Key Points

He watched the Italian war drama with his family and heard the Sicilian dialect spoken by relatives in New York onscreen for the first time.

Speaking at the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, where he accepted a lifetime achievement award, the director told the audience: "It was there in that room, that night, that I had a calling to make movies, and to touch people in the same way that this film touched us that night.

"So it is Sicily that helped draw me to cinema and cinema drew me to Sicily."

He added of his American upbringing: "With the exception of Native Americans, we're all either immigrants, children of immigrants or descendants of immigrants. The country is very young. It's 250 years old, which is nothing in terms of world history. We're learning. We're just crawling. We haven't begun yet to walk or talk."

During his speech, Scorsese also paid tribute to Hollywood movie legend Frank Capra, a fellow director with Sicilian roots.

The moviemaker ended his speech by saying: "I wonder, where I would be without Italian cinema. The debt I owe to Italian cinema and the people that made it and are continuing to make it, is really incalculable. I'll never stop talking about it, to the entire world, wherever I go and I thank you for this wonderful honor to be here tonight.

"Thank you for bringing me back home."

In an interview with Variety, Scorsese went on to explain his strong connection to his Italian homeland, saying: "Growing up, my first formative years, even before my early teenage (years), I was really living in a Sicilian village. It just happened to be downtown in Manhattan. What I mean by that is the thinking, the behaviour, the language. All of this was very, very much part of who I am.

"Then we became American, kind of. In a way I think that for me that (Sicilian link) combined with the religious experiences, it has propted a curiosity and a search as to my own identity. As to who I am."

- IANS