Did You Spot Martin Scorsese’s Brief Cameo in ‘Silence’?

Martin Scorsese has always slipped himself into his own films, whether in near-subliminal cameos, or with speaking roles both onscreen – Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, The King of Comedy – and off – over the phone in The Wolf of Wall Street, and on the EMS radio in Bringing Out the Dead, among others. While many of us assumed the Scorsese cameos ceased with Silence, the director still found a way to put himself in the religious epic.

One eagle-eyed fan, filmmaker and critic Ian Mantgani, spotted Scorsese’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Silence cameo and shared it on Twitter this week (via The Independent, h/t The Playlist). You might be thinking, “But wait, most of the movie is set in Japan so how the heck does Scorsese, a fairly recognizable Italian dude from Queens, not stick out like a sore thumb?” The filmmaker found a spot for himself in the film’s final scenes where Andrew Garfield’s Rodrigues sorts through religious iconography that’s been collected from those suspected of Christianity. There are multiple Dutch traders in the background of the scenes, thus granting Scorsese the perfect opportunity to cast himself as a random European visitor.

Check out that hat! Those glasses! If Scorsese is going to put himself in a movie, you bet he’s going to go all in. If you’re hungry for more Scorsese cameos, take a look at Fandor’s new video essay charting the filmmaker’s appearances in his own films, plus his cameos in others.