Godfathers, Goodfellas and Madonnas:

A  Pedagogical Approach to the Representation of

    Italian Americans in Recent American Cinema

 

    In the past two decades, there has been a decided shift toward mul­ticulturalism at American universities, with an emphasis on the expe­rience of ethnic minorities, both white and of color.[1] For Italian stud­ies, this development has spurred interest in Italian American history, literature, and culture. Conferences are held, articles and books are pub­lished, and scholarly journals such as this one are founded in order to dedicate themselves solely to this vast and enthralling field. What is lacking, however, and here as in the rest of this article I speak from my own experience as a graduate student and instructor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a concerted effort on the part of scholars of Italian Americana to share their interest and knowledge with univer­sity students.

    This realization, however, was not the primary impetus for my deci­sion to teach a class on images of Italian Americans in recent Hollywood cinema. In fact, it was the non-academic reality which ini­tially attracted my attention. Beginning in the Fall of 1990 and continu­ing through 1991, a plethora of films about and not necessarily by Italian Americans was released in the United States: Goodfellas, State of Grace, Miller’s Crossing, The Godfather Part III, My Blue Heaven, Oscar, Once Around, Jungle Fever, just to name a few. What most caught my eye was the fact that almost every one of these films relied on the negative stereotypes traditionally associated with Italian Americans in American culture: ruthless mobsters and violent thugs, lazy members of the working class lacking in intelligence and ambition, and overbearing mothers and whiny wives and daughters.

    The appalling abundance of these negative depictions begged for an investigation. But rather than embark on the lonely endeavor of researching an article, I opted for a more open and communal form of inquiry: a course about Hollywood’s portrayal of Italian Americans. I began my task by asking colleagues and my film-buff friends for films they could remember which dealt with Italian Americans. I also consulted general articles and books about the cinematic representation of Italian Americans; they included Carlos E. Cortés’s “Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons” and Daniel S. Golden’s “The Fate of La Famiglia: Italian Images in American Film.”[2]

    One of the first discoveries I made was just how broad this subject was: the depiction of Italian Americans in the movies could be traced all the way back to a 1914 silent film entitled The Italian, which por­trayed the plight of Italian immigrants at the turn of the century, and continued more or less steadily up to the recent films which initially had piqued my curiosity. Hence, in order to limit the scope of this vast topic for the course, I decided to concentrate on the cinematic production of the last twenty years, not only because it was freshest in my mind but also because I believed that it would be of greater interest to today’s college student.

    The next step was following the proper bureaucratic channels in order to obtain official approval for the course. It was my good fortune that the University of California has a program designed precisely for students (mostly undergraduates) who want to either create or enroll in courses not traditionally offered in the general curriculum: Democratic Education at Cal (DE-CAL).[3] In order for any course to be accepted into the DE-CAL curriculum, it must first be affiliated with both a depart­ment and a faculty sponsor. I consulted both Steven Botterill and Gavriel Moses, professors of Italian at UC Berkeley, as to how I should proceed in proposing the course to the rest of the faculty; Professor Moses, our film specialist, agreed to be the professor associated with the course.

    After compiling a preliminary list of films, I formally proposed the course to the Italian department on March 15, 1991, planning to teach it during the Spring semester of 1992. I justified my proposal based on the following assumptions: 1) it would spur interest in Italian American studies on this campus, and 2) it would have a wide range of appeal, attracting film students, Italian majors, and students of Italian American descent.[4] While the department regrettably was unable to provide me with a stipend for the course, they nevertheless encouraged me to pursue the project, allotting me funds for some course materials.[5]

    In the Fall of 1991, I began full preparations for the course. An ini­tial observation was the paucity of texts devoted to this subject; there seemed to be a large gap between interest in the 1970s and scholarly works of the past five years. Using the Cortés article as my principle source, I went in search of additional and more specialized material (articles on specific films, themes, etc.). I simultaneously familiarized myself with the material and attempted to gather sources for a class reader, which I envisioned as consisting of a wide variety of articles and essays: excerpts from books on recent Hollywood cinema, film reviews, biographical portraits of the directors in question, and more theoretically oriented writings. My aim was to create a balance between the critical and the theoretical in each reading assignment for a particular film (or group of films).[6]

