MARIO GAUCI I've often claimed that I admire Martin Scorsese far more as a film historian than as a film-maker & something like this only reaffirms that notion. While I've watched A PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE THROUGH American CINEMA (1995) years ago, I've only managed now to catch up with its follow-up; although it doesn't seem to me that the previous documentary was as selective as this one, his later (& much shorter) A LETTER TO ELIA (2010) was equally choosy. While in a way this stringent choice of material - in this case, some 20 movies discussed over a 4-hour time slot - makes for a rigorous analysis of the films in question (almost playing like a selected, scene-specific audio commentary from a distinguished fan), one can't help feeling that the movies or film-makers which have been bypassed are being unjustly discriminated against! Yet, this is Scorsese speaking about the handful of Italian movies that have meant the most to him on a personal & artistic level...so there are (mainly) 8 Rossellinis, 4 De Sicas, 3 Viscontis, 3 Fellinis & 2 Antonionis. As much as I enjoyed listening to him dissecting each of these films for 10 minutes at a time, the fact that he (mostly) concentrates on celebrated World Cinema classics to begin with also means that he is not really stating anything new (unlike, say, his then-'surprising' championing of Allan Dwan's neglected oater SILVER LODE [1954] in his previous documentary which had stuck with me enough to purchase the film on DVD much later on & come to love it myself)! While I can understand that some of the omitted titles just might not have been available to view as he was growing up, some of the missing stuff IS perplexing: he doesn't mention De Sica's classic MIRACLE IN MILAN (1951) but instead concentrates on the lesser-known THE GOLD OF NAPLES (1954; the only film included I've yet to watch) & skips over LA NOTTE (1961) when he gets to Antonioni's famous trilogy! He also commits the common mistake of dismissing Rossellini's work between his Bergman & TV phases (1955-1965); I, for one, am glad that his VIVA L'ITALIA (1961) is being released on BluRay by Arrow next year in 2 versions! Again, the decision on what to include may have willfully been restricted to his formative years...but, the thing is, he is so good at analysing the films included that one longs to learn his opinion on lesser-known masterpieces like Mario Monicelli's THE GREAT WAR (1959), Luigi Comenicini's EVERYBODY GO HOME! (1960), Dino Risi's THE EASY LIFE {IL SORPASSO} (1962), Vittorio Cottafavi's THE 100 HORSEMEN (1964) & Valerio Zurlini's THE CAMP FOLLOWERS (1965)! His complete passing over of Mario Bava, Pasolini & Bertolucci is genuinely baffling, to say the least...but, for what it's worth, what is included makes one yearn to watch the films again & it served as a personal reminder that some of these I've only watched once ages ago!!

artihcus022 This is a documentary about movies. It is also a masterpiece that can be appreciated on it's own terms. IL MIO VIAGGIO IN ITALIA is an essay film that uses clips from Italian masters(Visconti, DeSica, Fellini, Antonioni and above all RossellinI) not in the club footed manner of Oscar montages, but with the care and attention of detail of an art historian contemplating Renaissance architecture. It's like the scene in F FOR FAKE when Welles looks at the Chartes cathedral, the same sense of elegy and beauty, and defiance.But just as importantly, the film is about Scorsese himself. He begins by noting that the total absence of non-American films in the cultural landscape and the influence these films had on him. Then he shares recently uncovered video footage of his father(who Scorsese resembles a great deal) as a young man and then footage of street life in New York as a boy. The film goes through each Italian film step-by-step, inch-by-inch and the effect generated by the use of the clips is very poetic. At the end of the film, Scorsese talks about Fellini's 8 1/2, a film about a film-maker who goes through a period of crisis, of reflection and then resumes rejuvenated and full of affirmation of life.

ishmaelite Trivia or not, the fact that M.S. refers repeatedly to Umberto's D.'s dog in this film as "Flag" has been driving me nuts. I have seen this great movie several times and there's no way, the actor enunciates Flag: the terrier's name is pronounced, "Fleek." I always thought it was a little homage to the french/American slang for flick(s), (alt. plural flix.) I doubted it was the french slang for cop i.e "flic")Undoubtedly other sites that include Umberto D have hashed over this subject ad N . My big problem is that Mr. S. knows more about film than almost anyone - historically included. And HE says it's Flag.It's quite likely the filmmakers had seen read m.k. rawlings book and seen the surprisingly impressive move. Rawlings and deSica shared a unflinching worldview, sensitivity not sentimentality. That said, I will always remain an aflickionata, but I'd love to be enlightened if I'm missing something.

aw-komon-2 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."