Martin Scorsese finished his first feature-length film, originally titled I Call First and later released as Who’s That Knocking at My Door. Made outside the studio system, it introduced key themes that would return in his New Hollywood work, including Italian-American identity and Catholic guilt. The film also began his long creative partnership with actor Harvey Keitel.
Who’s That Knocking at My Door opened in New York City, giving Scorsese a public foothold beyond festivals and campus screenings. The release helped signal that a new generation of American directors could make personal, street-level films with limited resources. This set the stage for Scorsese’s move into larger productions in the early 1970s.
Scorsese directed Boxcar Bertha for producer Roger Corman and American International Pictures. The project gave him practical experience working fast on a low budget within a commercial genre framework. It also helped him build credibility for getting more personal films financed afterward.
Mean Streets was released by Warner Bros. and quickly became a key early statement of Scorsese’s style: energetic camera work, popular music used as storytelling, and moral conflict set in New York’s Little Italy. The film launched Robert De Niro as a major Scorsese collaborator and marked Scorsese’s arrival as an important New Hollywood director.
Scorsese directed the documentary Italianamerican, centered on conversations with his parents about family history and immigrant life in New York. While smaller in scale than his crime films, it deepened his on-screen exploration of identity and memory. It also showed that his New Hollywood period included nonfiction work, not just studio features.
Warner Bros. released Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, a character-driven drama led by Ellen Burstyn. The film showed Scorsese could work inside the studio system while focusing on emotional realism rather than crime-world stories. Burstyn won the Academy Award for Best Actress, boosting Scorsese’s profile in mainstream Hollywood.
Taxi Driver was released by Columbia Pictures, depicting a lonely veteran and taxi driver whose anger turns into planned violence. The film drew controversy for its intense violence and for casting 12-year-old Jodie Foster as a child prostitute, but it also earned major critical recognition. It became one of the defining films of the 1970s American cinema wave.
At the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, Taxi Driver won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. The award confirmed Scorsese as an internationally recognized New Hollywood director. It also helped cement the idea that gritty, director-driven American films could compete at the highest global festival level.
On Thanksgiving night in San Francisco, the Band played a large farewell concert that Scorsese filmed for what would become The Last Waltz. The project brought his fiction-film storytelling skills into a music documentary setting, using multiple cameras and planned staging to capture performances clearly. It also showed how Scorsese’s New Hollywood period crossed between narrative cinema and documentary filmmaking.
United Artists released New York, New York, a long, stylized musical drama starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Scorsese attempted to blend old Hollywood musical traditions with a more modern, uneasy relationship story. The film’s box-office disappointment marked a turning point, showing that New Hollywood ambitions could clash with expensive studio expectations.
Scorsese made the documentary American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, centered on his friend Steven Prince telling stories from his life. The film’s intimate, conversational style contrasts with the controlled staging of New York, New York, while still reflecting the era’s interest in raw personal experience. It also connects directly to Scorsese’s circle from Taxi Driver, since Prince appeared in that film.
The Last Waltz was released by United Artists, completing Scorsese’s late-1960s-to-1970s run from independent debut to major studio and documentary work. The film capped a period when Scorsese helped define New Hollywood’s mix of personal storytelling, strong music choices, and New York-centered realism. After 1978, his next major phase would shift toward projects that led into the 1980s, including large-scale collaborations and new stylistic directions.
Martin Scorsese's New Hollywood period, 1967–1978