Martin Scorsese’s 1974 documentary, arriving a year after Mean Streets, is an unfussy, unfiltered document, mostly consisting of his mother Catherine and father Charles sitting in their New York City apartment, cooking and eating a meal, and sharing memories as children of Italian immigrants. The delight is in the couple’s particular dynamic—the playful, blunt Catherine eager to be the star and Charles’ eagerness to let her have the spotlight—as well as the way it works as a time capsule of interior design. (I especially appreciated the kitchen wallpaper of giant blue flowers—clematis, perhaps?—and plastic-covered furniture.) For those with more auteurist inclinations, there is plenty to chew on, even in this slight, modest offering. Italianamerican is cleverly edited (a roving shot down the street of contemporary New York is matched by similar historical footage); features stylistic grace notes (as when there is a freeze frame of Catherine that fades to black and white right after she talks about her mother’s death); and boasts a single take traveling up the apartment building’s stairway and out onto the roof that seems like a prototype for the Copacabana sequence in Goodfellas.
