Scorsese’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.