‘Yes, it’s true, it’s got my name on it, but it’s a family film’, Martin Scorsese says, laughing down the phone from New York City just hours before boarding a plane to London. But there's a hint of exasperation in his voice too. He must be hearing this a lot. A few days after our interview, the man behind ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Goodfellas’ will shake hands with Prince Charles at the Royal Command Performance of ‘Hugo’, a sure sign that his new film, a 1930s-set family fantasy shot in 3D and about a Parisian orphan’s brush with early silent cinema, features no bad language, no blood and no Joe Pesci threatening to carve you into little pieces.

‘To tell the truth, I wanted to make a film that my daughter could watch’, he explains. ‘I’m lucky I have a young daughter, she’s 12. I had daughters in my thirties and I had another at 57, and I’m a little bit older, not so youthful perhaps, but we spend pretty much every day together, and we are friends. So when I go to work I can see the world from her eyes’.

Of course, it wouldn’t be surprising if Scorsese’s daughter were more of a cinephile than most 12 year olds. Not only is her dad one of the world’s leading film directors, a man who has sustained a world-class career from ‘Mean Streets’ in the 1970s to ‘Gangs of New York’ in the new millennium, via ‘Raging Bull’ in the 1980s and ‘The Age of Innocence’ in the 1990s, but he is also a tireless propagandist for film history and world cinema. This 69-year-old Italian-American puts his name and money to film restorations, makes documentaries on past filmmakers and has now directed ‘Hugo’, a work with a celebration of silent cinema at its heart. A film for kids as well as adults, it’s intelligent and utterly free of cynicism. ‘Good, that’s what I was hoping’, says the unmistakable voice at the other end of the line – speedy, staccato and New York to the core.

I ask whether he finds much time to keep up with new cinema and younger filmmakers. ‘No, it’s hard to keep up,’ he begins, before launching into how much he loved the small British film ‘Archipelago’ by Joanna Hogg from earlier this year. I realise he misinterprets my question as only being about British cinema, but I let him go on. His enthusiasm is fascinating. ‘Somebody gave it to me to watch when I was filming “Hugo” and I liked the relationship it had with the landscape. I like Lynne Ramsay [the director of ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’] too, and Andrea Arnold.’ When I mention that Arnold has just released a low-budget, defiantly auteurist version of ‘Wuthering Heights’, his ears prick up. ‘Oh, really?’

This might be a phone conversation, but I’m sure he was reaching for pen and paper. It’s an arresting image: Martin Scorsese, packing to travel to London, readying himself to premiere ‘Hugo’ in London and Paris, but scribbling down on a scrap of paper that he must remember to catch up with a radical new British version of ‘Wuthering Heights’ when – if – he ever manages to find a spare hour or two.

Read Time Out's movie review of 'Hugo'

From Time Out London