Los Angeles Times 
By Kevin Thomas
October 24 2001

Martin Scorsese's superb, monumental "My Voyage to Italy" began in his 
parents' Little Italy living room in the late '40s when his Sicilian 
immigrant family gathered around its new TV on Friday nights to watch Italian 
movies. He tells us that were it not for this weekly ritual, which started 
when Scorsese was 7 and already an avid moviegoer, he would have been "a very 
different person and a very different filmmaker."

Suddenly, the little boy who loved Roy Rogers was confronted with the harsh 
realities of neo-realism, which had such an impact on his parents and 
grandparents and which also marked the beginning of his interest in his own 
roots. Drawing upon memories, snapshots and a home movie recently given to 
him by a cousin, Scorsese warmly evokes his own childhood. And he tells us 
how, through the Italian cinema, he discovered that a tumultuous history 
caused families--especially those as impoverished as his had been in the old 
country--to believe they could only trust each other. Although Scorsese 
refers back to "Cabiria" (1914), the great historical spectacle that had a 
major influence on D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance," he concentrates on 
introducing us to the post-World War II cinema through the early '60s. 
Scorsese's dedication to film preservation and passion for film history is 
well-known, but here he truly scales the heights. His unobtrusive, succinct 
narration of his inspired choice of films and of clips to represent them 
reveals him to be as masterful a film critic as he is a filmmaker.

>From his highly personal perspective he provides consistently fresh and 
illuminating insights for viewers having their memories renewed by generous 
glimpses of one acknowledged masterpiece after another or who are being 
introduced to them for the first time. It hardly comes as a surprise that 
Scorsese's grasp of human nature, history and cinema are never less than 
profound, and it is imperative that his narration for this film be published 
in book form. A four-hour, six-minute running time (not including an 
intermission) can be wearying, but "My Voyage to Italy" is consistently 
enthralling.

Scorsese felicitously describes neo-realism as the juncture of history and 
art, born of a dire economic necessity that precluded the expensive 
conventions of commercial filmmaking and a need for Italian filmmakers to 
regain the honor and dignity of their battered nation through an honest 
depiction of its wartime ordeal and defeat. Documentary and fiction were 
conflated, as Roberto Rossellini started filming his landmark "Open City" 
while deadly skirmishes were still going on in Rome. Scorsese makes the case 
that Rossellini is as important to world cinema as Griffith and states 
rightly that his influence endures and can be seen in the flowering of the 
Iranian cinema, to cite but one example.

Scorsese pays special attention to the films Rossellini made with Ingrid 
Bergman that began in scandal with their romance and her pregnancy while 
still married to her first husband and ended in their divorce in the wake of 
their poor critical and commercial success. Scorsese redeems "Stromboli" from 
Howard Hughes' moralistic ending to show us how Rossellini meant for it to 
conclude with the spiritual awakening of its heroine, a Lithuanian refugee 
trapped in a marriage of convenience to a virile but uncomprehending 
fisherman.

Vittorio De Sica was Italy's Cary Grant in the 1930s but, after the war, 
astounded the cinema world with "The Bicycle Thief," which Scorsese quotes 
twice. He also places special emphasis on the less-known "Shoeshine," which 
traces the horrors of war on children, and on "Umberto D," in which an 
elderly retired bureaucrat finds it increasingly impossible for him and his 
beloved dog to survive on his meager pension.

Scorsese introduces us to Luchino Visconti, the Northern Italian 
nobleman-Marxist, via his neo-realist masterpiece "La Terra Trema," revealing 
the economic exploitation of a fishing village, and then moves on to give 
major attention to "Senso" (1954), a sweeping romantic tragedy of love and 
betrayal set in Venice under Austrian occupation as the bloody struggle for a 
unified Italy unfolded. Scorsese demonstrates in detail how Visconti emerged 
as a masterful stylist of operatic temperament who evoked a "neo-realism of 
the past."

Scorsese devotes the second half of his survey to the rise of Federico 
Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. He places more emphasis on Fellini's "I 
Vitelloni," that highly personal evocation of a group of 30-ish layabouts, 
emotionally immature and stifling in their seaside town (but lacking the 
courage to leave, and his even more autobiographical "81/2," than his 
landmark "La Dolce Vita," in which Marcello Mastroianni played a Roman 
tabloid columnist ensnared by the glittering milieu of pleasure-seekers he 
chronicles.

In bringing his ravishing survey to a close, Scorsese states simply that he 
wants to share his pleasure in experiencing films that he loves in the hope 
that it will contribute to keeping them alive. All film epochs in other 
cultures should be so lucky to receive such a celebration.

MPAA rating: PG-13, for some images of violence and sexuality. Times 
guidelines: Some scenes of wartime fighting, torture and abuse are too 
intense for children.

