{"id":12882,"date":"2011-09-07T07:35:20","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T06:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=12882"},"modified":"2011-09-07T08:27:57","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T07:27:57","slug":"dvd-my-voyage-to-italy-martin-scorsese-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2011\/09\/07\/dvd-my-voyage-to-italy-martin-scorsese-documentary\/","title":{"rendered":"DVD: My Voyage to Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Martin Scorsese’s classic 1999 documentary on Italian cinema gets a welcome release on DVD this month.<\/p>\n

In addition to being one of the great directors of his generation, Scorsese has long been a passionate advocate for cinema itself by making documentaries and helping create the World Cinema Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1995 he made the four hour A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies<\/a>, which examined key films up to 1969, focusing on directors such as D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray and Stanley Kubrick.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Four years later he took a similar journey into the heart of Italian cinema and explored the films which had such an effect on him and his relatives growing up in New York.<\/p>\n

Scorsese was born to parents who both worked in the Garment district<\/a> and his father’s parents had emigrated from the province of Palermo<\/a> in Sicily.<\/p>\n

As a boy his parents and older brother would take him to the movies but he would also catch Italian films of the post-war era on the emerging medium of television<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In those days television was still in its infancy and the fledgling stations needed programming which they often filled with Italian movies.<\/p>\n

As sets were quite rare, relatives and friends would gather round to watch films in his family apartment in 253 Elizabeth Street<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was whilst watching movies dealing with the pain of post-war Italy that Scorsese saw his grandparents (who hardly spoke English) powerfully affected by what was on screen.<\/p>\n

In that was born a desire to see more Italian cinema and this four hour documentary charts the landmark films and directors of that era, including Vittorio de Sica<\/a>, Luchino Visconti<\/a>, Federico Fellini<\/a>, Roberto Rosselini<\/a> and Michelangelo Antonioni<\/a>.<\/p>\n