Scorsese revives :: Film & TV News :: Articles

The above title was chosen because it was more interesting than "Martin Scorsese creates a wine advertisement." But it is also fitting because the ad is also way more interesting than most simple television commercials. Freixe's executive creative director Alex Martínez said in the spot's press release, "Never before has art been so close to and tied in with advertising." While that's a bit of PR hyperbole, there's no denying that the spot is just as much a film as it is any sort of advertisement.

The Key to Reserva isn't a full-length feature, but it does a good job making the wait for the delayed Shine a Light more bearable. The nine-and-a-half minute short takes as its premise that Scorsese, in one of his well-noted efforts to help preserve old films, came across the remnants of a lost Hitchcock script and intends to film what's still there himself. Viewers will need to invoke some good ol' fashion suspension of disbelief since Hitchcock never wrote his own scripts, but really, it's as fine an excuse as any to check out Scorsese taking on the signature Hitchcockian directing style.

The film can be viewed in high definition at Freixenet.es, or you can view it below:

Scorsese uses Bernard Herrmann's score from North by Northwest (who would later work on Taxi Driver) while the title sequence is meant to evoke the iconic Saul Bass style of North by Northwest, Vertigo and Psycho (he also later worked with Scorsese on Casino, Age of Innocence and Goodfellas). There's a lot of other neat homages there for Hitchcock fans to check out, so have some fun seeing if you can recognize where the various shots are drawn from.

Now if only Scorsese would get to work remaking those missing hours of Greed, or perhaps redo the original ending to The Magnificent Ambersons...