The Delicate Art of Turning Your Parents Into Content

In 1974, Martin Scorsese was a year removed from his breakthrough film—the semi-autobiographical “Mean Streets,” about a young man in New York’s Little Italy neighborhood who is sinking into the quicksand of Mafia life—when he presented a companion piece of sorts: a documentary featurette about a pair of second-generation Sicilian-Americans who also happened to be his mother and father. “Italianamerican,” which premièred at the New York Film Festival and later aired on PBS, sits at home with Catherine and Charles Scorsese on their plastic-covered sofa and at their dining table, and, for a spell, peers over Catherine’s shoulder as she stands at her stove, preparing her famous meatballs and tomato sauce, wiping surfaces as she goes. (Her recipe is included in the end credits.)