Martin Scorsese hasn’t directed too many movies that fit neatly into the romance genre (outside say Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and The Age of Innocence), but his films do often explore relationships. Most of his films are more able to be categorized as thrillers, crime movies, or historical dramas, but in exploring humanity (including the darker sides of it), characters who are in couples do pop up pretty often.
Because of how flawed many Scorsese characters are, it’s appropriate to call the majority of these relationships dysfunctional, and most of them don’t survive the entire film’s duration… hell, sometimes the characters themselves don’t survive their film’s duration. What follows is a rundown of some of the most dysfunctional – or “worst” – relationships found in Martin Scorsese’s filmography. Also, these don’t count as bad because they’re poorly written or developed, but because they’re intended to depict and examine pairings that just don’t work, for one reason or another.
10
Colin Sullivan and Madolyn Madden
‘The Departed’ (2006)
Given it’s a movie all about deception where no character seems unwilling to lie in some capacity, The Departed does not contain many wholesome romantic pairings or friendships. One of the central characters is a cop who goes undercover in a criminal gang, while the other central character is a criminal who infiltrates the police force, with the two of them each battling, in their own ways, to expose the other before they themselves are outed.
The criminal posing as a cop, Colin Sullivan, gets into a relationship at one point with a police psychiatrist, Madolyn Madden, but it never feels like a particularly healthy one. He has certain struggles that are implied more than spelled out, and she’s clearly unfulfilled, leading her to begin a relationship with the cop posing as a criminal, Billy Costigan. It’s chaos, and things don’t end well for many people here. But that’s also part of what makes The Departed a blast to watch.
The Departed
- Release Date
-
October 6, 2006
- Runtime
-
151 minutes
9
Frank and Mary Sheeran
‘The Irishman’ (2019)
Frank Sheeran is the central character of The Irishman; a hitman who outlives just about everyone in his life, and is introduced near the film’s beginning as a lonely old man looking back on his violent past. People around him have died for a multitude of reasons, sometimes violently, sometimes because of illnesses, and sometimes because of Sheeran himself (you know, with him being a hitman and all).
Sheeran watches friends die, is directly responsible for killing one of the few good people in his life, finds himself distanced from his children, and – perhaps not surprisingly – experiences a breakdown in his first marriage. It’s a testament to how little it works, and the kind of person Frank is, that family members of Frank barely register as characters as far as screen time is concerned. That’s one of the ways The Irishman sheds light on its main character, at least.
- Release Date
-
November 27, 2019
- Cast
-
Bobby Cannavale
, Jack Huston
, Joe Pesci
, Jesse Plemons
, Sebastian Maniscalco
, Al Pacino
, Kathrine Narducci
, Stephen Graham
, Ray Romano
, Aleksa Palladino
, Anna Paquin
, Robert De Niro
, Harvey Keitel
, Jake Hoffman - Runtime
-
210 minutes
8
Henry and Karen Hill
‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
To the credit of the central couple at the heart of Goodfellas, their marriage does technically survive until the film’s end. Henry and Karen Hill are together from not long after they first meet until the closing scene (in witness protection), though in real life, they separated just before Goodfellas ultimately came out: in 1989.
Throughout the film, Henry isn’t exactly faithful to his wife, and the arguments they have serve as particularly stressful scenes in a movie that’s already pretty full-on and intense. Unlike some of the very worst relationships found throughout the movies directed by Martin Scorsese, Henry and Karen do at least seem to show some love for each other for some of the movie’s duration, but things fall apart over time between them (there’s a lot of falling apart in Goodfellas; the good times not lasting is pretty much what it’s all about).
- Release Date
-
September 21, 1990
- Runtime
-
145 Minutes
7
Travis Bickle and Betsy
‘Taxi Driver’ (1976)
Travis Bickle and Betsy, admittedly, can hardly be considered a couple. They date briefly in Taxi Driver, but so uncomfortable is the way that brief period ends that their “relationship” does have to be considered here. After all, Travis makes the decision to take Betsy to an adult movie while on a date, and she understandably leaves almost straight away, staying away from that point onwards (outside a scene near the very end that’s almost definitely in Travis’s head).
Taxi Driver is one of Scorsese’s darkest and most uncomfortable movies, so the closest thing it has to a central relationship being hard to stomach doesn’t feel too surprising. Travis has a surprising amount of confidence when it comes to asking Betsy out initially, but as for where he eventually chooses to take her? It’s probably one of the worst places you could go on a date, to put it mildly.
- Release Date
-
February 9, 1976
- Runtime
-
114 Minutes
6
Teddy Daniels and Dolores Chanal
‘Shutter Island’ (2010)
It’s hard to elaborate on the relationship between Teddy Daniels and his wife, Dolores Chanal, without giving away much of what Shutter Island has to offer narratively. It’s a bit of a different film for Scorsese, placing a huge emphasis on mystery and playing out more like a psychological thriller than perhaps anything he’d made prior to 2010. That is to say, the less said about the plot, the better.
