ROBERT
DE NIRO

Robert De Niro was born in New York City on 17 August 1943. New York also recurs as a setting in his collaborations with Martin Scorsese, from Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976) to Goodfellas (1990). These films give very different meanings to belonging: a neighbourhood can offer a place in the world, while a crowded street can leave someone profoundly alone. For FLM.RED, revisiting De Niro begins with those relationships between a person and his surroundings. The force of a performance emerges through the people who answer him, the rooms he enters and the attention he expects to receive.

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II (1974) cast De Niro as the young Vito Corleone. He won the supporting-actor Oscar at the 1975 ceremony. Raging Bull (1980), directed by Scorsese, brought the leading-actor Oscar in 1981 for his portrayal of boxer Jake LaMotta. The awards belong to the ceremonies held after each film’s release year. Seen together, the roles invite a comparison between the acquisition of authority and the difficulty of living with it. In FLM.RED’s reading, an economical gesture from Vito and an explosive reaction from LaMotta ask different questions about how a man expects others to respond to him.

Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle offers a more isolated perspective. Following him does not require accepting his account of the world as the film’s own. The separation between a character’s conviction and what an audience can observe is central to FLM.RED’s approach to the performance. A Bronx Tale (1993) then shifts the position from which De Niro tells a story: his feature-directing debut also casts him as bus driver Lorenzo Anello. With a screenplay by Chazz Palminteri, the film places Lorenzo’s example beside the influence of local mobster Sonny. Its father-and-son relationship allows authority to be considered through everyday conduct and the choices a child sees adults make.

Meet the Parents (2000) moves paternal scrutiny into comedy with Jack Byrnes, the formidable father faced by Ben Stiller’s Greg. A suspicious look or a carefully prolonged question now feeds the discomfort of a family visit. This is a useful companion to the dramas because the response of the other performer becomes so visible: the harder Greg tries to reassure Jack, the more material the encounter gives the comedy. Across these settings, De Niro’s work offers contrasting studies of control, vulnerability and mutual assessment. The film links below come from titles currently associated with him in FLM.RED and do not represent his complete filmography.