A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movie DVD

Despite its nearly four-hour length, this is a unique personal look at films from one of the great directors and film historians of the late 20th century. The film consists of head and shoulder shots of Scorsese talking to the camera for a minute or two, followed by 10-15 minutes of film clips with Scorsese's voice-over. Scorsese approaches the films in terms of how they affected him primarily as a director and secondarily as a storyteller/film fan. The segments include "The Director as Smuggler," "The Director as Iconoclast," and so on. The journey begins with silent masters such as D.W. Griffith and ends in 1969—when Scorsese began making films; as he says at the end, "I would not feel right commenting on myself or my contemporaries."

Martin Scorsese, perhaps the most avid filmmaker of all the great film directors, has produced a masterful account of the world's largest and most powerful film industry. Scorsese's love affair with cinema began in his childhood, and his passion for the medium and its history makes him a compelling guide. Over three and a half hours, the program is a treasure trove of cinematic moments, all lovingly presented in their original screen ratios. Classics from the silent era (Intolerance, The Crowd) are here, as are examples from the major American genres: westerns (from The Searchers to Unforgiven), musicals (Busby Berkeley to All That Jazz) and gangster films (Public Enemy to Point Blank) , along with such groundbreaking masterpieces as Sunrise, Citizen Kane, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Scorsese's personal journey will delight, inform, and entertain not only film buffs, but anyone who has ever sat in a darkened theater, spellbound by the silver screen.

Language

English

Subtitles

English