SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

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!!

leonblackwood Review: Man, this 4 hour documentary really seemed to go on forever. It's full of footage from the early years in Italian cinema, but I don't think that I have ever watched an Italian movie. At first, I did find it quite interesting because it was good to see how far the world of cinema has progressed, but I lost interest after a while. I liked when Scorsese was talking about his family and how it was to grow up in America back in the early years, but once he starts to get into the various directors and actors that influenced him to make movies, I did drift off a couple of times. My main problem with the documentary was that I hadn't seen or heard of any of the movies that Scorsese was talking about, so I didn't have a clue why the movies were so important back in a day and age when I wasn't born yet. I can understand how the movies had changed his life, but it's a world that I really can't relate to. In all, it's a well put together documentary which gives a deep insight into a Italian cinema, but you have to have an interest in this genre to be able to find the whole 4 hour experience interesting. Average! Round-Up: Scorsese really hasn't lost his touch nowadays, and he is still pulling in huge audiences at the box office. This documentary really does show that he was a lover of movies at a really early age and it gives a complete different point of view about the world of cinema. With movies like the Taxi Driver "You Talking To Me", to films like Goodfellas and Casino, I doubt that were ever going to get a director that can mix deep drama with heavy violence so well. After watching were he got his influences from, it really doesn't seem like he would ever make movies the way that he does. Maybe thats because of his unique vision which your everyday person well never be able to create, write or direct, because he is coming from such a different angle which is deeply rooted inside him. As I director, I rate him highly, but as a documentary, it's just way too long. Budget: N/A Domestic Gross: $11,600I recommend this movie to people who are into there documentaries which show the many movies and actors which have influenced Martin Scorsese to make movies. 4/10

conannz Really enjoyed the perspective of film maker Scorsese on these featured films in this documentary. Also useful to understand the links between transplanted Sicilians in NY and the TV demographic that Martin grew up with. I have to say that not all the movies are as powerful in their impact to me- a non Italian but that is not a criticism. I really liked the way that a nations films convey a sense of history and culture and transmit that through universal themes to the present day and somehow translate further to other viewers in other cultures. It was great to have a context for many of the films reviewed. To balance the cultural resonance, universal themes and capture the human dimensions of the day is a grand thing and many of the movies featured did this. I particularly enjoyed the musical cadence influences in Senso. A great way to spend an afternoon. Update - 2006: Original viewing (above) was a film festival and was a bit of a (4hrs) marathon at the time. More recently I have viewed a DVD version which is easier to absorb. As a study of mostly neo realism in Italian and French film it now seems much more powerful as we get to see how different directors responded to the changes around them to get their films made in difficult times. In effect it is personal fim criticism by a master who has used the films in the documentary as part of his film story. As it includes clips from directors - Antonioni, Di Sica, Fellini, Renoir, Rossellini, Visconti and Blasetti as well as snaps from other films of the time - it is a great place to explore Italian cinema from.

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."