    The next step, and by far the hardest one, was selecting which films would be screened. I had put together a tentative list in my mind, which consisted of the following “classics” of recent Italian American cinema: The Godfather, Mean Streets, Serpico, Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, Raging Bull, Married to the Mob, The Freshman, Moonstruck, Do the Right Thing, and Goodfellas. I had certain issues that I wanted to raise: the portrayal of the Mafia in the movies, the vision of the Italian-American director (Martin Scorsese in particular), the representation of gender, and the relationship between film genre and the portrayal of Italian-American ethnicity. In my many hours of film screenings, I discovered some film “gems” which I decided to include: Italianamerican, a documentary Martin Scorsese made about his par­ents and their Italian American heritage; True Love, a recent film by Nancy Savoca in which the traditional Italian love story is demysti­fied (an excellent film to compare and contrast with Moonstruck); and Queen of Hearts, a fable-like film depicting the plight of Anglo-Italian immigrants.[7]

    The next obstacle became one of organization and orientation. Here an invaluable source of information was Race and Ethnicity in the History of the Americas: A Filmic Approach, by Carlos E. Cortés and Leon G. Campbell.[8] The work was a result of a course with the epony­mous title, taught by the authors. The professors described the course’s premise, their own approach, and their views on ethnicity and the cin­ema, focusing on specific ethnic groups: African Americans, Native Americans, and white ethnics, including Italian Americans. The book not only helped me to define the basic concepts which would be funda­mental for my course but also gave me an example of how it should be constructed.

    I divided the main tenets of my approach into two categories: cin­ema and ethnicity. Cortés and Campbell outlined three basic principles of cinema: 1) that all films are subjective and not direct representations of reality; 2) that films, particularly Hollywood films, deliver a mes­sage to the audience through the dynamic sum of their “words, images and sounds,” which act both independently and as a whole; and 3) that the nature of film viewing is highly personal—each spectator carries his/her own “baggage” when viewing a film, depending on his/her class, gender, race, personality, etc.[9] When stressing the latter point during the course of the semester, I asked students to look for the con­structed spectator (technically speaking, the discursive position inscribed within the film’s text) in order to see how the film wants the spectator to interpret its message, particularly in the use of point of view shots, the narrative, and constructed character identifications.[10] Another concept which Cortés and Campbell stress (and with which I concurred) is their dislike for value judgments of films based on whether they have “positive” or “negative” representations of ethnic groups. Instead, they choose to view all films as interpretations, pay­ing careful attention to the extracinematic discourse: when, why, and how the film was made? what cultural forces and movements does it reflect? how was it marketed?[11]

    Ethnicity, however, was a more difficult subject for me to approach, especially due to the fact that I am not of Italian-American descent. Here, once again, I turned to Cortés and Campbell, who see ethnicity as more of an organizing principle, consisting of three elements: “factual characteristics; the ways people in a particular group view them­selves; and the way others may view them.”[12] In addition, they define it “not as a scholarly label or category, but as a continuous interplay of reality and the perception of reality . . . a dynamic organizing concept without firm and rigid boundaries rather than as a hard-line category for inclusion or exclusion of groups.”[13] What struck me about this definition was its similarity to cinema, which can also be defined as a “continuous interplay of reality and the [filmmakers’] perception of reality” that often tries to pass itself off as pure truth; the role of the spectator, then, is the consumer of this new truth/reality—s/he is intended to perceive this “perception” as new and real.

    When dealing with the fusion of these two elements into “ethnic cinema” per se, Cortés and Campbell discern three different genres of films: 1) “consciously ethnic films,” which deal with one ethnic group in particular; 2) films in which ethnicity figures prominently in the narrative and the lives of the characters in question; and 3) works in which ethnicity plays a supporting role and has little or no impact on the film’s diegesis.[14] I decided it was important to include films from each of the three categories in order to fully examine the depth of Hollywood’s stereotypical depictions of Italian Americans.

