My Voyage to Italy

I got back from Italy a few days ago.  Of course, I was there for the food.

And for the antiquities.

And for the sense of history all around you.

And for the scenery.

Not to mention the people watching.

But a couple of hours after landing in Rome, I snapped the throngs of tourists at the Trevi fountain,

and foremost in my mind was Federico Fellini,

who used the fountain in a famous scene from his 1960 film La Dolce Vita.

And for the rest of the trip, the images I saw around me often brought to mind the images from classic Italian films.  "I saw these movies.  They had a powerful effect on me.  And you should see them."  Not my words but Martin Scorsese's, spoken in his nearly-four-hour-long documentary about Italian cinema My Voyage to Italy (1999).

In his film, Scorsese discusses the work of Fellini, along with that of other major Italian directors Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni, presenting generous clips from many great films that will make you want to fill a Netflix queue.  It's like sitting in on a university class taught by the best film professor imaginable.  His enthusiasm is infectious.

And the movies Scorsese discusses are ones that every serious student of film should know.

Here are a couple clips. The first focuses on Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

The next focuses on Visconti's Senso (1954).