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Last Updated: November 26. 2011 1:00AM John Horn/ Los Angeles Times

You think you know by now what you’ll get in a Martin Scorsese movie.

Someone will be gothically whacked. A person’s tenuous grip on reality might slip away, possibly in a mental institution. Vengeance will be doled out — with guns, knives, fists or anything else that causes great bodily injury.

And a sweet orphan will search for a new family.

What looks at initial inspection like Hollywood’s version of a shotgun marriage — the man behind “Goodfellas,” “Raging Bull,” “The Departed,” “Shutter Island,” “Cape Fear,” “The Aviator” and “Gangs of New York” directs the 3-D family film “Hugo” — makes sense if you look closer.

In some ways, Scorsese’s personal life and professional interests have guided him toward a gentle movie like this, even while audiences were cowering from his prior mayhem.

“It’s just natural this time,” says the director, who recently turned 69 and is the parent, with book editor Helen Morris, of a 12-year-old daughter, Francesca, “in particular experiencing living life with not only parenting but a child being a partner with you and with your wife.

“There have been great films made about children, and some great films made from the point of view of children. But what does a child really understand or perceive?” Scorsese says, explaining what captivated him about the project.

Adapted by screenwriter John Logan (“The Aviator”) from Brian Selznick’s popular richly illustrated children’s book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” Scorsese’s new movie is a Dickensian drama about a lonely boy’s quest for happiness.

The film also brings to life some of the Oscar-winning director’s longtime obsessions: the history of cinema and film preservation.

“Hugo” simultaneously stands on its own as a drama while also being a love letter to the creation of the medium.

Boy, man relationship focus

Like the novel, “Hugo,” in theaters now, is focused on the relationship between Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), who tends to clocks in a 1930s Paris train station, and an ornery toy seller (Ben Kingsley).

Hugo’s father (Jude Law) has long since died, and the drowning of Hugo’s alcoholic uncle (Ray Winstone) has left the young man fighting not only poverty and hunger but also a dictatorial station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), resolved to dispatch the urchin to an orphanage.

As he maintains the station’s massive timepieces, Hugo labors to fix a child-size mechanical man, or automaton, that, once repaired, might be able to transcribe a message from the boy’s late father.

The automaton carries other data in its wind-up memory, though, and those images at first threaten and then cement the relationship between Hugo and the toy seller, who turns out to be Georges Melies, a pioneer in early cinema before his career, and many of his films, went up in flames.

Selznick, who is distantly related to “Gone With the Wind” producer David O. Selznick, was inspired to write the book by seeing “A Trip to the Moon,” the 1902 Melies short.

The very things that make “Hugo” attention-grabbing are also part of its commercial challenge.

Cineastes who are drawn to Scorsese’s mature movies might be reluctant to see a film about a 12-year-old boy. Parents, open-minded enough to take their kids to a Scorsese film, could see their younger children squirming when “Hugo,” which runs about two hours, delves into the history of motion picture production.

And the film has formidable weekend competition in the PG-rated realm from “The Muppets,” “Arthur Christmas” and the second weekend for “Happy Feet Two.”

But audiences of all ages should be more than a bit intrigued to see what one of American movies’ most celebrated directors can do with a family film, particularly with stereoscopic cameras. Like Melies, who began his show business career as a magician, “Hugo” proves that Scorsese still has a few tricks up his sleeve.

(For those who want to see Scorsese’s old tricks, the Emagine Novi theater is showing “The Departed” and “The Aviator” free at 10 a.m. today and Sunday, respectively.)

Special effects developed

Melies, who died in 1938, was astonished when he saw an 1895 presentation from the Lumiere brothers.

“We sat with our mouths open without speaking, filled with amazement,” he wrote of seeing one of the world’s first movies.

Borrowing some techniques from his magic shows and inventing others, Melies created and refined many filmmaking techniques still in use today — dissolves, time-lapse photography and special effects that allowed for transformations and substitutions.

Working a century later, Scorsese, who if he wasn’t behind a camera could be chairing the film studies department at a university, followed his French predecessor in using the newest tools and plunged into 3-D filmmaking.

“Melies was aiming that way anyway,” he said. “There is some footage of his that’s in 3-D that’s been preserved in France right now.”

Still, today’s 3-D cameras are bulky and require complicated lighting. Scorsese was further restricted in how long he could work with his young actors — just four hours a day. And the director would occasionally complain that a shot wasn’t in focus — only to realize he was reviewing footage without his 3-D glasses on.

From the moment the film begins, you notice that Scorsese is using his stereoscopic cameras to give the film definable depth. The station is often filled with steam and smoke, escaping from heat vents, pipes, locomotives and even warm croissants, which helps to separate foreground from background. This makes the station’s hallways, passageways and galleries feel like a maze, with Hugo scurrying through it.

While he concedes the technology has been misused here and there — “over the years, there’s been some gimmicks” — he was certain it was the right choice after he saw James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

“I’ve collected 3-D pictures over the years. When I was a child, I had these postcards, I had two images on them, I could put them in a stereoscope and look at them. I’ll never forget Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders and that sort of thing. And then when you see (‘Hugo’) in 3-D, the impression you feel is you’re there. You see around the person. You could feel the dust. And it transports you to another place.”

Audience education needed

Producer Graham King says he realizes audiences will need some educating. “Telling parents that they can take their kids to a Scorsese movie — it’s a bit tough,” he says.

The director, who admits he could show none of his recent movies to his youngest daughter, says to parents and children alike: Come on in.

“Of any films that I could have made that would be considered a family film, I would make this, because of the boy,” says Scorsese, who has yet to decide what his next project will be.

Screenwriter Logan says no matter how operatic Scorsese’s films might be, they are connected by a common element. “Marty is at heart an absolute humanist,” Logan says. “What excites him beyond technical achievement is getting inside the souls of human beings. It could be ‘Taxi Driver’s’ Travis Bickle, and it could be Hugo Cabret. It’s what he does best.”

‘Hugo’

Rated PG for some action, peril and smoking

Running time: 127 minutes

Scorsese for free

To celebrate the release of Martin Scorsese’s first 3-D film, “Hugo,” Emagine Novi is showing some of the famed director’s other films at no charge.

‘The Departed”The Aviator’

44425 W. 12 Mile, Novi

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis

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