A film’s style, a director’s style, or even a movement’s style provide the viewer with a plenitude of analytical content and once you latch on to these patterns, a new world of cinema can be unraveled. A film’s style in particular as posited by Bordwell and Thompson refers to the distinctive pattern of techniques we find in a film–may they be choices in mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing or sound–and relates to their overall organisation with in the filmic form. Scorsese hones a very unique style, one replicated in part by many contemporary directors today (David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson) exemplifying the quality and importance of his stylistic influence.

A common Scorsese trait is to tend to the story of a single, desperate character, burgeoning on the edges of a certain social group, and to track the intricacies of their movements; usually following them up as they rise (sometimes literally) through the ranks and always following them down as they descend into the pit of madness they themselves curated and their exile from their chosen (sometimes the greater) society. As acclaimed Aussie film critic David Stratton writes “There’s so much information stored inside him it’s as though he’s bursting at the seams; he talks in a rapid-fire style as though he doesn’t have enough time to describe everything he knows. He’s like a character in a 1930s movie.” Such personal characteristics are directly channeled into the style of his films; their crammed nature and extended runtimes are simply homes for the plethora of information and detail Scorsese feels the need he has to convey.