The 64-year-old won the top award over the directors of the most favorite films ot 2006. His win sees him take the top prize from directors of Dreamgirls, Babel, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen. This is his first DGA award after six previous nominations.
The win comes for his stunning depiction of the also nominated film The Departed. The Directors Guild of America (DGA) award for mob drama The Departed, boosts his chances of winning his first Oscar, This award comes as a well-deserved and great praise to the honored Martin Scorsese.
The prestigious prize is regarded as a reliable indicator as to who will go on to land the best directing Oscar. Only six times in the guild’s 58-year history has the winner failed to do so.
Scorsese accepting his award from director Steven Spielberg, joked that his film had been well received in US cities with an allegedly large mafia presence. “If you look at the graph at the spikes at where the picture is doing really great figures, it’s like looking at a veritable map of the American underworld,” he said. “[Las] Vegas, forget about it. It was amazing.”
However, backstage the Raging Bull director refused to be drawn into speculation on his chances of being named best director at the Oscars on 25 February. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s good to have a nomination.” “I didn’t think I’d be standing here tonight,” he added. “I was just trying to make a good picture.”
The truth is that Scorsese is the favorite to win the best director Oscar. He has been nominated several times before and up against two of this year’s other DGA nominees – The Queen’s Stephen Frears and Babel’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu as the best director Oscar. Dreamgirls director Condon left the ceremony empty-handed.
Bookmakers have made The Departed favorite to win both best picture and best director at this year’s Academy Awards. The Departed is notably Scorsese’s biggest commercial hit. The critics praised it as a triumphant return to the bloody crime genre the director helped pioneer in such films as “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas.”
Scorsese known as the King of gangster genre story telling has finally come into his own with the honor before Hollywood’s finest collective group of also worthy directors. The race for the Oscar is going to heat up, but Scorsese with this win has got to feel more worthy than not for his chances this time around.
The bridesmaid of previous Oscar nominations, Scorsese could be for the first time in the possession of the coveted Oscar to accompany his well-earned The Directors Guild of America (DGA) award.
