11 Great Italian Films Recommended by Martin Scorsese

Some years ago, young filmmaker Colin Levy had the enviable opportunity to meet Martin Scorsese. The meeting itself isn’t as important (at least not to cinephiles) as what happened afterwards. Three weeks after the meeting, Scorsese had a list sent to Levy. On the list were 39 foreign films that Scorsese thought every young filmmaker should watch and learn from. Unsurprisingly, Germany, France, Japan and Italy are the most represented nations on the list.

Given Scorsese’s Italian heritage, it is interesting to focus on the Italian movies on the list. Scorsese has talked at length about the profound impact of Italian cinema on his art. The four-hour documentary, My Voyage In Italy, is well worth anyone’s time: a tour of Italian cinematic history given by a modern-day master.

He begins his journey with a personal account of watching Italian films on television with his family. Strange to think, but TV often showed Italian films back then, for the large community of Italian immigrants. For Scorsese’s parents it was a way of remembering and keeping in touch with their homeland.

Films such as Rossellini’s Rome Open City and Paisa had a profound effect on both Scorsese and his family, as they depicted an Italy undergoing the trauma of war. Indeed, many of the Italian films on Scorsese’s list depict an Italy coming to terms with historical trauma or uncertainty.

This in turn makes this list ideal for young filmmakers who feel incapable of either finding their voice or having it heard in the increasingly changeable world of cinema. Many of these movies represented bold steps in new directions, and their creators often faced hardship or censure as a result.

1. Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

Rome, Open City is regarded as the founding film of Italian Neorealism. Rossellini wanted above all to bring a new documentary realism to cinema. This was realised more through the conditions of filming than some intellectual dogma. Natural lighting, non-professional actors, scene durations determined by the amount and type of celluloid available, no studio sets,: all these things brought a radical spontaneity to the film, and to the neorealist films that followed.

Rome, Open City was filmed on location just two months after the Nazis had been driven out of Rome. The visible devastation seen in all the exterior scenes is real, adding to the distinct documentary feel of the film.

In fact, it had originally been planned as a documentary about a Catholic priest who had been executed for helping the partisans. But when an additional project about the children who fought against the occupiers was suggested, Rossellini and his co-writer – Federico Fellini – decided to make one film combining the two stories.

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