How Three Iconic Films Changed Hollywood’s Power Balance

Martin Scorsese has always been the sort of director who does things his own way, never one to just follow the crowd. From the early days of his career, he was drawn to stories that mirrored the world he saw around him. When he made films like Mean Streets, he often said he was only a whisker away from living the same lives as his characters, so close were their experiences to his own day-to-day.

By the late 1970s, things were starting to shift. Raging Bull marked a turning point, with Scorsese taking a different approach to the usual big, dramatic productions. The film follows a boxer who’s not exactly easy to like, down on his luck and struggling with his own demons. The rawness of the story comes through in every scene, especially when Robert De Niro is on screen. At the time, boxing films were everywhere, with Rocky sequels drawing crowds, so Scorsese wanted to do something that stood out. He told GQ,

“Black-and-white would make it distinctly different from the other boxing films that were being made. Also, Irving Winkle pointed out to the studio that films that were made in black-and-white up until that point in the ‘70s were Paper Moon and Lenny, and they were hits.”

Breaking the Mould in Hollywood

Raging Bull’s release was a big moment, but it wasn’t alone. That same week, United Artists also put out Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Scorsese reckons this trio of films changed the game, saying,

“The week that film was released was the same week, from the same studio, that Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate opened. That, along with Raging Bull and Apocalypse Now, all from the same studio, United Artists. It ended the power of the director in American filmmaking, and that had to come back through independent cinema, through the 1980s.”

The way Raging Bull was shot—black-and-white, gritty, and with camera work that put you right in the ring—set it apart from the glossy blockbusters of the time. The slow-motion and sharp editing made the fights feel almost otherworldly, a far cry from the usual Hollywood fare.

Apocalypse Now and the End of an Era

Apocalypse Now, directed by Coppola, was another film that pushed boundaries. Loosely inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it reimagined the story in the chaos of the Vietnam War, digging into themes of colonialism, American intervention, and the darker side of human nature. It was a massive, ambitious project, and its release alongside Raging Bull and Heaven’s Gate signalled a shift in the industry.

Compared to the big-budget crowd-pleasers, these films had a more artistic edge. Scorsese, in particular, wanted the boxing scenes in Raging Bull to feel completely separate from the rest of the film, almost as if the audience had been dropped onto another planet every time Jake LaMotta stepped into the ring.

Freedom Lost and the Rise of Indie Cinema

Looking back, Scorsese remembers a time when directors had heaps of creative freedom at the studios. He said,

“Things were wide open, and we took it like barbarians at the gate. We transformed whatever we could, but they caught us.”

After these films, though, the studios started to tighten the reins, and the era of the all-powerful director came to an end. It wasn’t until the rise of independent cinema in the 1980s that filmmakers began to claw back some of that lost control.