I'm not a fan of Martin Scorsese's works, so my intention of watching this was never because it's Scorsese but because it's about the history of Italian cinema. I've been watching quite some oldies black and white movies, from Hepburn's Roman Holiday and Sabrina to Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso, and I had a harddd time digesting Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.
First half of the movie is extremely depressing when he narrates his childhood life as an immigrant from Sicily to New York and how Roberto Rosellini's neorealism had impact on him as a kid. It gets interesting to me only when it came to the story of Luchino Visconti, a film director born into an aristocratic family. Interesting to see how the background of being an aristocrat could shape one's way of creating a movie, specially in the eyes to details.
One thing that stuck in my head is Scorcese's narration after one of the neorealism movie, Europa '51, "Rosellini makes the case that society has rules. And those rules are what define madness and sadness. And that's the disturbing truth. People today only know how to live in a society. Not in a community. The soul of society is the law. The soul of community is love."