    When it came time to planning the course’s structure, I arrived at an impasse: should I organize it around the themes and genres I wanted to examine or should the films be viewed chronologically? Originally, I had conceived the course in the former mode, but the more research I did, the more I became convinced that the films needed to be anchored in the historical, political, social, and cultural reality in which they were made and distributed. I thus chose to view the films in the order in which they were released (with a few exceptions due to scheduling conflicts). I did not, however, neglect the important issue of genre. Some films, such as the mob-parodies, were all allocated to one class session. For many of the films which would be screened in class, I also recom­mended other films for outside viewing, which, while not necessarily released contemporaneously with the lesson’s film, complimented it thematically or sequentially.

    With these basic problems solved, I launched into more of the specifics: course requirements and scheduling. I decided to devote each week to a particular film, dividing it into two sessions: one reserved exclusively for screening the film and the other for lectures and discus­sion. In film courses I have taken, I have always found that I needed time for the film to “digest” before being ready to discuss it in detail; I also believe it is important to have seen the film before one does the assigned readings.[15] In addition, for certain films, I invited guest speakers to address the class on their field of specialization. They included lectures on the history of the gangster film, the origins of the Mafia in Italy and America, Italian-American Catholicism, the Anglo-Italian community, and the recent history of African American cinema. Each was received enthusiastically by the students, who asked intelligent questions and appreciated a different perspective from my own.

    As far as the course requirements were concerned, I had certain limi­tations imposed upon me by the DE-CAL program: students could only enroll in the course on a PASS/NO PASS basis (i.e. grades were not assigned). Consequently, I could make the assignments neither too demanding (with the reasoning being that no one would do them) nor too easy. I opted to have the students be responsible for two primary tasks: a film journal, in which they were to write down impressions, ideas, and analyses of each film, and one six- to eight-page paper. The idea for the journal was suggested to me by Professor Moses; it was designed to be both a personal diary and a critical exercise leading up to the final paper. I did not require students to hand it in, since it was intended for their own educational purposes; instead, I asked them to read me their favorite passage when we had mandatory consultations for their papers. The decision to have the students write a final paper rather than take an exam was based on my own experience as a student: it is much easier for someone to regurgitate in an exam than in a situa­tion where s/he is forced to come up with original ideas. I reinforced this belief by prohibiting them from writing exclusively on a film which was discussed extensively in class; they had to analyze at least one film from a supplementary viewing list which I provided.[16] The results for both assignments were outstanding.[17]

    On Wednesday, January 22, 1992, the first meeting of “From Mean Streets to Madonna: Images of Italian Americans in Recent Hollywood Cinema” convened. I had asked my fellow graduate student instructors to publicize the class; with the help of the Italian department’s administrative assistant, I distributed fliers in order to attract a wide variety of students. The response was overwhelming: in the first three meetings, over fifty students attempted to enroll in the course. For prac­tical purposes, I limited the number to thirty, and, even so, it was the most popular course in the Italian department that semester.[18]

    The first few meetings naturally were devoted to general introduc­tions: I discussed my aims for the course, went over the syllabus and the rules, and gave an overview of ethnicity and the cinema. I attempted to familiarize them with basic Italian-American history and the path of Italian-American representations in the cinema.[19] In order to complement my intention, the first film I chose to screen was the somewhat incongruous Little Caesar (1930), with Scarface (1932) as recommended supplementary viewing. Since the image of the mobster figures so prominently in cinematic and social stereotypes about Italian Americans, I believed it was necessary to trace this theme back to its origins.

    Before we launched into our discussion of Little Caesar, I deemed it necessary to go over some of the basic film terminology which would be used frequently in discussions and lectures: the concept of point of view; the role of the filmmakers; and the way the film’s iconography, its script, and its soundtrack can work both with and against each other.[20] I then asked the students to look for signs and codes of Italian-American ethnicity which, so prevalent today, were already in place sixty years earlier. We touched upon issues of the family, sexuality, crime in gen­eral, and Hollywood’s view of the Italian “other.” Some interesting parallels were made with recent films dealing with crime (and not just limited to Italian Americans). We noted how the film tended to distort “traditional” Italian customs (the close family, affection between men) and make them seem perverse and twisted.

