My Voyage to Italy

My Voyage to Italy (1999) is Martin Scorsese's four hour personal documentary about Italian cinema. It does not lecture. It starts in his family's living room in New York, with films watched on television. Watching them with his grandmothers was the only way he had of knowing Italy. It concentrates on neorealism and what followed: Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Fellini, Antonioni. When Scorsese describes a film he stops on a shot and explains why it was cut there and why the camera stands where it does. So what the documentary teaches is not a list but a way of looking. It is his second film of this kind. The first was A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies in 1995; this is the Italian half. It runs 246 minutes. Good for: film history, neorealism, and anyone who wants to understand why they love what they love. Less good for: four hours, and it shows long extracts from most of the films it covers, which means substantial spoilers for anything you have not seen. Scorsese's choices are personal, and some major names are passed over quickly or left out.