Italoamericano

Martin Scorsese's "Italianamerican" is a documentary, really a home movie in which the legendary director sits down with his parents and listens to them reminisce about their experiences of growing up and coming to America.

This is a beautiful, effortless film by the greatest director of all-time. It's charming, and light-hearted, and so familiar you will be able to relate to his parents whatever your ethnic background.

As an Italian-American myself I have to admit it was like watching one of my own home movies. My grandparents were just like Charles & Catherine Scorsese... my grandmother taught me how to make sauce just like Marty's mother does in the movie. Everything about them- the look of their apartment, the way they speak and argue- made me nostalgic for my childhood days.

At one point Catherine is in the middle of relating one of her stories and you can spot Marty in the foreground picking at the leftovers in the salad bowl... film can be this low-key, this unassuming, and be just as moving as scripted studio fare.

Oh, for days gone by...

Sweet little documentary where Catherine and Charles Scorsese casually talk old stories of their immigration, childhood, cooking..etc Random stuff. It is one of those rare pieces of work that can put it's audience in good mood and can make us appreciate little things.

Martin's grandfather arrived in America in 1901. My grandfather arrived in 1888, during the Great Blizzard. Martin's father recalls how Italians were treated by the Irish. During the Columbus Day parades, the Irish would make fun of the Italians, ending in a huge fist fight.

Like his father's family, my parents grew up in poverty. There were large families living in small living places. My ancestors came to America to work for a $1 a day. As a hod carrier, my grandfather carried bricks and mortar up and down ladders all day, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Even when he was dying from prostate cancer, he had to work, pissing blood, to support the family.

Life was not a bowl of cherries, yet my parents believed in the American Dream and worked hard, saving their pennies, to provide their children with a decent life.

If you are an Italian American baby boomer, you will relate to this film.

Like someone opening up a family scrapbook or putting on a video from footage you haven't seen in years, Italian/American is Martin Scorsese's personal look at his family, most particularly his parents Catherine and Charlie. Both have had memorable bits in his films (Goodfellas being their prime, as Catherine was Pesci's mother and Charlie the onion-cooking prisoner in jail), but are also willing to be on-screen for a kind of personal inquisition from Martin about the family's history. We learn about the ancestry of the Scorseses, on both sides, and how this influence came into the family. At times, strangely in such a short amount of time, the 'home video' factor is actually a little boring, as it would be in real life. Yet a fascination remains with these people, and the director's own deep interest in it (he references the family's history as well in My Voyage to Italy). A highlight actually occurs in the end, as Catherine offers up her recipe for tomato sauce! For Scorsese die-hards a must-see; a curiosity for anyone else interested.

I got to see a clip of this documentary when Martin Scorsese came to Providence, Rhode Island to accept an award on behalf of Brown University. We got to see a small clip from every directed film that Scorsese had made in his 40 plus year career. Out of all the films, Italianamerican got the biggest laughs and the longest applause. Having been the only Italian and the only person who did not attend Brown University that got into Brown's auditorium (the security was terrible) to see Scorsese, I enjoyed the realism that Scorsese captured by watching his parents be themselves in front of the camera. All the other Irish people who attended the event enjoyed the film as well, but not as much as me.