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It’s no shock that Martin Scorsese holds deep admiration for Alfred Hitchcock, a classic example of one master of the craft recognizing another. But what’s curious isn’t the respect itself, it’s how seldom that admiration bleeds directly into Scorsese’s work. His cinematic universe isn’t exactly littered with overt Hitchcockian fingerprints.
Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese: Two Paths Through the Labyrinth
Alfred Hitchcock’s playground was a twisted hall of mirrors, full of psychological games and taut. His characters were often pawns in elaborate cat-and-mouse setups, where every step had weight and every glance carried secrets. That kind of mechanical precision and manipulation of tension isn’t something Scorsese regularly leaned into. His thrillers, as visceral and unforgettable as they are (think Taxi Driver, The Departed, Casino, Goodfellas), don’t quite orbit the same planet as Hitchcock’s finely tuned fear factories.
But then there’s Cape Fear and Shutter Island, the two films in Scorsese’s arsenal that flirt most openly with Hitchcockian shadows. Both movies unspool with a creeping dread and deliberate atmosphere. They’re mood pieces, built from the inside out, where the characters seem to be spiraling just as much as the plot. And while Shutter Island may not wear its homage on its sleeve, it echoes Hitchcock’s spirit in every twisting corridor and flickering hallucination.
MARTIN SCORSESE talks about the brilliance of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. pic.twitter.com/01QbUeREpr
— All The Right Movies (@ATRightMovies) July 31, 2022
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The Film That Won’t Let Scorsese Go
Behind all this is a film Scorsese has never shaken off. Vertigo doesn’t just sit on his list of favorites, it haunts it. “Vertigo is probably my favourite Hitchcock film and probably one of my favourite films of all time. It’s a film that I’m obsessed with,” Martin Scorsese told Indie London. “I saw it on its first release in VistaVision, projected in VistaVision, and at the Capitol Theatre in New York. That moment when the nun comes up in the end? It’s just an extraordinary shot. But the entire film, even though I didn’t fully understand it when I was 15, it’s a film I keep revisiting.”
Years later, in the heat of the 1970s when New Hollywood was rewriting the rules, he caught Vertigo again, this time in the company of Spielberg and De Palma. They weren’t just watching a film, they were retracing steps left by a giant. And to this day, whenever Vertigo resurfaces on screen, uncut and in its original form, Scorsese makes time. That’s not just fandom, it’s ritual.
Everyone has that one film that grabs them by the collar every time it appears, that refuses to fade into the background. For Scorsese, it’s Vertigo. Not because it resembles his style, but because it transcends style altogether.
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