My Voyage to Italy (Italian: Il mio viaggio in Italia), 1999.
Directed by Martin Scorsese.
SYNOPSIS:
Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese embarks on a journey through Italian cinema history.
Let’s get something straight, right now. If you’re a film lover, you will quite happily soak in Scorsese’s documentary of Italian cinema for all four hours of its run-time. If you’re not much of a film lover, if you still think Transformers is the pinnacle of cinematic accomplishment, My Voyage to Italy is not for you.
You’re more than welcome to go pick up a copy and gaze lovingly on Anita Ekberg’s glorious…achievements, but let me stress that run-time for you again: this documentary is four hours long. If the prospect of Martin Scorsese talking, or reading subtitles, or not witnessing explosions frightens you, take a step back.
If you haven’t been scared off by that introduction, well done. Let’s get into the meat of the matter. Sometime in 1999, whilst everyone else was buzzing on millennium bugs and a phantom that wasn’t very menacing, Martin Scorsese decided to make a documentary about Italian cinema and what it meant to him. Yes, he of the highly acclaimed films and the fascinating eyebrows. He took the time to sift through footage of thirty-odd films he’d seen and loved growing up in New York. He sifted through it and he found some of the most beautiful, the most affecting moments in the history of Italian cinema.
Moving in a chronology more in sync with his own experiences than with the traditional forward-motion marching of time, he tells the story of how he fell in love with film. We learn about Friday night Italian films, playing on a black and white television up in an Elizabeth Street apartment, gripping a very young Scorsese with haunting accounts of the war in Italy.
Films like Paisá (1946) and Shoeshine (1946) struck him with their vivid sense of reality, depicting the tough, unforgiving world of post-war Italy through the eyes of children that could have so easily been him. Cabiria (1914) and The Iron Crown (1941) told epic, deeply expressive stories of ancient Carthage and medieval Italy, capturing the texture and the detail of their periods like nothing Scorsese had ever seen in a Hollywood swords and sandals picture.
From here, Scorsese settles into a steady pace, cycling through a list of Italian classics as long as your arm. Well. Not your arm. Maybe Richard Kiel’s arm, he’s tall enough. We linger just long enough on each film to pick out the interesting bits, sometimes replaying them so we can catch a brief expression on an actor’s face.
It’s all too easy to lose yourself in these powerful, passionate images. The stark desperation of The Bicycle Thief (1948), the revolutionary romanticism turned ugly in Senso (1954) and the small-town heartaches of I Vitelloni (1953) all become strangely familiar. We spend maybe five or ten minutes with each and it feels like a lifetime.
Time after time, Scorsese throws us in the deep end with these films, introducing characters here, tossing out a telling remark there. Even if you’ve forgotten to turn your subtitles on, there’s a remarkably universal feel to these films. You get what these films are saying; the story is summed up in a few luxurious minutes without spoiling the intricacies and subtleties of the plot. You start to wonder about the potential for this approach. Never mind those rubbish jump-cut edited cinema trailers, Martin Scorsese and a microphone is the future of film promotion.
And that’s only half-joking. Scorsese’s voice dominates My Voyage to Italy, so much so that he becomes almost synonymous with the images. He pitches his delivery just right for the material; relaxed, authoritative, with occasional fevers of passion just as we get to his favourite bits. You can feel a palpable excitement in his voice as he pitches the crowded media circus illusions of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) against Antonioni’s mysterious wilderness romance L’Avventura (1960). See? It’s catching.
Fellini’s gloriously surreal 8 ½ (1963) finishes as every single batty character in the film parades down a staircase in one great big sensory overload. As you’re watching this, you realise this is pretty much what My Voyage to Italy has done for a staggering two hundred and forty six minutes.
There is so, so much more to be said about these films, but that’s Scorsese’s job here; it’s his documentary, so let’s not take that away from him. Normally, documentaries are a bit like buses. There’s one that comes along every ten minutes, but it’s rarely one you want. Running away somewhat irresponsibly with this documentary/bus metaphor, consider My Voyage to Italy as the speedboat of documentaries –never in a million years did you expect anything like this to come along, but hell, it’s a speedboat, why wouldn’t you take a look?
Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.
Movie Review Archive
Originally published September 26, 2011. Updated April 10, 2018.
