My Voyage to Italy

Scorsese plays clips from films by influential Italian directors (Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Fellini, Antonioni), edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and accompanied by his explanatory commentary. As is his custom, he speaks eruditely and with passion, but for the four hours of material, he doesn’t speak enough to overcome the intrusive thought that this is the film form of abridged versions of classic novels from Reader’s Digest. For viewers who don’t want to first spend hours in a cinema and then hours thinking about what they’ve seen and how to understand it. It’s hard to rate it, but that feeling after it ended, that naïve faith that I know cinematic Italy a little better…priceless. (12.09.2011)