My Voyage to Italy - (Mr Bongo Films) (1999) [DVD]

Scorsese provides a useful guide to his American-Italian family's native background. He tells you how as a young man growing up he discovered a lot of these films on TV,then as he got older sought them out.He shows you pictures of Italians in America from film and documentaries he saw in America and pictures of his own parents, uncles, grandparents,their lives,rituals.He drew so much from Italian neo-realism as did his family.De Sica's early films like The Bicycle Thieves,Umberto D have a special resonance in terms of people's struggle to survive,poverty and dignity.Rosselini has a special place with his neo-realistic classics,Rome Open City,Germany Year Zero and Paisan. His two later film Stromboli and Voyage to Italy leave a deeper impression on him of an Italy of the soul.Visconti the aristocrat who learned film from Jean Renoir covered early neo-realism in Ossessione and La Terra Trema,but Scorsese gives a lot of time to Senso a more melodramatic colour film,giving lots of scenes from the film.The last two directors,Fellini and Antonioni,are compared and contrasted,both equally impressing him. Antonioni comes out as more mysterious and challenging,but he loves the way Fellini treats the sources of artistic inspiration and memory. Scorsese gives you 10 to 15 minutes of scenes from each film,often giving away spoilers.It gave me the desire to search out Senso,Rome Open City,Voyage to Italy,The Bicycle Thieves,I Vitelloni,81/2,and to revisit L'Avventura and L'Eclisse.This is 4 hours of an impassioned essay by a film fan,a monument to the history of film.

A personal, passionate and profound documentary about neo-realist cinema and Scorseses relationship with it. Told with the energetic mix of biographical reflection of an Italian American boy growing up in the post-war years and from the point of of view of the most gifted filmmaker of his generation. Scorseses documentary acst new light on the generation of Italian filmmakers known as the neo-realists and similarly adds to the understanding of the great mans work as well.

A beautifully crafted documentary.

My Voyage to Italy brings us on a personal journey with Martin Scorsese. Scorsese was influenced by his parents and grandparents in a subtle way that shaped the way he viewed cinema. They did not do much specifically to teach him about his Italian heritage other than watching Italian movies on television or at the cinema together. As Scorsese explains, Italian cinema took him beyond Hollywood and showed him an alternative. He very convincingly shows us of the importance of world cinema (and how world cinema even influences Hollywood to some degree).

In a way, My Voyage to Italy brings us on a journey to Italy too. We see and experience so many Italian films that it is like a crash course on Italian cinema. Talking about films, especially when done by scholars, can be very dull as they try to impress you with their vocabularies. Scorsese, although speaking with expertise, is as far from dull as possible. He speaks eloquently and his straightforward commentary shines light on the subtle, and not so subtle, things we should pay attention to while watching the clips. The directors and films Scorsese discusses are stung together in a way that entices your interest in Italian movies. My Voyage to Italy is a beautiful film about beautiful films.

I highly recommend My Voyage to Italy for not only those who love Italian movies, but also for everyone who appreciates world cinema. The clips presented are both in Italian (with English subtitles) or English dub, with Scorsese's narrative being in English also. Although it runs for about four hours long, it stays just as interesting from its beginning to its end. Even if you have watched a couple of Italian films, or a dozen like myself, you will probably be very impressed with the movies presented and have a deeper appreciation for Italian cinema after watching My Voyage to Italy.