When talking about his segment Life Lessons from the 1989 film The New York Stories, Martin Scorsese said “There’s a lot of movement in your head when you’re painting or writing or directing, I wanted to see that in the camera.” The film centers on the renowned painter Lionel Dobie as he struggles with obsessions and impulses upon the return of his younger assistant, an aspiring artist that has fallen under the grasp of Lionel’s manipulation. Scorsese often uses camera movement to place us inside Lionel’s mind as he paints, granting us deeper access into the frenetic mind of an artist at work, where every pan or push-in feels like further invitation to inhabit Dobie’s world and look through his eyes.
I think the most obvious example of this can be seen in the painting scenes. Scorsese allows us to easily slip into a frantic, euphoric daze along with Lionel as he swings his brush around the canvas and thrusts it down onto his pallet. The camera moves quickly, at extreme close ups, following the brush in hand as it is thrown in every direction. As these scenes carry on, we watch shot after shot of nothing but paint and blurred hands overthrow the screen, and soon we become lost in the painting too. This technique is most importantly used when his assistant, Paulette, decides to leave New York and move back home. When she charges forward and calls for Lionel her voice is drowned out by music, while Lionel is in a trance as he paints. She becomes distracted, and soon is sucked into the painting as the camera is thrusted forward. We cut back and forth, between the beautiful canvas with Lionel’s frenetic brush and a close up of her face. It suggests the idea of Paulette becoming the art, sinking into and letting go of everything else completely.
There’s a very specific moment that caught my eye, when Lionel pulls back from the canvas, sweating and looking euphoric. The camera swirls around him, slowly pushing in, another emphasis on Lionel as the center of the universe. This happens many times, the camera trekking forward until it’s just Lionel, or even more so just Lionel’s face. He becomes the focus of our world as if the frame his ego as the all-encompassing force it is.
To me, the camera movement is one of the most important elements of this piece. It’s such a personal device in this. Scorsese manipulates the camera and, at the same moment, manipulates our minds, just as Lionel manipulates Paulette. He captures the idea of becoming your art- even to the point of harm- perfectly, and this is a film that couldn’t have come from anyone else. You have to give yourself up and let the camera suck you in. We become Lionel Dobie, and we become obsessed.
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