    The course proceeded in much of the same manner: after Monday’s film screening, I would begin each Wednesday class with general back­ground information about the film in question and then launch into a discussion of the major themes raised by the film and the cinematic techniques employed to convey them. Throughout the semester, we dis­covered many reoccurring tendencies in the portrayal of Italian-American ethnicity. A common thread of many films, from The Godfather up through Goodfellas, was the conflict between assimila­tion into American life and the old Italian way. This theme often man­ifested itself in generational strife between the more Americanized youth and their more traditional parents, as can be seen in Saturday Night Fever and Queen of Hearts. Another tendency was for these films to generalize and romanticize the “old country” without anchoring it historically and/or culturally. Efficacious films included scenes in Italy, where many Italian-American customs, which may seem strange to mainstream Americans, are given their precedents and explanations (as in The Godfather). Catholicism played a key role in many films, from the use of its imagery and iconography (Raging Bull) to individ­ual religious conflict (Mean Streets), to downright parody (Queen of Hearts); in an example from popular culture, Madonna’s music video Like a Prayer is an expression of her own brand of Catholicism, fusing religious faith with images of sexuality, vitality and passion.

    More general social issues, such as race, class, and gender, figured prominently in our discussions. We discovered both prejudice against and by Italian Americans in these films, which manifested itself both covertly and overtly.[21] In certain films by Martin Scorsese, for example, much of the dialogue consists of racist epithets (with African Americans as the primary but by no means sole targets), explicitly anchoring the characters in a specific ideological framework. A much more subtle and, in our opinion, more dangerous discourse came to light in a film like Rocky. Within the context of a feel-good “Cinderella” story, the tension between white ethnics and their African-American counterparts is discreetly exploited. The spectator is encouraged (and cannot help but) identify with the lovable buffoon who literally battles the uppity black man for the good of (white) Bicentennial America; Rocky becomes, to quote Andrew Sarris, “the great white hope.”[22] Spike Lee offered the students a different perspective with both Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever. Each film paints a complex portrait of race relations in urban America, in which the problems are many (particularly between the Italian-American and African-American communities) and easy solutions nearly impossible to achieve.

    Perhaps due to my own ideological preferences, much time was spent discussing the portrayal of Italian-American women and gender rela­tions in the films. Usually marginalized with respect to the narrative, the female characters tended to follow the traditionally prescribed stereotypes as wives, mothers, and objects of desire. In Sidney Lumet’s Serpico, for instance, the male hero’s crusade seems to depend on the woman’s subservient attitude and domestication: Serpico’s live-in girlfriend is filmed practically without exception within the confines of his tiny apartment. Even in films which center around a female protagonist (Moonstruck and Once Around), women are images of what Caryn James calls “synthetic ethnicity,” in which being Italian American (and a woman) justifies inexplicable behavior.[23] Of significant interest was theme of the family, which, in these films, was often shown as comically idyllic (Moonstruck again) or tragically flawed (The Godfather series); only the documentaries discussed (Italianamerican and Truth or Dare) offered a more complex view of family life.

    Some of our most fascinating sessions were devoted to the films’ rela­tionship with the contemporary historical and political reality. The Godfather, released in 1972, is clearly an indictment of American capi­talism and those who blindly follow its leaders. At the same time, however, we noticed how the film was also an attempt to restore order in a turbulent time through a celebration of old world values, such as patriarchal domination and female subjugation;[24] the image of the Mafia becomes, in this and other films, an Italian-American iconic con­vention which signifies not only abhorrent behavior but also rigid (and male-coded) rules of conduct. Similarly, the familiar discourses of the Reagan era manifest themselves in a film like Moonstruck: gender con­flict (especially between husbands and wives) is trivialized and sim­plified, all for the greater good of “la famiglia.” In contrast, an inde­pendent film like True Love, which focuses on the impending nuptials of two young Italian Americans, offers an interesting twist on the tradi­tional Italian love story. Instead of romanticizing gender relations, the film explores the social forces and pressures which can lock the sexes in constant battle. Marriage, for this couple, is not a union of love but rather an alienating process; the words “I love you” are never even exchanged between the characters.

