Arguably New York's finest filmmaker, Martin Scorsese has churned out such classics as "Raging Bull", "GoodFellas" and "Taxi Driver". It's almost three years since his last screen outing "Bringing Out the Dead" received mixed reviews but his latest epic, "Gangs of New York", promises a return to form.

Tell us about the district of Five Points, where the film is set.

The Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London. He wrote about it in a book called American Notes and describes it as filthy, dirty and with pigs running up and down!

Why did you choose to recreate Five Points in Rome?

Well the thing is that the New York of 1846 to 1862 was very different from downtown New York now. Really nothing from that period still exists in New York. We had to make it.

Why was this film so important to you?

I hope people will begin to see that this is how America started. The amount of racism and the amount of hatred that existed. They threw everybody in from the boats, living together, expecting them all to get along regardless of religion or race. Naturally there's going to be friction and there's going to be an explosion. It was really the first test of immigration and democracy, a struggle that still hasn't ended.

And why Leonardo DiCaprio for your leading man?

He was able to give me what I wanted. It's the story ultimately of a young man who has to become a man, a young boy who needs a father. And in a sense, Bill, who's a father, has no son. But he has to kill him. He has to kill Bill. This was the conflict he was able to put on screen for me.