Sicilian Culture: News: Scorsece's 'Voyage' to the Neo World

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Scorsece's 'Voyage' to the Neo World
By Kevin Thomas & Susan King, Los Angeles Ties
October 24 2001 - - 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.
Scorcese's 'Voyage' to the Neo World
Italian movies aired on TV every Friday night in New York when he was growing up, recalls director Martin Scorsese, whose family came from Sicily. "They were on at the time because of the [immense] Italian American community in New York," he says. "There was no video at the time, so the reportage [about Italy] was mainly in newsreels in the theaters. My grandparents didn't go to the theaters, so this was the way of showing them what it was like in Italy."
Those 1940s films left an indelible mark on Scorsese, playing a major part in shaping his career--and they became the inspiration for "My Voyage to Italy," his four-hour documentary that opens today. (It's not the only salute to Italian films in town; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is in the midst of a festival called Italian Cinema Forever, which runs through Nov. 2).
In an interview this week, Scorsese said "My Voyage to Italy" came about as a result of discussions he had with Raffaele Donato, co-executive producer of the documentary. "He started with me as an archivist in 1986, and when we were traveling together, I would tell him about my enthusiasm for Italian cinema--more than my enthusiasm, my formation through them," Scorsese says. "He was a cinema studies writer and knows more about Italian cinema from the inside because he comes from Naples."
During their discussions about these films, Scorsese developed a "burning desire" to communicate his love for Italian cinema to young people.
"They would probably see these things on video," he explains, "therefore I wanted to do this on film to give them a sense of what the imagery and emotional power [of these movies] felt like to see on the big screen."
Another of Scorsese's goals is to spur an interest in Italian cinema of all kinds in America. "Besides showing a 10-to 15-minute overview of each film--his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker collaborated with him on this project--Scorsese talks about the circumstances of when he first saw the movie, the history of the filmmaker, the critical acceptance of the film, and the effect each one had on him and his career. Scorsese's passion for these films leaps off the screen.
Scorsese discusses the power of Vittorio De Sica's dramas "The Bicycle Thief" and "Umberto D," the operatic style of Luchino Visconti in his films "La Terra Trema" and "Senso," the magic, heart and surrealism of Federico Fellini's "I Vitelloni," "La Dolce Vita" and "81/2," the enigmatic beauty of Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura" and the emotional effect of Roberto Rossellini's "Stromboli," "Europa '51" and "Voyage to Italy."
Ironically, these groundbreaking neo-realist films were not originally accepted by the Italian moviegoing public. "It was a defeated nation," Scorsese explains from his New York office. "It was a nation that had bad breaks. [These films] were everything negative that had happened, and the country had to start from the rubble up. I think at a certain point, the minister of culture said about 'The Bicycle Thief' that 'we shouldn't be cleaning our dirty linen in public."'
Adds Scorsese, "Of course what happened was these films reflected the humanity in all of us and that re-represented Italy to the entire world."
When the world embraced these films, so too did Italy. "The majority of the people and the government were able to get behind them to a certain extent," he says. When Rossellini strayed from his neo-realism roots, critics and audiences lambasted him. In 1949, he made headlines when he had an affair and later a child with Ingrid Bergman, who starred in his poorly received "Stromboli." The two other features he made with Bergman, "Europa '51" and "Voyage to Italy," also were ridiculed. But Scorsese finds all three films fascinating and powerful, though flawed.
"They wanted him to continue to make neo-realism," Scorsese says. "Because 'Open City' and 'Paisan' were accepted outside [the country], they accepted neo-realism. So when he made the Bergman films, along with the personal scandal, it was time to condemn him."
Although some of these films are available on video and DVD, most are rarely seen in America. "Whenever you are dealing with Italian films, there is a difficulty with rights," he explains. "It took years just to get these clips. It has been so difficult with a normal Italian film, and when you get to the Rossellini films, it is even more difficult. There are so many different people who own rights in [various] countries. We would love to get [his] war trilogy, 'Open City,' 'Paisan,' and 'Germany Year Zero.' We would love to get his early '50s films."
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Italian Cinema Forever continues through Nov. 2 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Leo S. Bing Theater. All programs start at 7:30 p.m. Screening Friday is Rossellini's "St. Francis of Assisi" and Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Mamma Roma"; Saturday: "La Dolce Vita"; Nov. 2: Antonioni's "Red Desert." Admission is $7 for adults; $5 for museum and AFI members, seniors, and students with ID. For information, call (323) 857-6010.
Scorsese's 'Voyage' to the Neo World
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