Martin Scorsese was right to say how we watch The Irishman matters

The director was mocked for begging film fans not to watch his latest Oscar-tipped movie on their phones, but the truth is that this an issue we all have to grapple with

The director says a ‘big iPad’ is required at the very least (AFP/Getty)

There’s a scene in Lawrence of Arabia which is arguably one of the greatest entrances in all of cinema.

Omar Sharif’s character Ali emerges from a desert mirage, spending almost two minutes materialising from a blurred speck on the horizon.

The first time I saw it was at a screening at the Prince Charles Cinema off Leicester Square. The sheer vastness of the landscape on that huge cinema screen was jaw-dropping.

But when I saw the same film on another occasion – on DVD, on a 32-inch TV screen – the magic was lost. That intriguing speck on the horizon now looked like a smudge on my TV set.

The cinematography that captured the awe-inspiring scale of the desert didn’t work at home, leading me to wonder just how badly it would translate if watched by someone on an iPhone on an interminably long train journey.

We’re too late to push movies back into the cinema – Netflix creates big-budget, straight-to-TV-streaming blockbusters. But the peril that brings to the craft of cinematography was highlighted this week by Martin Scorsese.

In an interview, he pleaded with fans not to watch his latest Oscar-tipped movie The Irishman on their phones. At a push, he said, they could view it on a “big iPad, maybe”.

The cinema purist’s view divided social media, with some mocking him for being oversensitive, and others applauding him for taking a stand.

It begs the question of where this leaves reviewers. An action movie that blows the mind at the multiplex may underwhelm on a tablet – should the fact that not all viewers will see it in the ideal environment be factored in?

On the flipside, some vast dialogue-dense, tightly plotted offerings on the big screen have left me cold, only for them to appear on streaming services, where their subtitles and the ability to pause and skip back give them new life for me on the small screen. Does that affect how it should have been originally reviewed?

Our viewing habits – in terms of where we watch what we watch – have been fragmenting for decades since the introduction of cable and, later, streaming.

But Scorsese is right to raise questions about the format in which we watch, and not just the content.

Yours,

Dave Maclean

US features editor