From Immigrants to Icons

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Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons

Carlos E. Cortes University of California, Riverside

"The Godfather is a fictional account of the activities of a small group of ruthless criminals. It would be erroneous and unfair to suggest that they are representative of any ethnic group."

Intoned by a solemn voice and emblazoned on millions of television screens throughout the United States, these words preceded the 1977 showing of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Saga (a revised and expanded version of the two theatrical motion pictures, The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II). Forewarned that the characters were not "representative of any ethnic group," a nationwide television audience then watched the violent, multi-generational saga of the Corleone family. Much of the early part of the film took place in Sicily, large segments of the film were spoken in Italian with English subtitles, and most of the characters bore such names as Barzini, Clemenza, Brasi, and Tattaglia. No problem. The disclaimer had guaranteed that viewers would not mistake them as members of any specific ethnic group.

The Godfather disclaimer has become a landmark in the history of the film depiction of Italian-Americans, as well as ethnic groups in general, reflecting a growing awareness of the power of the media to influence audience thinking and public beliefs. It also represented an effort, albeit ineffective, to address this media educational power, although the inser- tion of the disclaimer can be interpreted either positively as an honest attempt to mute the deleterious side-effects of the film or negatively as cynical posturing to blunt criticism by Italian-American groups. Moving beyond the confines of Italian-Americana, that statement established a media disclaimer model, which has been copied and only slightly modi- fied in later controversial films that similarly presented other ethnic groups as criminally violent, such as the 1983 Scarface (Cuban-Americans) and the 1985 Year of the Dragon (Chinese-Americans). In short, the disclaimer demonstrated a recognition that entertainment films do, in fact, teach, possessing the power to create, reinforce, and modify public images about ethnic groups, including Italian-Americans.

MELUS, Volume 14, Nos. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 1987).

CARLOS E. CORTES

Moreover, The Godfather epitomized Hollywood's relentless iconiza- tion of film Italian-Americans not only as popular cultural embodiments of their ethnic group, but also as symbols for the ethnic experience in general, particularly for the extra-legal quest for the American Dream. Italian-Americans have become, in fact, a synonym for screen criminality. Provide characters with Italian surnames, and the burden of proving innocence falls on them. Expect at any moment an ominous offer that better not be refused. The post-Godfather movie trajectory of Italian- Americans has been, to a great extent, an offshoot or a response to this icon-solidifying masterpiece, a film that in itself integrated the major threads of seventy years of U.S. screen treatment of Italian-Americans.

LAUNCHING OF THE IMMIGRANT FILM (1900-1928)

During the first two decades of the silent era, Italian-Americans and other European immigrants became a favorite motion picture topic. In general, films portrayed European immigrants in jocular terms, as people with odd, quaint, humorous customs, but customs that could be "cured" with the proper dose of Americanization. In fact, learning to be Ameri- can became a common subtext of these early immigrant films.1

At times, as in Eleventh House, The Organ Grinder (1909), Tony America (1918), and the early minor classic, The Italian (1914), laughter gave way to seriousness. In the latter, for example, an Italian immigrant couple struggles to build a new life on New York City's Lower East Side. However, their efforts end in tragedy when their baby becomes sick and dies during a heat wave, as poverty prevents them from obtaining the hygenic food needed to pull him through the crisis.

Movies like The Italian provided a more solemn look at the underside of the immigrant experience, in which slums, poverty, low-paying jobs, and societal prejudice impeded the progress and sometimes even threatened the survival of Italian-Americans and other immigrants. However, so some movies proclaimed, these obstacles could be overcome by a com- mitment to becoming American, a strong tug at one's own bootstraps, and the appropriate helping hand from concerned mainstream Ameri- cans. In fact, film Italian-Americans occasionally achieved the American Dream, like dressmaker Tito Lombardi in Lombardi, Ltd. (1919). In the 1918 comedy, My Cousin (1918), the great Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso, plays the dual roles of two upwardly-mobile Italian immigrant cousins, one an operatic tenor, the other a struggling (and ultimately successful) sculptor.

These gently humorous, occasionally serious portrayals of Italian- Americans and other European immigrants stood in sharp contrast to the film depictions of "colored" Americans - blacks, Mexican-Ameri-

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cans, Indians (Native Americans), and Asian-Americans - who fared much worse at the hands of early U.S. filmmakers. While these colored ethnics, like their white ethnic compatriots, could also be humorous, their deviant behavior seemed more genetically rooted and, therefore, not generally salvageable through Americanization. Moreover, their color would forever set them apart from other Americans. Silent screen colored ethnics operated anti-socially and resorted to far more violence than did white ethnics. Mexican bandits, bloodthirsty Indians, inscruta- ble dope-peddling Chinese-Americans, and (institutionalized in 1915 by The Birth of a Nation) brutish, sexually unrestrained blacks became com- monplace on screen. Italian-Americans seldom participated in such silent film social deviance; their days of widespread screen gangsterism would not arrive until the 1930s.

World War I began to change American society's vision and, likewise, filmdom's stance toward Italian-Americans and other white ethnics. With World War I, mainstream Americans became increasingly concerned about the presence and apparent strength of alien cultures in their midst. Particularly threatening stood German-Americans, whose foreign language schools, churches, clubs, and newspapers suddenly became anathema. With Germany as our nation's prime wartime enemy, could German-Americans be trusted? What about the loyalty of those ensconced in other ethnic cultural pockets?

Reacting to concerns about this newly-highlighted (but certainly not new) ethnic presence, Congress passed a series of laws intended to temper America's foreign element. The Federal Immigration Laws of 1921 and 1924 placed severe restrictions on European immigration, particularly from southern and eastern Europe, including Italy. Main- stream Americans tended to view people from those areas as the least desirable European ingredients in the supposed American melting pot. Bilingual education programs, then particularly widespread throughout the midwest, were scuttled, while state after state passed laws restricting the use of languages other than English in schools.

