The Questionable Success of Unquestioned Excess: Martin Scorsese & The Wolf of Wall Street

American Capitalism as envisioned by Academy Award winning director Martin Scorsese.

Both hailed as black comedy and denounced as glorifying immorality, Martin Scorsese's latest film The Wolf of Wall Street teams the master American auteur with star Leonardo DiCaprio for the fifth time, alongside Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie. DiCaprio stars as Jordan Belfort, an unscrupulous stockbroker who shamelessly sells worthless "dog-shit" stock to unknowing dupes and lives a life of debauchery on the proceeds - at least as long as the FBI don't catch up to him. The lifestyle of the rich and (in-)famous was never shown in such explicit detail before the production studio gave Scorsese and DiCaprio the artistic, creative freedom to "push the envelope" of contemporary American cinema as they saw fit, without restraint. And that indeed they did in a contemporary story of excess that rivals the infamously decadent Caligula.

In his latest e-Book, Australian National Film & Sound Archive former SAR Research Fellow Robert Cettl takes an in-depth critical look at The Wolf of Wall Street in relation to Scorsese's work and critical reception: at its ethical overtones (or lack of them), its celebration of excess and its divisive critical interpretation as allegory, satire and/or dark comedy.

"The first critical treatise of Scorsese's modern masterwork."