'My Voyage to ItalyJW A Miramax Films release of a Mediatrade presentation in 
association with a Cappa production of a Mediatrade production in conjunction 
with Paso Doble films. Director Martin Scorsese. Producers Barbara De Fina, 
Giulana Del Punta, Bruno Restuccia. Executive producers Giorgio Armani, 
Riccardo Tozzi. Editor Thelma Schoonmaker. Running time: 4 hours, 6 minutes.

Exclusively at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 
274-6860. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

Interview

Filmmaker speaks lovingly of the power, 
imagery of postwar films that shaped him.
 

By Susan King
Los Angeles Times
October 24 2001

Italian movies aired on TV every Friday night in New York when he was growing 
up, recalls director Martin Scorsese, whose family came from Sicily. "They 
were on at the time because of the [immense] Italian American community in 
New York," he says. "There was no video at the time, so the reportage [about 
Italy] was mainly in newsreels in the theaters. My grandparents didn't go to 
the theaters, so this was the way of showing them what it was like in Italy."

Those 1940s films left an indelible mark on Scorsese, playing a major part in 
shaping his career--and they became the inspiration for "My Voyage to Italy," 
his four-hour documentary that opens today. (It's not the only salute to 
Italian films in town; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is in the midst 
of a festival called Italian Cinema Forever, which runs through Nov. 2).

In an interview this week, Scorsese said "My Voyage to Italy" came about as a 
result of discussions he had with Raffaele Donato, co-executive producer of 
the documentary. "He started with me as an archivist in 1986, and when we 
were traveling together, I would tell him about my enthusiasm for Italian 
cinema--more than my enthusiasm, my formation through them," Scorsese says. 
"He was a cinema studies writer and knows more about Italian cinema from the 
inside because he comes from Naples."

During their discussions about these films, Scorsese developed a "burning 
desire" to communicate his love for Italian cinema to young people.

"They would probably see these things on video," he explains, "therefore I 
wanted to do this on film to give them a sense of what the imagery and 
emotional power [of these movies] felt like to see on the big screen."

Another of Scorsese's goals is to spur an interest in Italian cinema of all 
kinds in America. "Besides showing a 10-to 15-minute overview of each 
film--his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker collaborated with him on this 
project--Scorsese talks about the circumstances of when he first saw the 
movie, the history of the filmmaker, the critical acceptance of the film, and 
the effect each one had on him and his career. Scorsese's passion for these 
films leaps off the screen.

Scorsese discusses the power of Vittorio De Sica's dramas "The Bicycle Thief" 
and "Umberto D," the operatic style of Luchino Visconti in his films "La 
Terra Trema" and "Senso," the magic, heart and surrealism of Federico 
Fellini's "I Vitelloni," "La Dolce Vita" and "81/2," the enigmatic beauty of 
Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura" and the emotional effect of Roberto 
Rossellini's "Stromboli," "Europa '51" and "Voyage to Italy."

Ironically, these groundbreaking neo-realist films were not originally 
accepted by the Italian moviegoing public. "It was a defeated nation," 
Scorsese explains from his New York office. "It was a nation that had bad 
breaks. [These films] were everything negative that had happened, and the 
country had to start from the rubble up. I think at a certain point, the 
minister of culture said about 'The Bicycle Thief' that 'we shouldn't be 
cleaning our dirty linen in public."'

Adds Scorsese, "Of course what happened was these films reflected the 
humanity in all of us and that re-represented Italy to the entire world."

When the world embraced these films, so too did Italy. "The majority of the 
people and the government were able to get behind them to a certain extent," 
he says. When Rossellini strayed from his neo-realism roots, critics and 
audiences lambasted him. In 1949, he made headlines when he had an affair and 
later a child with Ingrid Bergman, who starred in his poorly received 
"Stromboli." The two other features he made with Bergman, "Europa '51" and 
"Voyage to Italy," also were ridiculed. But Scorsese finds all three films 
fascinating and powerful, though flawed.

"They wanted him to continue to make neo-realism," Scorsese says. "Because 
'Open City' and 'Paisan' were accepted outside [the country], they accepted 
neo-realism. So when he made the Bergman films, along with the personal 
scandal, it was time to condemn him."

Although some of these films are available on video and DVD, most are rarely 
seen in America. "Whenever you are dealing with Italian films, there is a 
difficulty with rights," he explains. "It took years just to get these clips. 
It has been so difficult with a normal Italian film, and when you get to the 
Rossellini films, it is even more difficult. There are so many different 
people who own rights in [various] countries. We would love to get [his] war 
trilogy, 'Open City,' 'Paisan,' and 'Germany Year Zero.' We would love to get 
his early '50s films."
*
Italian Cinema Forever continues through Nov. 2 at the Los Angeles County 
Museum of Art, Leo S. Bing Theater. All programs start at 7:30 p.m. Screening 
Friday is Rossellini's "St. Francis of Assisi" and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 
"Mamma Roma"; Saturday: "La Dolce Vita"; Nov. 2: Antonioni's "Red Desert." 
Admission is $7 for adults; $5 for museum and AFI members, seniors, and 
students with ID. For information, call (323) 857-6010.