As part of this new rage for rapid Americanization, Hollywood movies carried a three-fold message. First, white ethnics, formerly cuddly and humorous, could also be downright unsavory. Among Italian-Ameri- cans, such screen characters ranged from the bomb-throwing labor radical, Sophia Guerni, in the 1919 Dangerous Hours (which launched a vigorous simultaneous attack on foreignness, feminism, and labor acti- vism), to the lascivious merchant, Arno Riccardi, in Manhandled (1924). Second, with foreign characteristics no longer so cute, white ethnics should become Americanized, quickly. Hollywood also provided the obvious solution: upward mobility through hard and honest work. Third, intermarriage could serve as a short-cut to Americanization and

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the removal of the remaining vestiges of foreignness ... if not always totally effective for the couple, more likely for their children. Yet be careful whom you marry. Most filmic intermarriages of the 1920s paired white ethnics of different foreign derivations. Seldom did movies cele- brate the marriage of an Italian-American to a mainstream English- descent American (and interracial marriage remained totally unacceptable as screen fare).

Throughout the silent era, then, Italian-Americans served as the quintessential example of the European immigrant. Armed with exotic surnames and manacled by traditional ethnic customs, sometimes anti- social and sometimes the victims of unfortunate economic conditions, occasionally successful in achieving full Americanization and the Ameri- can Dream, screen Italian-Americans embodied the white immigration experience. But the 1930s would bring a new and, for Italian-Americans, ominous twist in their screen persona, a giant step toward becoming an undesired screen icon.2

SOUND AND THE BIG BANG (1928-1945)

The coming of sound to motion pictures in the late 1920s and the arrival of the Great Depression combined to create a veritable revolution in Hollywood filmmaking. Sound gave Hollywood the capacity to heighten impact through spoken dialogue, fully-orchestrated recorded music, and often-jarring sound effects. At the same time, the depression forced Hollywood to contend with the dramatically changing social conditions. Many filmmakers responded by grinding out escapist entertainment to draw diversion-seeking Americans into the theatre. Others attempted to engage the depression seriously, including the societal problems that both contributed to and resulted from the catastrophic economic collapse. Italian-Americans played a key role in many such films, especially in social dramas.

Hollywood had long been fascinated with crime.3 After all, crime meant conflict, and conflict attracted audiences. But with the depression, this fascination with crime became focused on the special problem of gangsterism, particularly ethnic gangsterism as a barometer of the nation's social ills. In the forefront of Hollywood's inspection of gangsterism stood three ethnic groups: Chinese-Americans, in such films as Chinatown Nights (1930) and The Mysterious Mr. Wong (1935); Irish- Americans, in movies like Public Enemy (1931) and The Roaring Twenties (1939); and, most extensively and totemically, Italian-Amerians.4

In fact, Italian-American gangsters became a major film personifica- tion of America's social failures, including the crisis of the increasingly elusive American Dream. Frustrated in their efforts to grasp The

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Dream, movie Italian-Americans turned to illegal avenues in their quest for pride, power, and prosperity. Led by two iconographic screen figures, Edward G. Robinson's Caesar Enrico Bandello (Little Caesar - 1930) and Paul Muni's Antonio Camonte (Scarface - 1932), motion picture Italian- Americans became the epitome of screen gangsterism.5

Italian-American film hoodlums ran from the serious (murderous bank robber Tony Garotta in the 1931 Night Ride and reformed mobster "Little John" Sarto in the 1940 Blue Orchid) to the humorous (bumbling bootlegger Remy Marco in the 1938 A Slight Case of Murder and comically incompetent gang leader Gordoni in the 1938 Manhattan Merry-Go-Round). Nor was criminality limited to men. Following in the footsteps of Danger- ous Hours' Sophia Guerni came such underworld figures Little Caesar's Ma Magdalena. This widespread screen celebration of Italian-American gangsters established a screen pattern to which filmmakers have con- tinued to turn, a tradition that survives to the present.

Yet these Italian-American gangsters embodied more than the inher- ent (implicitly genetic) evilness of film Mexican bandits and Indian savages. Movie Italian-Americans may have been violent and willing, often eager, to engage in illegal means of striving for The Dream. However, they also sometimes emerged as victims, or at least as examples of the failings of American society. Italian-American gangsters occasionally became both victims and victimizers, basically decent people who chose criminality out of frustration over the apparent obstacles to legitimately- attained success, criminals to be pitied as well as feared. However, the Motion Picture Production (Hays) Code's requisite "crime-does-not- pay" movie endings argued that they should not be imitated.6

But in these gangster movies, rationalizations of context and causality took a back seat to criminal sensationalism. Even when films provided a modicum of social analysis, they put their main emphasis on staccato violence, reinforced by the wonders of sound, which gave the omnipres- ent machine gun an ear-shattering reality. Only the whoops of Holly- wood's blood-thirsty Indians could rival Italian-Americans' machine guns as movie sound's contribution to the image of ethnic violence.

Not all social realism movies about Italian-Americans indulged in violence. Some Italian-American screen figures, along with other white ethnics, emerged as decent, estimable, law-abiding citizens, as in the 1939 screen adaptation of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy (while it did include mobster Eddie Foseli) and the 1940 film version of Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted. In the latter, Antonio Patucci earned both respect and sympathy as a hard-working, if highly emotional, grape grower in California's Napa Valley. Moreover, Patucci's marriage to an Anglo girl - admittedly a poor one - symbolized the growing screen acceptability of white ethnic-Anglo intermarriage.

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This new integrationist acceptability surfaced in other 1930s films, like Kid Galahad (1937). The latter blended intermarriage with Italian- American criminality, as crooked boxing manager Nick Donati tries to douse the growing love between his younger sister and rising boxer Ward Guisenberry (Kid Galahad). However, after Donati dies following a shoot-out with another crooked fight manager, the two young people appear headed for marriage, providing both a happy ending and a further integrationist message.

