Martin Scorsese joins Letterboxd, shares his must-see movie duos

Martin Scorsese with an illustrious 50-year career in filmmaking and a passionate advocacy for preserving cinematic treasures, has now ventured into the realm of Letterboxd.

As part of the extensive promotional campaign for his upcoming film, Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese has officially become a member of Letterboxd, the film-centric social media platform that encourages users to log and critique the movies they've watched. 

In no time, he's been hard at work, meticulously logging 69 films and meticulously crafting a curated selection of timeless classics that he personally recommends as ideal companions to his own cinematic masterpieces. 

In an introduction to his "Companion Films" list on Letterboxd, Martin Scorsese articulated his profound love for the concept of pairing different movies into a single program.

As he expressed, "You always learn something, see something in a new light, because every movie is in conversation with every other movie. The greater the difference between the pictures, the better."

Scorsese elaborated on the genesis of these companion films: "Over the years, I’ve been asked to pair my own pictures with older films by other people that have inspired them. 

"The request has come from film festivals, which present the pairings as a program. The terms ‘inspiration’ and ‘influence’ aren’t completely accurate. 

"I think of them as companion films. Sometimes the relationship is based on inspiration. Sometimes it’s the relationships between the characters. 

"Sometimes it’s the spirit of the picture. Sometimes it’s far more mysterious than that."

He meticulously selected five pairings for Killers of the Flower Moon, which includes William Wyler’s 1949 romantic drama The Heiress and Howard Hawks Western classic Red River. 

The entire compilation is replete with unexpected and profound choices, such as Dino Risi’s Italian road trip comedy, Il Sorpasso, paired with The Color of Money, and Abbas Kiarostami’s groundbreaking, format-shattering metafictional documentary, Close-Up, harmonizing with Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. 

Scorsese's ability to bridge seemingly disparate cinematic worlds is exemplified by his selection of the original Ocean’s Eleven, starring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, as a companion to Goodfellas.