Martin Scorsese: 'I've become my mother'

Martin Scorsese's latest film 'Gangs of New York' is a bloodthirsty 19th-century epic, but the director seems happiest when talking about family mealtimes, as Ryan Gilbey discovers

There are obvious signs that an interview is not going as well as could be hoped. For example, I once put a question to the director Abel Ferrara, who proceeded to slip into a dense and restful slumber before I had finished speaking. I believed that my confidence would be able to take anything after that. And then I find myself awaiting a private audience with Martin Scorsese, only to overhear him complaining that he has done enough interviews for one day. "I'm all wiped out," he protests loudly to his assistant, as I loiter in the airless corridor, contemplating hara-kiri with a pair of inadequately sharpened pencils. "I don't know how I'm gonna do Germany. I'll do it, but I don't know how." Poor Germany. Suddenly I feel nostalgic for the Abel Ferrara way of doing things.

Readers of a nervous disposition will be relieved to know that in person Scorsese is less raging bull and more goodfella. As I enter the room, he is inspecting a painting on the wall, hands folded behind his back. When he turns to greet me, he gives off a glow of presidential warmth. He is wearing a grey suit. His vivid black eyebrows, so striking in photographs, are even more dramatic in the flesh, or rather in the hair. From one angle, they seem poised to take flight. Yes, he is pocket-sized, but then so is a grenade or a flick-knife.

"I'm a little tired," he sighs, sinking into his armchair. "I'll do the best I can." But within seconds, the Scorsese motormouth is up and running, the fatigue dispelled. It's not so much that he's interesting, though he is that; more that he seems unshakeably interested in every subject upon which we chance, no matter how frivolous.

He is primarily here to discuss his latest picture, Gangs of New York, which has been percolating in his head for almost three decades. This sprawling, berserk epic is as unexpectedly warm-hearted about those who once ruled Scorsese's beloved mean streets as it is bloodthirsty in its depiction of the manner by which they maintained their reign.

It's set in the late 19th century, and hinges on the suspenseful relationship between Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the snarling warlord Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis), who killed the boy's father years earlier. But the real star is the woozy, intoxicating atmosphere. Early in the film, Amsterdam promises us that in recounting his story he has stuck mostly to what he remembers. "The rest," he warns, "I took from dreams." The movie obligingly adheres to this suggestion of a reality buoyed and bolstered by fantasy.

"People have said to me, 'Marty – this is the foundation from which all your other films have come'. But I had to have made those others first. Sure, I had a dream of making this, but I was never certain which story I wanted to tell. I knew I wanted to create this heightened world with these magnificent sets. Over the years the story may have changed – it even changed as we were shooting – but some things remained. The opening battle. The hangings. The draft riots at the end. Representational moments you might say; sequences that revealed the anthropology. I kept moving the various characters in and out of those scenes.'

As much as it is a joy to hear Scorsese's breakneck patter, it is a pleasure also to watch him as he speaks. His hands float on the air; he might be conducting an invisible orchestra. "What I was reaching toward was this sense of a fever-dream." He smacks his lips at that phrase. "When Bill has Amsterdam laid out on the table, and the crowd are calling for him to cut out his heart, you know it's not quite real. Having said that, we didn't scratch the surface of the violence that really went on in that era."

Gangs of New York provides Scorsese with another opportunity to induct his audience into an unfamiliar society. The new film features at least two of his trademark "tour-guide" sequences – those episodes which exude a self-conscious relish at cinema's ability to pass freely into extinct or exotic cultures.

In Taxi Driver (1976), Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) does a stock-take on the inhabitants of the New York gutter ("queens, pushers, fairies, dopers...") as the carnivorous camera prowls the streets hunting for prime examples. GoodFellas (1990) keeps pausing to quantify minor mafiosi and their various crimes or characteristics, while the entire first hour of Casino (1995) is taken up with an excessively helpful guide to Las Vegas etiquette. In Gangs of New York, there is no shortage of tribes (the Dead Rabbits, the Plug Uglies, the Daybreak Boys) and occupations (bludgers, badgers, turtle-doves, she-he's) to sate the director's appetite, and our own. I think it all comes back to his natural tendency to be interested. His most soulless films, such as the New York nightmares After Hours (1985) and Bringing Out The Dead (1999), are those in which he appears to know his subject too well; neither of those pictures has that spark that brings Scorsese, and his lens, to life.

Perhaps that was why he felt so dispirited at the thought of more interviews, more questions. It can't be a coincidence that those moments when he seems happiest are when we're not talking about his movies – when we might be touching on something he hasn't already gone through 20 times since lunch. I mention in passing his delightful 1974 film Italianamerican, which comprises an hour-long interview with his parents, complete with his mother's recipe for spaghetti sauce, and before I know it we're comparing childhood mealtime rituals.

I tell him that my Italian grandmother seems reluctant to relinquish the secrets of her fine lasagne. "It's a way of controlling what the family eats," he points out. "That's where the power is. Everything happened at the dinner table in my house. Food was the sacrament. And what kept the family together was being there at certain times and eating together."

And the eating is constant – you're always being offered something else. "That's it," he smiles fondly. "Food brings you in. 'Here, eat this, let's talk, let's see how you're doing. Let me see your face.' 'Ma, you know what I look like.' 'I wanna see your face!' I have three daughters, the youngest is three, and with her I'm the same. 'Take the hair outta your eyes, let me see that face.' I've become my mother."

In my grandmother's house, I say, it seemed we had to apply in writing months in advance to leave the table. "You can't just eat fast and get up and run around," he says, gently chiding me. "Sit. Relax. Digest. Have some fruit, some walnuts. Then coffee, then marzipans. And it goes on. It's really what life is about, isn't it? The family is your tribe. I'm fascinated by cuisine because it reflects culture. And it's so creative. That's really why your grandmother won't tell you about her lasagne. She's saying: You do it. You be the artist. She knows she's an artist. Now you gotta do it yourself now. Go make your own movies."

'Gangs of New York' is on general release