Although throughout Hollywood history films about Italian-Ameri- cans have overwhelmingly focused on men, Italian-American women began achieving a more extensive screen presence during the 1930s. Unfortunately, while Italian-American movie men grativated toward gangsterism, Italian-American screen women also became increasingly categorized - as broken-English-speaking, often temperamental earth mothers. Whether consoling their wayward children (the repentant get-away car driver's mother in Scarface) or berating them in public (gang leader Gordoni's mother in Manhattan Merry-Go-Round), they exuded a power of personality, even if that power proved to be more surface and volatile than rooted and effective.7

World War II brought Italian-Americans even further into the filmic mainstream. With the United States at war, Hollywood joined the effort. War movies called out to Americans of all backgrounds to enter the military and fight for their country. It became a standard part of Holly- wood's "affirmative action policy" to make certain that nearly every filmic military unit displayed a virtual ethnic mosaic, complete with at least one Polish-American, one Hispanic-American, one Irish-American, one Jewish-American and, of course, at least one Italian-American.

But in terms of the Italian-American image, Hollywood's World War II had a foreign-heritage downside. Mussolini's Italy was one of our ene- mies. While Italian-Americans served the United States with dedication and often with heroism, the Italian military opposed us. Yet, according to Hollywood, what opponents! Hollywood's Italian armies come off as less vigorous than those of Japan and Germany, with Italian soldiers generally pompous, stupid, incompetent, and even cowardly (not much good for anything except singing Italian songs, as in the 1943 Five Graves to Cairo). World War II, then, provided conflicting contributions of bravery and cowardice to the contours of the Italian-American (and the related Italian) film image.

VICTIMS, VICTIMIZERS AND VICTORS (1945-1970)

Hollywood's wartime crusading zeal did not end with the conclusion of military hostilities. After all, this had not simply been a military

CARLOS E. CORTES 112


struggle. It had been a war against evil, including the evil of ethnic oppression. With the war over, Hollywood turned its attention from the external evils of nazism and fascism to such internal evils as ethnic discrimination and inequitable social conditions. Hollywood focused most of its anti-prejudice attention on racism against blacks (Pinky 1949), Hispanic-Americans (A Medal for Benny - 1945), Indians (Broken Arrow - 1950), and Asian-Americans (Bad Day at Black Rock - 1954). But filmmakers also expressed concern about bigotry against white ethnics, such as Jewish-Americans (Crossfire - 1947) and Polish-Amerians (Satur- day's Hero - 1951). Italian-Americans also received attention.

At times the struggle of Italian-Americans to overcome social inequi- ties fell gently and paradigmatically into this post-war social message genre. Take, for example, the touching Give Us This Day (1949), based on Christ in Concrete, Pietro di Donato's compelling autobiographical novel about the struggle of one determined Italian-American family against heavy societal odds. One of the most sensitive screen portraits ever etched concerning Italian-American life, the film also provides one of the landmark portrayals of a strong, intelligent Italian-American woman.

Beginning in the 1920s, Geremio, an industrious bricklayer, and his newly-immigrated wife, Anunciata, struggle to escape the congested tenements of New York City's Little Italy and fulfill their dream of buying a home in Brooklyn. After they make a 25-dollar downpayment, Anunciata scrimps and saves in a valiant effort to amass the 500 dollars they need in order to move into the house. The arrival of three children slows their quest, but through great frugality she manages to accumu- late 495 dollars, when the Great Depression deals them a devastating blow, as Geremio cannot find work.

Their savings decline rapidly, until Geremio is offered a foreman's position. But there is a catch. To get the contract, the contractor has had to cut corners on safety. Distraught and torn between desperation for his family and the reality of jeopardizing the workers' lives, Geremio reluctantly accepts the job and convinces his friends to join him. Tragedy strikes. One worker becomes crippled, and soon afterward Geremio dies in a cave-in, impaled on a steel rod and buried alive in wet concrete while shouting, "Anunciata, forgive me! I tried!" A government investigation awards Anunciata compensation of 1,000 dollars and monthly payments for her three children. Overcome with grief, she tells a friend, "At last Geremio has bought us a house."

In contrast to Give Us This Day, at other times Hollywood combined social exploration with that prototypical Italian-American domain, criminality. In Knock on Any Door (1949), pretty boy Nick Romano falls into the established film tradition of Italian-American killers. However, the film also reveals that Romano took this criminal path partially as a result of

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oppressive social circumstances. In fact, his environmentally-blighted life becomes the basis for his defense attorney's passionate plea to spare Romano's life, a plea that may ultimately gain audience sympathy for Romano, but does not save him from execution.

Even prosecuting attorneys came to the rescue with social explana- tions. In The Young Savages (1961), teenagers Anthony Dipasto and Danny Dipaci, members of a New York City youth gang, go on trial for killing a blind Puerto Rican boy. But "mitigating" circumstances finally surface, when it turns out that the blind boy had been a vital member of a Puerto Rican gang that had beaten them up. Moreover, district attorney Hank Bell (born Bellini), himself a street product, launches the requisite court- room attack on the social conditions that had entrapped these Italian- American youngsters.

But most Italian-American film criminals did not benefit from such detailed causative expositions. No circumstances mitigated the villainy of crooked cop Johnny DiGarmo in Lady of the Lake (1946), numbers racketeer Bill Fico in Force of Evil (1948), or gangster Tami Giacoppetti in Detective Story (1951). Certainly not psychopathic killer Tom Udo in Kiss of Death (1947), sadistic gang leader Johnny Rocco in Key Largo (1948), or cruel racketeer Servo in The Long Wait (1954). Or even comic book but murderous gangsters like Spats Colombo in Some Like It Hot (1959). Colorful, dramatic, sometimes fascinating screen figures, Italian-American criminals had become not only a film fixture and continuous movie message, but also an avenue to Hollywood stardom. The fine character actor Edward G. Robinson etched a veritable sub-career in this genre, playing Italian-American gangsters in at least nine movies.

Moreover, building from the basic Italian-American gangster format, post-war films featured an even more insidious variation - organized crime with international links, as in Black Hand (1950), The Brothers Rico (1957), Inside the Mafia (1959), and Pay or Die (1960). Such movies not only reinforced the gangster image of the Little Caesar/Scarface tradition, but also added a new dimension. Larger, better organized, and far more brutal than their film predecessors, these Italian-American movie gangs also enjoyed venal connections with international Italian criminality, a far cry from the bumbling Italian soldiers of World War II Hollywood lore.

