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My Voyage to Italy
World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.
Release : | 1999 |
Rating : | 8.2 |
Studio : | Cappa Productions, MediaTrade, |
Crew : | Construction Coordinator, Production Design, |
Cast : | Martin Scorsese |
Genre : | Documentary |
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Reviews
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Intense and prolific filmmaker Martin Scorsese did not seem to be satisfied with projecting the influence he drew from Italian films from the 1940s, '50s, and '60s on his own films. So, he spends four solid hours explaining the details and expressions of at least thirty films, all condensed into about ten minutes each. He analyzes and discloses trivia about each of them and pours out all of his passion into this like water bore over his shoulders that he can't bear anymore.For awhile, I was wondering why he would spend so much time doing this. Why make a movie wherein most of the footage is taken from other movies? Why examine a condensed version of each film from beginning to end when we may want to see these movies ourselves? Well, after awhile, I realized the point of this. Scorsese had a very important reason why he wanted to make this epic documentary. It's because these films are what made him the filmmaker he is, not to mention the person he is, and their effects have not weakened throughout time. So, he wants to perpetuate their lives. He wants to interest younger generations, such as mine, in these films and their makers.And I'll tell you what. It works. I am now very interested in seeing a lot of these movies. I realize I have not seen nearly enough films by Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, or Vittorio De Sica. And I plan to, thanks to Scorsese's film.
Martin Scorsese's documentation of Italian cinema was an education for me. Being 1st generation Italian, I gained a better understanding of my parents and nonni's political and cultural experience. Thank you Martin for compiling these great works of art. I look forward to sharing this video with family and friends.
This labor of love represents one of the greatest triumphs of director Martin Scorsese's career. Picking up where his "Personal Journey Through American Movies" left off, "My Voyage to Italy" expands upon and enriches the themes of the earlier documentary as the focus shifts to Italian cinema. It's not merely a great film about Italian movies, though it is that--with the help of collaborators such as the always incisive film critic Kent Jones and the always reliable editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese crams a semester's worth of Italian film history and criticism into four hours. Beyond being a thoroughly entertaining and insightful cinema course, however, "My Voyage to Italy" is a marvelous film about the intersection between movies and day-to-day life, both on a personal scale (as Scorsese recounts the effect that Italian films had on him and his family as he was growing up) and an international one (as Scorsese delineates the relationship between movements such as Italian neorealism and the historical context of the time). This is a movie that reminds us that movies matter, and Scorsese and his collaborators appropriately make the connection between the films under discussion and more recent works from countries such as Taiwan and Iran---showing us that the tradition of socially engaged filmmaking is alive and well, and that the world is a richer place because of it. This is a gift to film lovers everywhere, and stands alongside "Casino" and "Kundun" as yet another recent masterpiece by perhaps America's greatest filmmakers.
Instead of doing commentary on the DVDs of his favorite Italian films, which he probably could do better than anyone else alive, being a masterfully adept teacher as well as the greatest working American director, Scorsese has decided to make his own film about them so he could relate them to his own development as a director. He relates how in the late '40s and early '50s, early Neo-Realist masterworks such as "Paisa" were shown often on New York area TV because of the large Italian-American population there, and what an indelible mark they made on him, a kid used to escapist Hollywood films. The films Scorsese's talking about, of course, are those of Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, Visconti, and Antonioni. He leaves out some of the lesser known master directors such as Valerio Zurlini and Francesco Rossi, but does drop in a fascinating little visit to the beautifully dreamlike and nearly forgotten films of Alessandro Blasetti (1860, Fabiola) in his discussion of the common elements, born of a 2000 year old tradition, of Italian-made fantasy films and neo-realist films, as opposed to most Hollywood films.Scorsese's sense of humor and eye for bizarre detail and the hilariously nuanced absurdities of some of these films are in top form throughout, and it's quite obvious from the get-go that he knows these films like the back of his hand. He's so passionate about these films that often his voice falters a little as you can hear him audibly moved to the point of tears in the voice-over!The films he goes into in considerable detail are "ROME, OPEN CITY," "PAISA," "GERMANY: YEAR ZERO," "STROMBOLI," "AMORE," "ST. FRANCIS OF THE FLOWERS," "EUROPA 51," "VOYAGE TO ITALY," "SHOESHINE," "BICYCLE THIEF," "GOLD OF NAPLES," "OSSESSIONE," "LA TERRA TREMA," "SENSO" (Scorsese uses a breathtakingly beautiful restored print when discussing this technicolor Visconti film), "I VITELLONI" (the direct inspiration for "Mean Streets," as well as George Lucas' "American Graffitti"), "LA DOLCE VITA," "L'AVVENTURA," "THE ECLIPSE," and then closes the nearly 4 and half hour discussion with a brilliantly wide-scoped dissection of his favorite Italian film: "8-1/2."