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The Aviator

Martin Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in New York City — a metropolis that would go on to have a profound effect on the filmmaker’s creative output. He is one of modern cinema’s defining auteurs, and in honor of the director’s 73rd birthday, we’ve declared it Scorsese Week here at Decider. Click here to follow our coverage.

In 1992, Leonardo DiCaprio was preparing to say goodbye to his yearlong gig as dreamy teen heartthrob, Luke Brower, on ABC’s Growing Pains when Robert De Niro sought him out. During the casting call of This Boy’s Life, Michael Calton-Jones’ adaptation of Tobias Wolff’s memoir of the same name, De Niro reportedly picked the 18-year-old actor out of a crowd of 400 to play the role of young, troubled Toby. Little did the Academy Award-winning vet know that by being choosy with his co-star, he helped get the ball rolling for DiCaprio’s celebrated career as teen sensation turned young Oscar bait turned Martin Scorsese‘s 21st century muse. Two decades and five films later, it’s no secret that Scorsese and DiCaprio work well together, but has the forty-year-old actor inadvertently surpassed De Niro as the director’s greatest collaborator?

Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in *This Boy’s Life* (1993)Photo: Everett Collection

Believe it or not — aside from October’s overpriced, $70 million commercial for an elite, Chinese casino (that can only be watched in China, apparently) — De Niro and DiCaprio have never once starred together on a Scorsese project. Other than This Boy’s Life and Marvin’s Room, the two Hollywood icons have shared minimal screen time despite their overlapping inner circles. Though unconfirmed rumors claim De Niro wanted to introduce the up-and-comer to his good friend, Marty, circa ’93; soon after wrapping This Boy’s Life, De Niro was cast in his final collaboration with Scorsese. That film was Casino, which celebrates its twenty-year anniversary on Sunday, November 22. But was This Boy’s Life an unofficial passing of the torch from one Scorsese muse to another? And if so, who is the better collaborative pair? Below, we attempt to investigate.

Director Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro on the set of *Casino* (1995)Photo: Everett Collection

Case Study: De Niro and Scorsese

After garnering sizable attention for his role in the baseball drama Bang the Drum Slowly, a then 30-year-old Robert De Niro was cast in Scorsese’s Mean Streets. The film marked the director’s first signature effort after wrapping Boxcar Bertha and leaving the nest of B-movie mentor Roger Corman. Mean Streets, which has attained cult status (and an induction to the Library of Congress) since its 1973 release, became the first of eight films where Scorsese-De Niro collaborated. Following the Little Italy crime tale, however, was Taxi Driver, a transcendent work that solidified De Niro’s place as a Hollywood icon (he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Godfather: Part II the year before) and also cemented Scorsese’s reputation as one of the most pronounced visionaries of contemporary cinema.

The two teamed up again a year later for musical epic New York, New York before 1980’s boxing biopic Raging Bull — Scorsese’s undeniable masterpiece that earned De Niro his Oscar for Best Actor. After toying around with pitch black, showbiz humor in The King of Comedy, Scorsese and De Niro reconvened in the early ’90s to visit their crime genre roots with Goodfellas, Cape Fear, and, finally, Casino. Since 1973, films directed by Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro have racked up a total of 21 Oscar nominations with three wins: one for De Niro’s portrayal of Jake “The Raging Bull” La Motta, and the remaining two for Joe Pesci and Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, for their work on Goodfellas.

Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of *The Departed* (2006)Photo: Everett Collection

Case Study: Scorsese and DiCaprio

Though there are no reports of a falling out between De Niro and the director, it’s certainly strange that a solid twenty years have passed since the two have been on the same feature set. Perhaps Scorsese is preoccupied, however, with his prodigal pseudo-son, Leonardo DiCaprio, with whom he’s already racked up five onscreen credits since 2002.

Whether or not those introductory rumors are true, it took nearly a decade from working with De Niro on This Boy’s Life for DiCaprio to be cast by Scorsese in 2002’s period gangster drama Gangs of New York. Though the ambitious but boring epic would be remembered as a thorn in the director’s side (thanks to the bullheaded Weinsteins and a tiff with Miramax), it brought him together with the decade’s Hollywood It Boy — igniting wholly complementary career paths for both men. Since working with Scorsese, DiCaprio has channeled a raw energy in his characters and has seemed to consciously avoid falling back into the often hindering role of the romantic hero. Even when portraying real-life womanizers like Howard Hughes in The Aviator or Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, for example, there is noticeable criticism of masculinity that comes along with his embodiments. Even though DiCaprio has worked with some of the most decorated, renowned directors in the business — from James Cameron and Sam Mendes to Quentin Tarantino and now, Alejandro Iñárritu for the upcoming action epic The Revenant — it’s his work with Scorsese that has propelled DiCaprio to his current standing with audiences and the greater Hollywood community alike. Since 2002, films directed by Scorsese and starring DiCaprio have garnered a whopping 31 Oscar nominations and nine wins, including Martin Scorsese’s long overdue Best Director honor for The Departed, which also took home the award for Best Picture of the Year in 2006.

DiCaprio and Scorsese on the set of *The Wolf of Wall Street*.Photo: Everett Collection

The Evaluation

It’s no secret Robert De Niro’s career has veered from dramas to comedies—some intended, and some unintentional— since he all but retired from working with Martin Scorsese. Yet, it’s only fair to acknowledge credit where credit is due; considering the actor and director both benefitted from their creative cohesiveness. Together, they solidified their iconoclastic places in film history through groundbreaking depictions of mobsters and Italian Americans.

It’s with DiCaprio, however, that Scorsese has been able to evolve as a visionary and experiment with more nuanced narratives outside the familiarity of the gangster drama. Though Scorsese tried to gain greater recognition as a comedic and musical director with De Niro circa New York, New York and The King of Comedy, it was the hard-hitting dramas and crime stories that allowed their foolproof formula to work for so long. Yet, with DiCaprio, Scorsese can weave in and out of the types of stories that made him one of the industry’s most prized eyes behind the camera, while also exploring deeper tales of the human psyche in films like The Aviator and Shutter Island.

So the more compatible pair? Evidence leans towards Scorsese and DiCaprio. There’s no denying that De Niro and the director achieved a monumental legacy through their projects, but it’s DiCaprio’s actorly prowess and Hollywood clout that have allowed Scorsese’s nearly fifty-year career to continue to evolve and flourish far past the point that his contemporaries began slowing down.