LA Times, 10/24/2001: "My Voyage to Italy" review
Bat Child (Sue M.)
http://www.calendarlive.com/top/1,1419,L-LATimes-Calendar-X!ArticleDetail-45654,00.html
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MOVIE REVIEW
Scorcese's 'Voyage' to the Neo World
The sweeping and inspired documentary explores neo-realism as history
and art.
By KEVIN THOMAS, Times Staff Writer
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.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
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