Fortunately, criminals did not monopolize post-war Italian-American film characters, as Hollywood increasingly provided screen portraits of good, sensitive Italian-Americans. By the early 1950s, sympathetic Italian-American characters had even become a highway to academy awards. In 1953, Frank Sinatra won an Oscar for his portrayal of Private Angelo Maggio in the screen version of James Jones' From Here to Eternity. Loud and brash, but also loyal and goodhearted (except when called



"wop" by sadistic Sergeant Fatso Judson), Maggio emerged as a recycled but far more personalized version of the Italian-American soldiers of World War II films.

Two years later movies about Italian-Americans hit the Academy Award jackpot, as 1955's two top acting Oscars went to persons playing Italian-American characters. Ernest Borgnine (who ironically had brutal- ized Maggio as Fatso Judson in From Here to Eternity), won for his portrayal of Marty Piletti, the lovable but lonely New York butcher in Paddy Chayevsky's Marty, a film that immerses itself in Italian-American culture. However, except for Marty himself, the culture comes up smelling somewhat less sweet than a rose. Marty may be a thoughtful, sensitive young man, but he is surrounded by less admirable Italian-Americans: an argumentative cousin and his nagging wife; shiftless pals; and a possessive mother who reveals her fear-laced bigotry when she opposes Mar- ty's new friendship with a non-Italian-American Catholic girl whom he had met at a public ballroom. Marty's mother and sister-in-law represent what were becoming the two major categories of Italian-American screen women: temperamental viragos and possessive earth mothers. Estimable three-dimensional portraits of Italian-American women, like Anunciata in Give Us This Day, proved to be rare exceptions.

The virago-earth mother categories converged that same year in the screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo. The film gained for Anna Magnani a Best Actress award as the neurotic Sicilian immigrant Serafina de la Rosa, torn between the memory of her dead husband and her repressed sexual desires. Set in a rural Louisiana community of Italian-Americans, the movie reeks with now-predictable shrieking women, while Serafina's suitor, Alvaro, an exuberant Italian-American truck driver (Burt Lancaster), needs to get totally drunk in order to bring himself to conduct a courtship with the explosive Serafina. Only her daughter, Rosa, played with subtlety by Marisa Pavan, breaks away from the rapidly-hardening screen stereotype of the Italian-American woman. But Rosa is young, so she has time to learn.

One common theme connects these two award-winning films - the impact of Americanization on the ethnic generation gap. Both Rosa and Marty seek to escape from their ethnic cages through out-group love. Both fall in love with Catholics, but not with Italian-Americans. In the end, Rosa goes off to marry her blond sailor boyfriend, leaving Serafina and Alvaro to carry out their Italian-American courtship, while Marty calls his newly-found flame, implicitly leaving behind both his life- wasting buddies and, possibly, his loneliness-wracked traditional Italian mother.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Italian-American screen diversity increased. Italian-Americans could be struggling immigrants (Teresa -

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1951) or wealthy playboys (An Affair to Remember - 1957), high school basket cases (Blackboard Jungle - 1955) or angry delinquents (Dino - 1957), unsavory press agents (Sweet Smell of Success - 1957) or lovable losers (A Hole in the Head - 1959). They could be diligent fishermen (Clash by Night - 1952), hardworking ranchers (Wild Is the Wind - 1957), or industrious dockworkers (A View from the Bridge - 1962). But whatever their pursuits, they often resorted to violence, whether using their fists to become world champion boxers (Somebody Up There Likes Me - 1956) or wielding knives to terrorize New York subways (The Incident - 1967). While movies demonstrated Italian-American diversity, they also ele- vated violence - physical or verbal - into the prime Italian-American screen cultural characteristic, be it the lethal, sometimes sadistic violence of criminals, the commercialized violence of professional boxers, or the explosively temperamental violence of ordinary women and men.

THE ERA OF ETHNIC COMMERCIALIZATION (1970-1988)

Italian-Americans had been a popular film subject since the beginning of movies. But the first seven decades of the twentieth century turned out to be merely a prelude to the 1970s, which brought an explosion of Italian-American film depictions and propelled Italian-American life and culture into the movie forefront. To a degree, the screen treatment of Italian-Americans reflected general trends in U.S. society, including filmmaking. The various ethnic movements of the 1960s and early 1970s reverberated broadly. Not only did these movements champion civil rights, social justice, and human equality, but they also popularized the search for and celebration of ethnic heritage, identity, and pride. Almost overnight, millions of Americans became enchanted with the discovery and display of their own ethnic roots. Italian-Americans did not remain immune to this national psychic contagion. In Hollywood, they took a leadership role.

The ethnic revival influenced Hollywood in two main ways. First, Hollywood saw the commercial possibilities of ethnicity. Second, many filmmakers with strong ethnic backgrounds seized this opportunity to examine their own ethnic identities via movies. This confluence of ethnic popularity and ethnic presence in the film industry gave rise to the greatest boom of ethnic theme motion pictures in American film history.

However, this boom in ethnic films also coincided with yet another major change in the American film industry, the disappearance of the Hays Code. The bedrock of Hollywood's self-censorship system, the Code had sanitized movies since the 1930s. Progressively losing its clout since the 1950s, as filmmakers increasingly ignored it, the Code surren- dered in 1968 to Hollywood's new multiple-letter rating system. Among



other things, this meant the end of Code restrictions on sexual explicit- ness, gratuitous violence, and the old Hollywood adage that crime could not pay. Filmmakers vied to top each other in graphic depictions of sex and violence, while films increasingly ended with criminals going unpun- ished for their deeds, if not always living happily ever after. The film intersection of ethnic revivalism and post-Hays exhibitionism led to a movie flood of explicit ethnic sex and violence.

