“Show, don’t tell” is an unwritten rule in filmmaking and storytelling that prioritizes expressing themes and meanings to the audience through visuals, rather than just telling them. Good dialogue often helps fill in the gaps of what’s going on with the plot and characters, but too much of it can overpower the audience with too much information. Martin Scorsese walks on a tightrope by not only providing great visual storytelling but also overlapping those visuals with narrations and character dialogue.
The main movies of his I am thinking of are both Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street. These movies are fantastic at giving us an inside look at characters’ mindsets, while also providing key information on what is currently happening in each scene. Normally, this overuse of narration would get tiring after a while, but Scorsese’s writing makes this kind of dialogue improve the scenes that they are in.
Understanding how Wall Street works or what goes on in a mafia crew can go over peoples’ heads, which is why the dialogue works so well. Shutter Island is another good example of dialogue’s importance to a story. The audience is just as confused as the main character is, so there is no point in having some kind of narration. Instead, Scorsese lays down hints that are disguised as normal dialogue, which makes the twist at the end make so much sense when watching it back. Scorsese uses the characters’ interactions to fill in the gaps that visuals can’t explain. It also helps that the dialogue is often so natural and sounds like how people talk in real life, which can sometimes be an oversight for writers. I highly recommend checking out Scorsese’s work and seeing just how transformative works can be to a visual medium.
