ITALIANAMERICAN
In this spare, joyous, tender documentary from 1974, Martin Scorsese, fresh from shooting "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," sits down in his parents' Lower East Side apartment and talks to them about their family and neighborhood history. What results is a portrait of a marriage, steeped in clan and ethnic heritage, that amounts to a mini-"Roots" for urban Americans of Sicilian stock. Charles and Catherine Scorsese have a relationship that's comfortable even when it's uncomfortable--as when Charles starts to discuss Irish resentment toward Italians and Catherine retreats to finish her meat sauce in the kitchen. The movie is about people who happily measure the American Dream in generational increments.--Michael Sragow