But what is explored in Shutter Island, relating to Teddy’s past, is tragic in more ways than one. It’s a film that paints a portrait of a very troubled relationship between two people grappling with their own personal demons, but it doesn’t become entirely coherent, as far as those intense details are concerned, until pretty close to the film’s ultimate conclusion.
Shutter Island
- Release Date
-
February 19, 2010
- Runtime
-
138 minutes
5
Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein and Ginger McKenna
‘Casino’ (1995)
You get two dysfunctional relationships for the price of one in Casino, with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci both playing characters who get involved with Sharon Stone’s. De Niro’s the protagonist, Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein, and he’s married to Stone’s Ginger McKenna initially, but they both like living dangerously and loudly, which might just be what happens when you have ties to the mob (Goodfellas seemed to suggest as much, too).
Pesci’s character, Nicky Santoro, is even more volatile, and though Casino wasn’t lacking in drama earlier, things get even more chaotic when Nicky and Ginger start having an affair. It’s hard to feel too sorry for Rothstein, though, because he’s also exceedingly far from ever being considered a good person. Really, most people in this movie are some combination of aggressive, rude, and violent, so just about any relationship here is doomed to fail.
- Release Date
-
November 22, 1995
- Runtime
-
178 minutes
4
Jordan Belfort and Naomi Lapaglia
‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013)
Like Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street also explores the life of an immoral person over many years in their lives, though the crimes committed in this 2013 film are a little less physical in nature than many crimes seen in Casino. Call it white-collar crime, if you want, but Martin Scorsese seems determined to show that such activity can still cause immense amounts of damage and harm to people and society as a whole, with perpetrators often getting off rather lightly.
It’s a sometimes funny movie, sure, but the relationship between Jordan Belfort (the film’s protagonist/narration) and his wife, Naomi Lapaglia, is a source of intense drama, especially as The Wolf of Wall Street enters its fairly grim final act. Their marriage does not survive until the film’s end, and The Wolf of Wall Street doesn’t shy away from the kind of damage Belfort does to Lapaglia, with things even getting distressingly physical near the film’s conclusion.
- Release Date
-
December 25, 2013
- Runtime
-
180 Minutes
3
Jake and Vickie LaMotta
‘Raging Bull’ (1980)
If you want an uplifting sports movie, you’re not going to find it in Raging Bull. This is a no-nonsense and emotionally devastating biographical film about Jake LaMotta, a notoriously aggressive boxer who found success inside the ring, but wrought nothing but destruction and misery outside it. This is most plainly seen in his family life, with his marriage to Vickie LaMotta being volatile pretty much from the very start.
Other filmmakers might’ve wanted to sugarcoat things a little more, even when tackling someone who lived a violent and dramatic life, but Martin Scorsese had no interest in doing that here. This naturally makes Raging Bull a difficult watch, as some of the scenes revolving around LaMotta’s family drama prove harder to stomach than the exceptionally violent boxing scenes, but that lack of compromise is also what makes the film hold up so strikingly well.
- Release Date
-
December 19, 1980
- Runtime
-
129 minutes
2
Ernest and Mollie Burkhart
‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (2023)
Killers of the Flower Moon is an incredibly well-acted movie that’s also extremely difficult to watch. It sees Scorsese once again pulling no punches in bringing to life a dark chapter of American history, here centering on a plot to obtain a wide area of oil-rich land from the people of the Osage Nation, principally through a combination of deceitful marriages and systematic murder, among other crimes.
The damage to the Osage people is seen mostly through Mollie Kyle (later Burkhart), a woman who’s married to Ernest Burkhart early in the film, experiencing tragedy after tragedy because Ernest is playing a role in the decimation of her people. The marriage is, therefore, a horrific one from the start, even if viewers are willing to accept the idea that Ernest did care for Mollie to some extent (though there’s perhaps a stronger argument to be made that it was always wrong, considering the marriage always had a sinister purpose).
1
Jimmy Doyle and Francine Evans
‘New York, New York’ (1977)
The only Martin Scorsese movie that has a potentially more uneasy main relationship than Killers of the Flower Moon is New York, New York, which is one of Scorsese’s oddest and most underrated films. It’s ranked above Killers of the Flower Moon here because New York, New York has its relationship placed front and center, with the movie beginning and ending – focusing all the while in between – on the relationship between Jimmy Doyle (De Niro, again) and Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli).
Doyle relentlessly pursues Evans early on, and is unsettling right from the start, progressively getting worse and more tyrannical as the years go along. Watching New York, New York means experiencing one woman going through emotional turmoil with a man who is, to put it mildly, probably too much for anyone. There’s an immense amount of catharsis in watching her slowly break free, but the movie’s two and a half hours long, so it takes a pretty long time. Scorsese wants you to feel every tortured minute, too, and damn if he’s not successful!
- Release Date
-
June 21, 1977
- Cast
-
Liza Minnelli
, Robert De Niro
, Lionel Stander
, Barry Primus
, Mary Kay Place
, Dick Miller - Runtime
-
155 Minutes
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