    I tried to incorporate contemporary theory into discussions as well. For Raging Bull, we read an excerpt from Robin Wood’s Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, in which he discusses the film’s representation of the negative effects of repressed homosexuality, basing his ideas on Freud’s notion of innate bisexuality.[25] This position, in my opinion, misinterprets the strong male camaraderie which exists in Italian-American communities. I countered Wood’s analysis by presenting what I believe to be a more plausible Freudian interpretation of the film, that is of Jake La Motta as pure id. I first explained to the students the differences between the id, ego, and super-ego in order to show how sex and aggression are related. In Jake, they become the driving forces of his life and ultimately lead to his self-destruction. On a more abstract level, I relied upon recent theories on self-consciousness and the cinema when dealing with the mob-parody films.[26] I divided them into two categories: movies which parody the mob (i.e. Prizzi’s Honor) and those which parody the mob-movie, with the latter creating a self-reflexive sub-genre (Married to the Mob and The Freshman). The stu­dents, while at first a little baffled by the terminology, grasped these concepts and were able to find examples of it in the films under exami­nation as well as in other media. Finally, I cited current topics in femi­nist film theory, such as the commodification and fetishization of the female body; nowhere is this clearer than in Raging Bull, in which the spectator is introduced to Vicky, Jake’s future wife, via a series of anatomical close-ups.[27]

    The course, however, was not without its faults, most of which arose from my first encounter with teaching this subject. Such a rich selection of films made it difficult to always stay on track and address issues of Italian-American ethnicity—one can easily get carried away with other topics, such as cinematic techniques and other relevant social issues. Some of the reading assignments were not met enthusiastically by the students, particularly the theoretically oriented pieces. At this level, I found that it would be better to include more reviews and fea­ture newspaper articles. The next time I teach this course, I also intend to include corresponding fiction and non-fiction, such as Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather, Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy, and selected works from other Italian-American writers.[28] In addition, I would advise against screening certain films. One that met with an almost unanimous negative reaction was the Madonna documentary, Truth or Dare; most students felt, and I tended to agree, that it was more a vehicle of self-promotion rather than an exploration of an Italian-American “artist” (to quote Madonna herself) and her vision. A better solution would be to devote one lecture/discussion section to images of Italian Americans in popular culture and show a few Madonna videos. Papa Don’t Preach and Like a Prayer are good selections, for both deal with different experiences of Italian-American life. Interestingly, even on a campus like Berkeley, the latter provoked intense debate—some students sur­prisingly found it blasphemous and offensive. I also would include (as I did for this course) routines by Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci and a particular episode of The Simpsons in which young Bart, in a hilarious parody of Goodfellas, takes a job as a lackey for the mob; these images provided some needed comic relief.

    In the end, what made the course successful was the unending enthu­siasm and interest of the students who participated in the class. Their comments were original and their contributions indispensable. Their final papers were impressive—they ranged in topic from analyses of single films (such as My Cousin Vinny, The Pope of Greenwich Village, and Good Morning, Babylon) to comparative essays (some across ethnic lines) to thematic issues (motherhood, gender relations). One student even videotaped her Italian “nonna” á la Scorsese, interviewing her about her life in both Italy and America. They were able to apply the tools of interpretation we had used in class to unique approaches to unfamiliar texts, ably satisfying my initial goal.

    I would like to conclude this essay by giving these students the last word: I have chosen excerpts from select papers which I believe best represent their efforts. I wish I could include every one, but space con­straints prohibit me from doing so. Instead, I have added, in addition to the syllabus and supplementary filmography, a list of all the students and their paper titles and topics, in order to give credit where credit is due.

 

Jacqueline Reich

University of California, Berkeley

 

 

Excerpts from Selected Student Papers

(in alphabetical order)

 

Dafney Dabach, “Italian Images in American Film: Prince of the City”

    The Catholic Religion has been a major theme in many Italian-American films. However, in Prince of the City, Catholicism itself is not directly dealt with; there are no baptism scenes, no priests, not a single church, yet many themes of Catholicism (such as guilt, penance, and judgment) and religious themes in general (code, ritual, etc.) are major components of this film.

