Martin Scorsese
Viaggio Nel Cinema Americano

More than a review, it is advice. If you missed it ten years ago, and maybe you haven't even caught up by buying the DVD (I have it, 24.49 Euros), and you haven't even bothered to download it from the Internet (you can find it on E-Mule without any problem), do everything you can to get hold of it. Because maybe you want to learn more about the history of cinema, and then there are two choices: either you endure some academic lesson from some overly inflated critic, or, better yet, you settle down on your home couch, turn off the light, and watch "A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies", the history of Hollywood cinema from its origins to the mid-Seventies, from the living voice of a great master of the Seventh Art: Martin Scorsese.

An extremely long documentary (almost 4 hours long), in which, through scenes, curiosities, interviews (and not just any interviews, interviews with Brian De Palma, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Arthur Penn, Howard Hawks, Clint Eastwood, Francis Ford Coppola, Nicholas Ray, Frank Capra, Samuel Fuller, Quentin Tarantino), the pioneering years of the cinema world, the Forties, Fifties and Sixties are reviewed. Through memories, technical details, little big curiosities, the mysteries of the studios, and everything that made cinema for fifty years. Scorsese, sitting on a classic director's chair, guides us on a unique and rare journey.

From silent films to the first western in history ("The Great Train Robbery", a 12-minute film dating back to 1903), to the birth of some great film genres (the western, the gangster movie, and the musical), without pauses, without idle times, a prodigious documentary, to be consumed in one go.
You will discover, for example, who David O’Selznick was, the King Midas of all Hollywood producers, the dictatorial father of films like "Gone with the Wind" or "Duel in the Sun", a control freak who drove Howard Hawks, King Vidor and Alfred Hitchcock crazy, because he wanted to replace the director, becoming a director and producer himself. He imposed heavy cuts, never accepted by Hitch in one of his early masterpieces, "Spellbound" and ordered to trim down "Duel in the Sun" to make it more effective. You will discover why David W. Griffith is one of the greatest directors in history, and why his "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) is one of the most important films in history (it had the merit of merging three genres, the western, the gangster movie, and the historical film, inventing at least two, the second and third).
And then again: the arrival in Hollywood of Friderich W. Murnau, after European triumphs like "Nosferatu" and "The Last Laugh", you will understand the role of the director, which Scorsese divides into three: the charlatan director, the experimental director, and the iconoclastic director. One of the focal points then, is the evolution of film genres. The western, for example, from the more elementary yet legendary "Stagecoach", to the complexity of Man and Existence that permeated Hawks' cinema ("Red River"), the latent racism of the Fifties (John Wayne in "The Searchers" is profoundly amoral and cynical), up to the social and revolutionary western of the Sixties, where the Frontier had disappeared, and characters were representations of everyday life (Paul Newman's rebel character in "The Left Handed Gun").

The gangster movie, from "Scarface" (1932), where Hawks dares to end the film with a semi-religious image (the Pietà) or other films, where under the pretext of telling spy and police stories, the notorious Hays Code, the code of cinematic morality, was freely transgressed. Until the early Sixties, if shootouts were to be shown, it had to be done in two ways: off-screen or by first showing the shot and then the dead body. Essentially, you couldn't show blood. Arthur Penn broke the rule, showing a long and bloody shootout in "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967). And then the musical, one of the audiences' most loved genres. A long reel of images, among the masterpieces of Vincente Minnelli, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and again Howard Hawks.
So much more, impossible to report everything in a single review. The dimensions of the screen, for instance. In silent cinema, parts of the screen were often obscured, then, in the mid-Fifties, it was decided that for epics the screen had to be enlarged, and so the very religious "The Robe" (1953) was the first Cinemascope film. The revolution had been accomplished, and great directors like Cecil B. DeMille made use of the huge width of the screen to direct their masterpieces, one example being "The Ten Commandments", a remake by DeMille of his early Twenties film (among others, in that very first film, there were scenes, such as the parting of the waters, that still impress today).

And then the great directors, the indispensable ones, those who cannot be missed. Some great films are dissected, meticulously and with perfect historical reconstruction, indispensable and crystal clear. Scorsese, bringing all his great passion for cinema into this documentary, talks to us about Orson Welles, how he was a genius and innovative, the comic who never laughed, Buster Keaton (some footage from "The Cameraman" is exceptional), Eric von Stroheim, a director who paid dearly for his exuberant freedom of expression (depicting nobility as corrupt perverts engaged in sex and trading their daughters, grim and funereal marriages, his famous "Greed", a harsh condemnation of money, we were in 1924, was cut to two hours from an initial nine). Josef von Sternberg, the director who made Marlene Dietrich famous, Billy Wilder, who played with fire without ever getting burned (if you haven't seen it, watch "One, Two, Three!", with a James Cagney for the ages), the big names always, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. Of Kubrick, he analyzes three works: "Lolita", "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Barry Lyndon", and, as a great director that Scorsese is, he makes us understand how in "Barry Lyndon", for example, the slow movements of the characters beautifully coincide with the slow camera movements and the sinuous music that sweetly underscores. Central in this documentary, the role of the director, a role in which Scorsese excels, explaining to us minutely all the imaginable techniques and some of the most famous directing techniques (the tracks, the dollies, the slow motions).

Delving also into lesser-known but highly capable directors. Great craftsmen like Allan Dwan, unjustly forgotten but who directed about 400 films in thirty years; the first female director in history, the great Ida Lupino (fifty years before Jane Campion); and the too often forgotten John Cassavetes. A director who worked with faces, with bodies, digging inside and dismantling them from the outside. "Faces", one of his great films (from 1968), is one of the most beautiful films ever. Who remembers it today? Nobody. So, it should be rediscovered as soon as possible. With one great, shall we say, national consolation: the American blockbuster was born thanks to an Italian film from 1914, "Cabiria", by Giovanni Pastrone. Griffith saw it and made "The Birth of a Nation".
And as Martin Scorsese says halfway through the documentary, after all, "we are all children of Griffith and Kubrick". Get hold of it if you can, it is an unforgettable experience.