Martin Scorsese set to stir Cannes again

LOS ANGELES

When Martin Scorsese premieres his latest film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, it will return Scorsese to a festival where he remains a key part of its fabled history.

Scorsese premiered his masterpiece of urban alienation, “Taxi Driver,” in Cannes in 1976. Its debut was one of the most fevered in Cannes history, drawing boos and some walkouts for the violence in Scorsese’s tale of the disillusioned New York cab driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro). The playwright Tennessee Williams, then the jury president, condemned the film.
“Films should not take a voluptuous pleasure in spilling blood and lingering on terrible cruelties as though one were at a Roman circus,” Williams said.

Yet “Taxi Driver” nevertheless won Cannes’ top honor, the Palme d’Or. Having heard of Williams’ disapproval, Scorsese and company had already flown home, with dashed hopes of any big award.

“I got a call from [publicist] Marion Billings around five in the morning saying, ‘You’ve won the Palme d’Or,’” Scorsese later recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. “We thought we might get screenplay or best actor for De Niro, so it was very surprising.”
“Taxi Driver” wasn’t Scorsese’s first time in Cannes. Two years earlier, he had premiered his breakthrough feature, “Mean Streets,” in Directors Fortnight, a selection of films typically from up-and-coming directors that plays outside Cannes’ main stage, the Palais des Festival.

“Killers of the Flower Moon,” his much-awaited adaptation of the David Grann bestseller, is his first new film to premiere in the Cannes official selection since “After Hours” in 1986. That film, a darkly comic nocturnal New York escapade, won Scorsese best director.

His latest, which Apple, in partnership with Paramount Pictures, will open in theaters Oct. 6, isn’t playing in competition in Cannes.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is about a series of murders of Native Americans in 1920s Oklahoma and the FBI investigation that followed. The cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion and Tantoo Cardinal.