Italian-Americans, along with black Americans and Jewish-Ameri- cans, headed the ethnic screen parade. Films about these three groups, often made by group members, issued forth from Hollywood. Sparked by the presence of a new coterie of gifted young Italian-American filmmakers, the screen soon became filled with screaming, cursing, battering, gun-toting, sexually-indulgent Italian-Americans.

Francis Ford Coppola's monumental The Godfather (1972), based on a novel by another Italian-American, Mario Puzo, became the prototype and most important legitimator of the new wave of Italian-American sex-and-violence odysseys. The Godfather focuses on one New York Mafia family, headed by Don Vito Corleone (although the film avoids using the word Mafia). Beginning in the last years of Vito's life, the film continues through his death and the passing of the mantle to his revenge-bent son, Michael. Moreover, the passing of the mantle also reflects a cultural transformation. Where the movie tempers Vito's awesome power and willingness to employ violence with Italian traditionalism - like love of family and loyalty to friends - the thoroughly modern, semi-Anglicized Michael emerges as icily cerebral.

Following up the enormous critical and commercial success of The Godfather, Coppola created The Godfather, Part 11 (1974). The latter served both as a prequel, by tracing Vito's early years from his escape from Sicily through the establishment of his ethnic crime empire in New York's Little Italy, and as a sequel, by documenting Michael's rise, as he develops his new crime headquarters in Nevada. Beyond its treatment of crime, the two films delve into many other aspects of Italian-American life: values and codes of honor; the extended family; male-female relation- ships; cultural maintenance (epitomized by the deeply Italian Corleone New York wedding at the beginning of The Godfather); and acculturation (embodied in the contrasting Anglicized Corleone Lake Tahoe wedding of Godfather II).

While the films focus on men, Coppola's treatment of Italian- American women continues the two basic depictions that had become standard film fare. The older generation, the traditional earth mothers, provide passive and stoic support for their men. The younger generation, the modern nags, become Italian-American spoiled brats, as person- ified by Don Vito's daughter, Costanza.

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Overall, the two Godfather films stand as an extraordinary cinematic achievement. One of the richest and most incisive portrayals of Italian- American life yet captured on film, these movies went well beyond Italian-Americana. Throughout Coppola used the Mafia as a metaphor for the American quest for wealth and power, in which the Mafia symbolizes the successes and excesses of American big business.8

The accuracy or ethnic authenticity of these two films may be debated, but their power as public image-makers remains uncontestable. Evi- dence of the effects of the Godfather films soon emerged, ranging from a boom in Mafia jokes and Mafia Staff Car bumper stickers to the public institutionalization of the expression, "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse." If anybody doubted that being Italian-American was virtually synonymous with having criminal connections (not necessarily being a criminal yourself), The Godfather put those reservations to rest. As movie figures, Italian-Americans had become screen and social icons.

Moreover, The Godfather films made money, lots of it. This sent a further message to the rest of Hollywood: there's gold in them there Mafia movies. Hollywood responded with film after film about the Mafia or other Italian-American criminal agglomerations referred to more generically as the mob or organized crime: The Don Is Dead (1973), Crazy Joe (1974), Mr. Majestyk (1974), Capone (1975), Silver Bears (1978), Gloria (1980), Absence of Malice (1981), The Cotton Club (1984), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Code of Honor (1985), Heat (1987), and The Untouchables (1987). As did The Godfather, a few of these and other motion pictures, notably Martin Scorsese's brilliant Mean Streets (1971), seriously explored broader aspects of the Italian-American experience, in which the Mafia served as only one element. But other movies simply exploited that experience, using the Mafia as the audience-titillating centerpiece.9

By 1985 the mafioso image had become so solid that John Huston could use the movie audience's "knowledge" of Italian-Americans and turn the Mafia theme on its head in the sardonic Prizzi's Honor. In some respects, Prizzi's Honor provided a reaffirmation of the iconic solidity of the mafioso image. However, it did so by playing off, manipulating, and even caricaturing assumed audience stereotypes, the ultimate paean to the image-building effectiveness of its movie predecessors. That movie Mafia chic had now added a new dimension - Mafia parody chic - can be seen in such ensuing parodies as Wise Guys (1986) and Married to the Mob (1988).

Further proof of the stereotype's pervasiveness came from other sources. Films not even about Italian-Americans, at least as a principal theme, often included them as subsidiary criminal characters, even though their being Italian-American had no importance for the plot line (in contrast, for example, to films about the Mafia, which make the

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Italian-American presence necessary). Throw-away Italian-American criminals - those whose ethnic identification had no plot significance- ranged from pimp DeLuca in The Gauntlet (1977), drug pusher DeMesta in Just You and Me, Kid (1979), and mob gambler Tony Paoli in Any Which Way You Can (1981) to the sadistic Severo in The Hot Touch (1982), pimp Guido in Risky Business (1983), and counterfeiter Knobby de Karno in Burglar (1987). Even female criminals, from mob hitwoman Sciloni in The Sting (1973) to crude, buffoonish gang leader Ma Fratelli in Goonies (1985), found themselves labeled gratuitously as Italian-American.

All of these characters could just as easily have been of some other background. Yet the filmmakers decided to make them Italian-Ameri- cans, taking advantage of audience predispositions, meaning Italian- American stereotypes solidified by previous films. Conditioned by movies to reflexively link Italian-Americans with criminality, violence, and temperamentality, movie audiences could be expected to respond predictably to criminal characters labeled Italian-American. With character development unnecessary, surnames and ethnicity would serve the Pavlovian role. Lazy filmmaking, certainly, but a type of stereotype- based, stereotype-reinforcing filmmaking that has been a Hollywood tradition since the introduction of the Indian savage and Mexican bandit villains of early silent movies. In this case, Italian-Americans have been the iconic victims.

