards earned by "The Departed" were for Best Director and Best Picture. After decades of huge professional renown and considerable critical respect, Martin Scorsese seemed to get passed over again and again at the Oscars and it wasn't until Scorsese remade a Chinese film into "The Departed" that he got over the hump and claimed the biggest prize in the directing game.

To put a little perspective on Scorsese's long road to the Best Director award, we can point out that Martin Scorsese began making feature films in the late 60's, nearly forty years before working on "The Departed", and produced a half-dozen classics in the interim: "Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver", "Good Fellas", "Raging Bull", "Cape Fear" and "Casino".

More From This Contributor:

Why Bruce Lee Is So Popular

Muhammad Ali's Best Movies

Sources:

YahooMovies

*BoxOfficeMojo