Element 3 - Flashback and flash forward

Martin Scorsese uses flashbacks quite a lot in his films. He uses them when someone is remembering something important or when someone is discussing something and it flashes back to help the viewer remember that particular scene.

Scorsese also uses flash forwards in some of his films. He does this in Gangs of New York. At the start of the movie there is a big brawl between the Irish gang and the Native gang. A young boy's dad is killed. The boy runs away and hides. the movie flash forwards from 1846 to 1860. The young boy is now out to get the man that killed his father.

One of his more noticeable trademarks is how he begins his movies with segments taken from the middle or end of the movie. For example in GoodFellas, the opening scene is 3 mobsters shooting and stabbing a half-dead man in their car boot. It then flashes back to when the 3 mobsters were young boys. The story carries on from when the boys are young and eventually we see the scene where the 3 mobsters are killing the man in the car boot again. This technique shows how the movie progresses to that scene. The scene at the start of the movie that we eventually see again is a very important scene in the movie, the man the 3 mobsters killed was another mob leader. this sparked a gang war. This technique adds interest to Scorsese's films.