    Guilt is a critical theme of this film. At one point Daniel (Danny) Ciello, the main character, states that “Everyone is guilty.” From a Catholic stance this is true when considering the Original Sin; because, in this view, everyone is a descendant of Adam and Eve, and they com­mitted sin, so everyone is seen as guilty. A good portion of the film deals specifically with Ciello’s guilt and the guilt of his partners. Richard Cappalino, a member of the Chase commission, tells Ciello that Ciello really wants to confess his guilt; Cappalino goes on to say that everyone “wants to come out clean” and rid themselves of guilt. It is because of this guilt that Ciello confesses; in this process he not only purges himself in the literal sense by confessing his crimes, but purges himself in a symbolic sense as well. After testifying before the court, Ciello vomits; his body is metaphorically ridding itself of all sin. Another time Ciello is purified is during his first truthful confession to the Chase commission—he cries. The torrents of angry tears which burst from his body serve as a means of purification. All of his impuri­ties, with his tears and confessions, are washed away . . .

 

Sarah Jaeger, “Images of Ethnicity in Betsy’s Wedding”

    Movie portrayals of Italian Americans often depict the Italian-American family as being tight-knit, respecting of “traditional” fam­ily values, and a bit crazy. Moonstruck is an example of this type of movie. One of the overall motifs of Moonstruck is the moon, and the myth that Italians can be “possessed” by the moon. The message that Moonstruck gives to the audience is that being Italian American is justi­fication for lunacy. Similarly, Betsy’s Wedding gives the message that being Italian is direct cause for being crazy. The movie goes so far as to convey that this is true for families of all ethnicities. By contrasting Betsy’s Italian/Jewish family with Jake’s “maybe Scottish” family, the movie clearly shows that families with ethnicity have more fun, so to speak, while families that have lost their ethnic ties become stagnated and lose sight of their “true colors.” However, there is also a covert message in this movie that can be found in a closer analysis. Although Betsy’s family has kept its ethnic identity and thus could be seen as being superior to Jake’s family, Jake’s family is the one that has prospered according to societal norms. Betsy’s Wedding thus intimates that the path to social success requires giving up one’s ethnicity . . .

 

William Kruft, “La Mamma: The Image of the Italian-American Mother in Marty”

    Since the earliest portrayals of Italian-American mothers in American cinema, the audience has been seasoned to accept an image of la mamma, or as Richard Gambino describes it, the “jolly, all-loving, naive, rotund mamma mia image” (Richard Gambino, Blood of My Blood [New York: Doubleday, 1975] 27) . . . This image has become a sign for Italian ethnicity in film. The audience expects to see la mamma in films of Italian Americans: she has become an integral part of the stereotypical portrayal of la famiglia. However, this ethnic stereo­typing is but one aspect of the mamma figure.

    The image also encompasses all of the ideologically correct traits of the ‘good mother’: the mamma figure is all too often depicted as the center of the family, sacrificing her own interests for those of the male members of the family, her husband and sons. She provides the stabil­ity and security of home while her activity in the film is primarily limited to domestic work. In essence la mamma is the ideology of moth­erhood, the ideological construct within our society, shrouded in the Italian ethnic stereotype.

    The ideology of motherhood is thus transferred from the American to the Italian mother . . .

 

Leah Potter, “Saturday Night in the Hood” (A comparison of Saturday Night Fever and Boyz N the Hood )

    Being ethnic minorities only intensifies Tre’s and Tony’s [each of the films’ protagonists] struggles to rise out of their neighborhoods. In Saturday Night Fever, Badham clearly places Tony in the context of Italian Americans. The posters of Rocky and Serpico in his room reveal his ethnic heroes. At one point in the movie, he is thrilled when a girl comments, “I just kissed Al Pacino.” Badham uses such blatant stereo­types throughout the entire movie, constantly alluding to the so-called Italian traditional values of family, religion, morality, and patri­archy. Also, most of the Italians in this film are seen as living a sim­pler, more primitive existence in which strength and loyalty abound.

