ABOUT PERFORMANCE
Film of the Alternative cinema: Authors' Collections series
USA / UK - 1995
Runtime: 225 min
Directors: Martin Scorsese, Michael Henry Wilson
Despite its nearly four-hour running time, this is a uniquely personal look at movies from one of the late 20th century's great directors and film historians. The film consists of head & shoulder shots of Scorsese speaking into the camera for a minute or two, followed by 10-15 minutes of film clips with Scorsese voice-over. Scorsese approaches the films in terms of how they affected him as a director foremost and as a storyteller/film fan second. Segments include “The Director as Smuggler,“ „The Director as Iconoclast”, and so on. The Journey begins with silent masters like D. W. Griffith and ends in 1969 — when Scorsese began to make films; as he says in closing, “I wouldn't feel right commenting on myself or my contemporaries.”