FRANCE: Iconic film-maker Martin Scorsese brings his new crime drama to Europe with a star-studded Paris premiere

Hollywood director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio attended the French premiere of their new movie 'The Departed' at the cinema Grand Rex in Paris on Tuesday (October 10). Movie fans began gathering in the early afternoon to catch a glimpse of the director and his muse of the moment, Leonardo DiCaprio, who has appeared in all three of Scorsese's most recent films. The movie also stars Hollywood heavymen Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Alec Baldwin and actress Vera Farmiga. The film, a remake of Hong Kong hit 'Infernal Affairs', is set in South Boston and focuses on the battle between Irish-American mobsters and the police. Nicholson plays a violent and deranged gangland boss who unwittingly takes an undercover cop, played by DiCaprio, into his ranks. But the gangland leader also has his own spy, played by Damon, on the inside of the police squad assigned to investigate his empire. Farmiga plays the love interest, caught between the pair of spies as she builds a relationship with each of them as both are on the verge of discovering each other's real identities. "Each character could be painted individually and then interwoven, and so I could do 25 days with Jack Nicholson and he leaves, and I could do another 30 days with Matt Damon and he leaves, and then the rest with Leo (Leonardo Dicaprio). It's a matter of weaving, we have also Vera Farmiga, Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin. If we could just concentrated on each aspect, each little detail of what we are doing on set, and then I had to step aside, and my editor and I would look at, 'alright, he is coming in here, he is too much in there, take in', it's a balance, it's really a balancing act," Scorsese said of working with his star-studded cast. DiCaprio, who also featured in Scorsese's Gangs of New York and The Aviator, said: "Any actor would like to be in a Martin Scorsese movie, I don't know any one who wouldn't." Farmiga described working with the two young Hollywood stars as "electrifying".

ITN Source | October 13, 2006

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