Filmstalker: Scorsese wins Directors Guild Award for Departed

Well done Martin Scorsese who wins the Directors Guild Award this year for The Departed (Filmstalker review). The film was up against Babel, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen.

The full list of nominees can be seen in this previous story. The story comes from Reuters.

The big commentary is that a huge percentage of DGA winners go on to take the Oscar, so that's well done again. Oh wait, it hasn't happened, sorry I wasn't really paying attention.

You know part of me is a bit jaded about all this because there's so much talk about how Scorsese deserves this, and that he has been nominated for so much before and never won something, so he...

No, no one deserves any of these awards for past work. These awards are clearly marked for what they are. If the Oscars want to be so anal about categories such as foreign film then they can be detail perfect about these ones. The awards are for this year, not for any previous years.

So forgive me if I feel a little worn out by all this but I do get annoyed when people are given honorary awards outside of honorary categories.

Scorsese should be winning this for The Departed and that's all. That film should be judged against the others listed above and the winner chosen. How unfair would it be if the other directors lose out because of all the previous films Scorsese has made?

All that aside, I think he does deserve it for this film, if the ending is somewhat flatter than the rest of the film.

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Has he ever won the award before?

Posted by: Simone | February 4, 2007 9:52 PM

This is the first time Scorsese has won a DGA Award for an individual picture. In 2003, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the DGA.

Apparently 51 of the last 57 winners of a best director DGA have gone on to scoop Best Director at the Oscars, and often their pictures win Best Picture too.

I for one can say I honestly believe Scorsese deserves this one. The Departed was a wonderful picture, and based purely on it's own merits it should win not only for Director, but for Best Picture too.

I'm not saying Scorsese should win Best Director because of his past work - that's why he'll receive a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in a few years - but the fact that he has been shafted out of the award on many occassions (especially in 1991 when Costner took Best Director for Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas) makes me HOPE that he wins for a film which is most-deserving of the prize.

Posted by: spidey1703 | February 5, 2007 1:40 AM

Scorsese should be winning this for The Departed and that's all

He should, but if he does then the general perception is bound to be that he got it as compensation for never having won anything before at least as much as because he actually deserved it. It happened with Bette Davis back in the 1930s (she was given an Oscar for one of her films around 1934/35 that was generally regarded as a make-up prize for having missed out on an Oscar for another film), I'm sure it's happened quite a few times since then, and it'll continue to happen. This is the Oscars, after all; it's not fair if the other directors lose out so Scorsese can be compensated, but fairness never had anything to do with it in the first place.

Posted by: James Russell | February 5, 2007 5:53 AM