Confronted by this challenge to their public image, Italian-Americans responded both as individuals and through organizations. Their protests rang general in nature, decrying the hyperbole, unrepresentativeness, and repetitiveness of the mafioso screen theme. But their protests also took special aim at major Mafia movies, like The Godfather, made by Italian-Americans themselves. Self-portrait posed the greatest threat to the Italian-American public image, since such films carried the trappings of insider knowledge, adding legitimacy to their presentations.10

Faced with this outcry from elements of their own community, Italian-American filmmakers, actors, and writers defended their movies as merely slices of Italian-American life, which happened to include portrayals of the decision and efforts by some Italian-Americans to seek the American Dream by extra-legal, sometimes violent means.1' Like their filmic heirs, such as Antonio "Scarface" Camonte, Little Caesar Bandino, and Pretty Boy Nick Romano, they were forced by circumstances - if not forced, at least left with limited options - to turn to crime as a way of striving for The Dream.

Next to Coppola, the most important recent figure in forming the Italian-American screen image has been Martin Scorsese, particularly through his Mean Streets and Raging Bull (1978).12 Both Mean Streets, an affecting portrait of a group of second-rate young hoods in New York's

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Little Italy, and Raging Bull, an arresting biography of former middle- weight boxing champion Jake LaMotta, featured the splattering of blood and joltingly earthy language. Moreover, Scorsese exceeded Coppola in his depressing portrayal of Italian-American women. More than screaming nags, Scorsese's Italian-American women tended to be neurotic, incompetent, and generally undependable.

Although not all Italian-American experience films dealt with gangs, even many that did not address gangsterism per se still portrayed Italian- American men as having a penchant for violence, a la Raging Bull. In Fighting Back (1982), when John D'Angelo sets out to clean up his Phila- delphia neighborhood, he resorts to vigilantism. Elsewhere in Philadel- phia, that overachieving Italian-American slugger with soul, Rocky Bal- boa, makes his strongest points with his fists, beginning with Rocky (1976), while Sylvester Stallone's other famous screen persona, the angst-ridden social misfit, Rambo (although not specifically identified as Italian-American), has lowered gratuitous violence to new levels.'3 Even Daniel La Russo, The Karate Kid (1984), has to achieve status by cleaning up on community bullies, first in Los Angeles and later in Okinawa in The Karate Kid, Part 11 (1986).

The 1978 Bloodbrothers typifies the film problem of men being both sensitive and Italian-American. Thoughtful young Stony De Coco pre- fers becoming a counselor, rather than pursuing his family's construc- tion worker tradition. Yet he must convince his family and friends of the legitimacy of his non-violent identity, in contrast to the hypertrophied machismo of his relatives. Moreover, in the conclusion of Bloodbrothers, even sensitive Stony ultimately has to prove his right to be non-violent by thrashing another steel worker in mano-a-mano physical conflict.

Police films form a special violence sub-genre. Some Italian-American film policemen demonstrate conscience and an aversion to wholesale violence - men like Frank Serpico (Serpico - 1973) and Danny Ciello (Prince of the City - 1981), who expose corruption among their fellow officers, and violence-only-when-necessary Deke da Silva (Nighthawks - 1981), who tempers his search for an international terrorist with a concern for protecting innocent bystanders. But times change. By 1986, Stallone, who had played da Silva, had become violence-if-at-all-possible Lieutenant Marion Cobretti (Cobra - 1986), joined by such other violence-prone Italian-American cops as Nico Toscani in the 1988 Above the Law. Even on the right side of the law, film Italian-Americans expressed their preferred motion picture form of behavior, violence.

While criminality, non-criminal propensities to violence, and female neuroticism seem to have become the most common Italian-American film characterizations, a fourth trend should also be mentioned - Italian- Americans as slobs. Sometimes they are just humorous, pitiable slobs,



like Fatso (1979) and good-natured, fast-eating Monty Cappalutti in Easy Money (1983). Other times these slobs also have a seedy undertone, like Tropo "Chuckles" Grosso, editor of the sleazy New York Informer in Not for Publication (1984).

However, despite such relentless movie categorization, Italian-Ameri- cans also benefited from a parallel counter-trend, the continuation of the diversity tradition that had begun in the 1950s. Within this tradition emerged a variety of strong and sympathetic Italian-American screen characters. While these have hardly balanced the mass of Mafia movies and other Italian-American violence portrayals, their presence remains significant.

Italian-American women moved into professional ranks, like the concerned, able Dr. Petrocelli in Tribute (1980). Tough-talking urbanites like Stephanie Mangano (Saturday Night Fever - 1977), although she does have brat undertones, and sensitive Teresa Perrone (Absence of Malice - 1981), while she does commit suicide, at least stand as rounded characters, not Italian-American stereotypes. And good-hearted Claudia Zimmer exhib- its insight in recognizing that, to a degree, she remains an outsider as the only Italian-American among the four couples who hold their traditional gatherings in The Four Seasons (1981).

Italian-American men have reached the screen in even more diverse roles: Phil Romano, the nostalgic ex-basketball player in That Champion- ship Season (1982); kindly gay actor Jimmy Perino in Only When I Laugh (1981); clothing store tycoon Thornton Melon (born Meloni) in Back to School; young pool hotshot Vincent Lauria in The Color of Money (1986); and champion gymnast Steve Tevere in American Anthem (1986). They include army Major Joseph Delucca, who tries vainly to prevent the assassina- tion of Patton in Brass Target (1978), Luigi Corelli, the self-sacrificing Italian immigrant who dedicates himself to caring for his drug addict Anglo society wife in A Wedding (1978), and concerned Lieutenant Albert Minetti, who searches relentlessly and ultimately finds a kid- napped child in Without a Trace (1983), thereby demonstrating that an Italian-American policeman can succeed with brains without necessarily resorting to brawn. Some of this Italian-American male diversity had sordid elements, like Singapore whorehouse owner Jack Flowers in Saint Jack (1979) and Italian immigrant Julian Kaye, the American Gigolo (1980). Confused youth comprise a special Italian-American subculture. Some become high school dropouts and descend from there, like Albert "Sheik" Capadelupo in Baby It's You (1983). Others struggle, discover themselves, and ascend, like disco dancing Tony Manero (Saturday Night Fever - 1977 and Staying Alive - 1983).

No, not all Italian-American men are gangsters or even violent, for that matter. Nor are all Italian-Americans women simple-minded

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shrikes. Just most of them ... at least according to Hollywood's movie textbook of the last two decades.

THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN COUNTERATTACK

But a funny thing happened on the way to the movie theatre. While continuing with their obsession for gangs and violence, some Italian- American and even Italian filmmakers have expanded their spectrum to include other ethnic groups. It may be coincidental, but between 1983 and 1985 Italian-descent directors made three major movies about non- Italian gangs.

First off the mark came Brian De Palma with his 1983 remake of Scarface. Depression-era Chicago's Italian-American gangster, Antonio Camonte, became contemporary Miami's Cuban-American drug dealer, Antonio Montana (with Italian-American Al Pacino doing the acting honors). The post-Hays-Code Cuban-American version was even more scurrilous, with its non-stop gutter language and self-indulgent violence - who needs to watch an arm being cut off by a chain saw? Predictably and justifiably, Cuban-Americans protested, but with little effect ... except, of course, a cloned Godfather-style film-ending disclaimer that "the characters do not represent the Cuban American community and it would be erroneous and unfair to suggest that they do." Flushed with crime-based "success," De Palma returned to Italian-Americans in 1987 with The Untouchables, giving Al Capone the opportunity to demonstrate his major league prowess by crushing an associate's skull with a baseball bat during a formal dinner party.

Not to be outdone, director Michael Cimino (with help from screen- writer Oliver Stone, who also penned Scarface), turned his ethnic angst on New York's Chinatown with the 1985 Year of the Dragon. Chinese-Amer- icans became Cimino's avenue for indulging in filmed ethnic violence (as well as his usual movie-making excesses), while avoiding criticism from Italian-Americans. Of course, he did catch it from Chinese-Americans, who rightfully responded in angry protest, as had Cuban-Americans and Italian-Americans before them. And, as was now becoming a cliche of its own, Year of the Dragon carried an on-film protestation of non-stereotyp- ing innocence. Like Scarface, Dragon proclaimed that it was about "a group of ruthless criminals" who should not be perceived as being typical of any particular ethnic group.

Even Italian director Sergio Leone participated in this ethnic switch with his masterful Once Upon a Time in America (1983). The film portrays the rise of Jewish-American gangs on New York's Lower East Side during the early twentieth century (with yet another Italian-American actor, Robert DeNiro, as the central Jewish figure). However, despite its

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smattering of Stars of David, this fascinating film was Italian through and through, even to Ennio Morricone's haunting score. Only the names had been changed to protect the innocence of Italian-Americans.

Possibly, then, filmic depictions of Italian-Americans have entered a period of transition. Italian-American gangsters increasingly share the screen with criminals of other ethnic origins (even Prizzi's Honor had a Polish-American hitwoman). Italian-American cops sometimes oppose Italian-American criminals, showing that they do not operate solely on the underside of the law. In The Untouchables, an Italian-American policeman (who had changed his name from Petri to Stone to conceal his ethnic heritage) joins the crusaders to help bring down Capone, while in Sidney Sheldon's The Naked Face (1985), good cop Bertelli helps uncover the Mafia-complicity of bad cop Angeli.

The 1987 Academy Awards further suggest (but do not prove) that we may be entering a new era of Italian-American screen tale. The success of Moonstruck - an Italian-American family tale that enchanted audiences, won acting Oscars for Cher as Loretta and Olivia Dukakis as Rose Castorini, and brought honors to others involved in the movie - signals a further step in diversifying and humanizing the Italian- American movie image. Like Prizzi's Honor, Moonstruck massages Italian- American stereotypes, but in this case domestic family life, not Mafia family relations.14 Emotional and exhuberant, but tender and loving, Moonstruck's characters take another step for an improved film presence. And they do it virtually without violence. First immigrants, later criminal and earth mother icons, with men generally having a penchant for violence and women a tendency toward neuroticism, screen Italian- Americans may finally be moving toward an overdue balance in their film image.

Notes

1. Much of the evidence for this article is drawn from my Ethnicity and Foreign- ness in Film Computer Data Bank in the University of California, Riverside's Laboratory for Historical Research. My book-in-progress on the U.S. feature film treatment of ethnic groups places Italian-Americans in the comparative context of the movie depiction of other ethnic groups, while my book on the movie treatment of foreign nations will examine the screen image of Italy as part of the broader theme of Hollywood's changing portrayal of the world.

2. For a bibliography of books and articles dealing with Italian-Americans in film and television see Allen L. Woll and Randall M. Miller, eds., Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1987), 301-307.

3. Among the studies of Hollywood crime movies see: Carlos Clarens, Crime Movies: From Griffith to the Godfather and Beyond (New York: Norton, 1980); Eugene Rosow, Born to Lose: The Gangster Film in America (New York: Oxford UP, 1978); and Jack

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Shadoian, Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster/Crime Film (Cambridge: MIT P, 1977).

4. The rise of the depression-era crime film is discussed in Andrew Sarris, "Big Funerals: The Hollywood Gangster, 1927-1933," Film Comment, 13 (1977), 6-9, and Stephen L. Karpf, The Gangster Film: Emergence, Variation and Decay of a Genre, 1930-1940, diss., Northwestern U, 1969 (New York: Arno P, 1973).

5. For an analysis of Little Caesar, see the chapter, "The Individual Film: Little Caesar and the Gangster Film," in Stuart M. Kaminsky, American Film Genres: Approaches to a Critical Theory of Popular Film (New York: Dell, 1977), 23-48, and Gerald Peary, "Rico Rising: Little Caesar Takes Over the Screen," in Gerald Peary and Roger Shatzkin, eds., The Classic American Novel and the Movies (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1977), 286-296. The script for Little Caesar can be found in Gerald Peary, ed., Little Caesar (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1981).

6. According to the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, which went into full effect in 1934, the movie treatment of crime could not "inspire potential criminals with a desire for imitation" or "make criminals seem heroic or justified." In application, this meant that screen crime could never pay. See Motion Picture Production Code, in Robert H. Stanley and Charles S. Steinberg, The Media Environment: Mass Communications in American Society (New York: Hastings House, 1976), 81, 91.