    In Boyz N the Hood, Singleton goes far beyond Badham’s superfi­ciality in portraying an ethnic minority. Before the movie begins, the cold and disheartening statistic that one out of twenty-two black American males will be murdered in his lifetime (most at the hands of other blacks) flashes on the screen. Already, the mostly white audi­ence is being drawn into the experience of African-Americans. We are drawn closer, too close perhaps, when Tre reminds his fellow pupils [both black and white] “that all of us were from Africa . . .”

 

Halla Timon, “Italian-American Males in Hollywood Cinema: American Gigolos”

    Throughout the history of Hollywood cinema, many Italian-American men have been portrayed as the possessors of a dark, brooding eroticism which women in the films cannot resist. Since the days of Rudolph Valentino, Italian-American males have been depicted as creatures of passion: the exotic, unattainable other. Although not all Italian American males stereotyped in films are lovers, those who are seem to share at least some of the strategies and characteristics mas­tered by the character of Julian Kay in American Gigolo; Julian is con­stantly aware of his physical appearance . . . Through his confronta­tional manner of approaching women, he tends to always make them seem like they have said or done something wrong, forcing them to apologize at their own will. However, his sexiest attribute may very well be the fact that he is constantly avoiding being possessed by any­one . . . He is attractive yet dangerously manipulative at the same time . . .

    Despite the sexist overtones of Italian-American male stereotypes in films, many of the seducers still remain appealing in the minds of viewers long after the film is finished, largely because the men, by the end of the film, show some glimmer of compassion and vulnerability . . . The outcomes of these films seem to deny the fact that many of these men were misogynistic and sexist, indulging in practices which debased and harmed women. It is difficult to think that these men are actually attractive to viewers. This is either a scary commentary on how Hollywood manipulates us, or an even scarier commentary on how few of us wish to hear what Hollywood is actually saying.

 

List of Other Students and Paper Topics

 

Adriana Alberghetti, “La Nonna: A Tribute to Scorsese” (she included a videotape of own “Nonna”)

Benjamin Aranda, “Two Movies, Two Views of the Italians and the Irish” (On State of Grace and Miller’s Crossing)

Tunisia Bailey, “I Love You to Death”

Eric Blum, “Spike of Bensonhurst: Milking the Italians For All They’ve Got”

Francis Carson, “Black/Italian Gangs” (on Harlem Nights and New Jack City)

Danielle Compton, “Men of Respect”

Simret Dhillon, “The Pope of Greenwich Village”

Karen Fellini, “Mona Lisa Vito” (on My Cousin Vinny)

Philip Galante, “Avalon and Queen of Hearts”

Diego Galeota, “Mobsters: A Real Family”

Claudia Hrvatin, “The Cornerstone” (About images of women in some of the films)

Alexis Jordan, “The Italian American as Modern-Day Saint” (on Mean Streets and The Pope of Greenwich Village)

Tracy Long, “American Gigolo: A Study of the Attraction Between The Italian-American Man and the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Woman”

Dierdre McGill, “The Godfather, Part III”

Brian Monty, “The Pope of Greenwich Village”

Sharon Phillips, “Organized Crime Crossing Ethnic Boundaries” (On New Jack City and Once Upon a Time in America)

Alicia Reginato, “True Confessions”

Cheyenne Riester, “The Myth of the Italian American” (on Spike of Bensonhurst)

Allison Root, “A Stranger in a Strange Place” (On My Blue Heaven and My Cousin Vinny)

Dylan Shrader, “Dog Date Afternoon: Italian Americans in Marty”

Gary Scott, “From Martin’s Brain: De Niro Reflects the Psychotic Psyche”

Marco Valla, “The Italian-American Famiglia in American Cinema”

Jim Wagner, “Good Morning, Babylon: The Italian Answer”

 

Syllabus

 

Week I (Jan. 22)                                              General Introduction

Carlos Cortés, “Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons” (Melus 14.3-4  [Fall/Winter 1987]).

Lester D. Friedman, “Celluloid Palimpsests: An Overview of Ethnicity and the American Film” in Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema, Lester Friedman, ed. (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1991).

