Harvey Keitel: The Art of Darkness
Harvey Keitel was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 13, 1939. Harvey was the youngest of 3 children, one brother and one sister. Harvey’s childhood was rough. He spent most of his times on the streets of New York. He was raised in a rather bad neighborhood, and he began to hang out with a local gang. Although things were bad, every summer he would go to Coney Island, climb rocks, and fish. He was a normal child raised in a very dangerous place, but he knew what was the right thing and what was the wrong thing to do. Although he was in a gang, he never really got himself into much trouble.
At the age of 16, Harvey Keitel did not know what to do with his life, so he decided to enlist in the Marines. Harvey was stationed in Lebanon, and stayed there for his 3 year term. When Harvey got out of the Marines in 1959, he was still unsure of what he wanted to do for a living. For the time being, he began a job as a shoe salesman. About a year later from selling shoes, Harvey began to take an interest in becoming an actor. He began to try out for part in off Broadway plays. Stella Adler and Strasberg found promise in Harvey Keitel, and they began to teach him ways to become a better actor. Even under these two stars wings, finding work was still very hard for Harvey. He did find some job opportunities in very off Broadway plays. While Harvey Keitel was a very good actor, it did not look like he was going to be going anywhere with acting.
Harvey Keitel was about to give up on acting altogether, but he decided to give it a second chance when he answered a newspaper ad by Martin Scorsese, who at the time, was a NYU student looking for actors for his thesis work, Who’s That Knocking On My Door?. When Harvey and Martin met, they became fast friends, and have stayed friends since than. Keitel has worked with Scorsese many times since than, and only Robert De Niro has worked with Scorsese more than Keitel.
Things were looking good for Harvey Keitel, but his career took a downfall when he was passed over for a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian, is arguably one of the best directors of his time. His lifelong dream was to make a movie about his faith, about Christ. He was inspired from a very young age by the church , art, and movies. The Last Temptation of Christ was a movie in which he was preparing for mentally for most of his life. I will discuss how certain artists and their works influenced scenes and casting in Last Temptation. Scorsese’s religious background
relationships, excitement, and loss. Refreshingly, the female characters’ stories are not exoticized, reduced, or manipulated to fit many of the tropes of male-dominant film culture. Cinematography and art direction in the film is beautiful. It’s dark and crisp with a pleasing high contrast between the darkness of night and the fluorescent lights of the city. The acting performances matched the quality of the film and were in general very good. This film was a great example of how sometimes the smaller