7. An analysis of Italian-American women in motion pictures can be found in Daniel S. Golden, "Pasta or Paradigm: The Place of Italian-American Women in Popular Film," Explorations in Ethnic Studies, 2 (1979), 3-10.

8. The Godfather has generated more critical debate than any other film about Italian-Americans. Among such analyses are: Lawrence J. Dessner, "The God- father, the Executive, and Art," Journal of Popular Culture, 6 (1972), 211-214; Stephen Farber, "Coppola and The Godfather," Sight and Sound, 41 (1972), 217-223; Giovanni Sinicropi, "The Saga of the Corleones: Puzo, Coppola and The God- father: An Interpretive Essay," Italian-Americana, 2.1 (1975), 79-90; and David Thomson, "The Discreet Charm of the Godfather," Sight and Sound, 47 (1978), 76-80. Also of interest is Robert K. Johnson, Francis Ford Coppola (Boston: Twayne, 1977).

9. This cloning also occurred in published fiction. Dwight C. Smith, Jr., identified 300 Mafia theme paperback books that were issued in the first six years following the 1969 publication of Puzo's novel. See Dwight C. Smith, Jr., "Sons of the Godfather: 'Mafia' in Contemporary Fiction," in Italian Americana, 2.2 (1974), 190-207.

10. When asked to comment on the representation of Italian-Americans in his Mean Streets, director Martin Scorsese replied, "I just wanted to be as accurate as possible.... I wanted to make them look the way I saw them." See "Center Honors Martin Scorsese," The Dispatch: The Newsletter of the Center for American Culture Studies, Columbia University, 4.1 (1985), 14.

11. For example, see Mario Puzo, The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions (New York: Putnam's, 1973).

12. See, for example, Leonard Quart and Paul Rabinow, "The Ethos of Mean Streets," Film & History, 5 (1975), 11-15, and Mary Pat Kelly, Martin Scorsese: The First Decade (Pleasantville, N.Y.: Redgrave Publishing, 1980).

13. Among the various discussions of Rocky is Daniel J. Leab, "The Blue Collar Ethnic in Bicentennial America: Rocky," in John O'Connor and Martin Jackson, eds., American History/American Film: Interpreting the Hollywood Image (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1979), 257-272.

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14. A discussion of the Italian-American family figures prominently in Daniel S. Golden, "The Fate of La Famiglia: Italian Images in American Film," in Randall M. Miller, ed., The Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups (Englewood, N.J.: Jerome S. Ozer, 1980), 73-97.

Works Cited

"Center Honors Martin Scorsese." The Dispatch: The Newsletter of The Center for American Culture Studies, Columbia University 4.1 (1985): 14.

Clarens, Carlos. Crime Movies: From Griffith to the Godfather and Beyond. New York: Norton, 1980.

Dessner, Lawrence J. "The Godfather, the Executive, and Art." Journal of Popular Culture 6 (1972): 211-214.

Farber, Stephen. "Coppola and The Godfather." Sight and Sound 41 (1972): 217-223. Golden, Daniel S. "The Fate of La Famiglia: Italian Images in American Film." The

Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups. Ed. Randall M. Miller. Engle- wood, N.J.: Jerome S. Ozer, 1980. 73-97. . "Pasta or Paradigm: The Place of Italian-American Women in Popular Film." Explorations in Ethnic Studies 2 (1979): 3-10.

Johnson, Robert K. Francis Ford Coppola. Boston: Twayne, 1977. Kaminsky, Stuart M. "The Individual Film: Little Caesar and the Gangster Film." American

Film Genres: Approaches to a Critical Theory of Popular Film. New York: Dell, 1977. 23-48.

Karpf, Stephen L. The Gangster Film: Emergence, Variation and Decay of a Genre, 1930-1940. Diss. Northwestern U, 1969. New York: Arno P, 1973.

Kelly, Mary Pat. Martin Scorsese: The First Decade. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Redgrave Publishing, 1980.

Leab, Daniel J. "The Blue Collar Ethnic in Bicentennial America: Rocky." Ed. John O'Con- nor and Martin Jackson. American History/American Film: Interpreting the Hollywood Image. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1979. 257-272.

Peary, Gerald, ed. Little Caesar. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1981. "Rico Rising: Little Caesar Takes Over the Screen." The Classic American Novel and the Movies. Ed. Gerald Peary and Roger Shatzkin. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1977. 286-296.

Puzo, Mario. The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions. New York: Putnam's, 1973. Quart, Leonard and Paul Rabinow. "The Ethos of Mean Streets." Film & History 5 (1975):

11-15. Rosow, Eugene. Born to Lose: The Gangster Film in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. Sarris, Andrew. "Big Funerals: The Hollywood Gangster, 1927-1933." Film Comment 13

(1977): 6-9. Shadoian, Jack. Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster/Crime Film. Cambridge: MIT P,

1977. Sinicropi, Giovanni. "The Saga of the Corleones: Puzo, Coppola and The Godfather: An

Interpretive Essay." Italian Americana 2.1 (1975): 79-90. Smith, Dwight C., Jr. "Sons of the Godfather: 'Mafia' in Contemporary Fiction." Italian

Americana 2.2 (1974): 190-207. Stanley, Robert H. and Charles S. Steinberg. The Media Environment: Mass Communications in

American Society. New York: Hastings House, 1976.

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Thomson, David. "The Discreet Charm of the Godfather." Sight and Sound 47 (1978): 76-80.

Woll, Allen L. and Randall M. Miller, eds. Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1987.

I must thank the Italian American Media Institute, the Research Committee of the University of Califor- nia, Riverside, Academic Senate, and Acting Dean Carol Tomlinson-Keasey of the UCR College of Humanities and Social Sciences for grant support for my film research. I would also like to thank UCR Professor Jean-Pierre Barricelli for his comments on a draft of this article, and to express special appreciation for my research assistant, Tom Thompson, who has so ably assisted me in the development of my Ethnicity and Foreignness in Film Computer Data Bank.

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