With a career that has been dedicated to film preservation and the art of filmmaking, you’ll want to set aside four hours and take A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. The Wolf of Wall Street director’s documentary, presented by the British Film Institute in 1995, remains an impressive ode to his craft nearly two decades after its initial release.

Scorsese takes us through an extensive list of films with colloquial anecdotes about his own experiences with the films and their greater historical significance. In the documentary’s opening segment Scorsese equates cinema with a disease and reveals his own celluloid obsession. As clips from Johnny Guitar or interviews with Billy Wilder unfold viewers will find themselves enveloped by the many images that comprise decades of American cinema.

Within Scorsese’s comprehensive and deeply personal tribute to movies, you’ll find extensive sub-genres covered, and even if you don’t have the time to watch the documentary all in one sitting, it is conveniently broken up into chapters that explore Musicals, Gangster Films, and the traits of great filmmakers. Recently Mark Cousins‘ The Story of Film: An Odyssey (available in all 15 hours on Netflix) gained recognition for its presentation of cinema across decades and continents, but this documentary was a major precursor to that creation, able to combine its academic sensibilities with deep rooted nostalgia.

Take a look below (via A Bittersweet Life), or pick up the DVD version. If you want to dive into some of Scorsese’s favorites, check out a list (via Fast to Create) and corresponding video of his 85 films you need to see:

1 Ace In the Hole (1951)

2 All That Heaven Allows (1955)

3 America, America (1963)

4 An American In Paris (1951)

5 Apocalypse Now (1979)

6 Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

7 The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

8 The Band Wagon (1953)

9 Born On the Fourth of July (1989)

10 Cape Fear (1962)

11 Cat People (1942)

12 Caught (1949)

13 Citizen Kane (1941)

14 The Conversation (1974)

15 Dial M For Murder (1954)

16 Do the Right Thing (1989)

17 Duel In the Sun (1946)

18 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

19 Europa ’51 (1952)

20 Faces (1968)

21 The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)

22 The Flowers of St. Francis (1950)

23 Force of Evil (1948)

24 Forty Guns (1957)

25 Germany: Year Zero (1948)

26 Gilda (1946)

27 The Godfather (1972)

28 Gun Crazy (1950)

29 Health (1980)

30 Heaven’s Gate (1980)

31 House of Wax (1953)

32 How Green Was My Valley (1941)

33 The Hustler (1961)

34 I Walk Alone (1948)

35 The Cake-Walk Infernal (1903) (5m short)

36 It Happened One Night (1934)

37 Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

38 Voyage To Italy (1954)

39 Julius Caesar (1953)

40 Kansas City (1996)

41 Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

42 Klute (1971)

43 La Terra Trema (1948)

44 The Lady From Shanghai (1948)

45 The Leopard (1963)

46 MacBeth (1948)

47 The Magic Box (1952)

48 M*A*S*H (1970)

49 A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

50 McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

51 The Messiah (1975)

52 Midnight Cowboy (1969)

53 Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters (1985)

54 Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936)

55 Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

56 Nashville (1975)

57 Night and the City (1950)

58 One, Two, Three (1961)

59 Othello (1952)

60 Paisan (1946)

61 Peeping Tom (1960)

62 Pickup On South Street (1953)

63 The Player (1992)

64 The Power and the Glory (1933)

65 Stagecoach (1939)

66 Raw Deal (1948)

67 The Red Shoes (1948)

68 The Rise of Louis Xiv (1966)

69 The Roaring Twenties (1939)

70 Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

71 Rome, Open City (1945)

72 Secrets of the Soul (1912) (?m short)

73 Senso (1954)

74 Shadows (1959)

75 Shock Corridor (1963)

76 Some Came Running (1958)

77 Stromboli (1950)

78 Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

79 Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

80 The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)

81 The Third Man (1949)

82 T-Men (1947)

83 Touch of Evil (1958)

84 The Trial (1962)

85 Two Weeks In Another Town (1962)

What was your favorite section of the documentary? How many of Scorsese’s 85 favorite films have you seen?