Daniel Sembroff Golden, “The Fate of La Famiglia: Italian Images in American Film” in The Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups, Randall M. Miller, ed. (Englewood: Jerome Ozer, 1980) 73-97.

 

Week II (Jan. 27, 29)                                        Little Caesar (1930)

Recommended viewing: Scarface (1932)

Stuart Kaminsky, “Little Caesar as Prototype” from American Film Genres: Approaches to a Critical Theory of Popular Film. (New York: Dell, 1974) 23-48.

Gerald Peary, “Rico Rising: Little Caesar Takes Over the Screen” in The Classic American Novel in the Movies. Ed. Gerald Peary. (New York: Ungar, 1977) 286-96.

 

Week III (Feb. 3, 5)                                       The Godfather (1972)

Recommended viewing: The Godfather, Parts II and III

Carlos Clarens, “All in the Family” from Crime Movies: From Griffith to the Godfather and Beyond (New York: Norton, 1980).

Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner,”Francis Coppola and the Crisis of Patriarchy” in Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988) 44-60.

John Hess, “Godfather II: A Deal Coppola Couldn’t Refuse” in Movies and Methods, v. I. Bill Nichols, ed. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1976) 81-90.

Michael Covino, “The Godfather Legacy” (East Bay Express, January 4, 1991).

 

Week IV (Feb. 10, 12)                                        Mean Streets (1973)

Lee Lourdeaux, “Martin Scorsese in Little Italy and Greater Manhattan” from Italian and Irish Filmmakers in America: Ford, Capra, Coppola and Scorsese (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990) 217-66.

Richard Gambino, “Despair, Italian Style” as reprinted in Mary Pat Kelly, Martin Scorsese: The First Decade (Pleasantville, NY: Redgrave, 1980).

 

Week V (Feb. 19)                                      Italianamerican (1974-75)

Readings: Mary Pat Kelly, “The Family” (from Martin Scorsese: The First Decade)

 

Week VI (Feb. 24, 26)                                               Serpico (1973)

Recommended viewing: Prince of the City (1981)

Readings: Irwin Silber, “Serpico” from Movies and Methods, v. I. 78-81.

“Sidney Lumet interviewed by Gavin Smith” in Film Comment, 24.4  (July/August 1988): 32-43.

 

Week VII (Mar. 2, 4)                                                    Rocky (1976)

Daniel J. Leab, “The Blue Collar Ethnic in Bicentennial America: Rocky” in American History/American Film: Interpreting the Hollywood Image, John O’Connor and Martin A. Jackson, eds. (New York: Ungar, 1979) 257-72.

 

Week VIII (Mar. 9, 11)                          Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Lynn Garafola, “Hollywood and the Myth of the Working Class” (Radical America 14.1 [1980]).

M. Ryan and D. Kellner, “The Hollywood Working Class” plus Appendix (from Camera Politica) 109-21, 303-07.

 

Week IX (Mar. 16, 18)                                           Raging Bull (1980)

Robin Wood, “Two Films by Martin Scorsese” in Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia UP, 1986) 245-59.

Robert Casillo, “Catholicism and Violence in the Films of Martin Scorsese” in Support and Struggle: Italians and Italian Americans in a Comparative Perspective, eds. Joseph L. Tropea, et. al. (Staten Island, NY: American Italian Historical Association, 1986) 283-304.

 

Week X:                                                                    SPRING BREAK

 

Week XI (Mar.30, Apr. 1)                                  Prizzi’s Honor (1985)

                                                         and Married to the Mob (1988)

Recommended viewing: The Freshman (1989)

Angelo Costanzo and Elizabeth Penn Custer, “The Film Career of John Huston” and Leonard Engel, “Irony and Sentiment in Prizzi’s Honor: Shades of Spade in the 80s” in Proteus: A Journal of Ideas  7.2 (1990): 1-4 , 18-21.

Mast’ud Zavarzadeh, “The New Woman as Mafia Hitman: John Huston’s Prizzi’s Honor” in North Dakota Film Quarterly 56.1 (Winter 1988): 154-64.

 

Week XII (Apr .6, 8)          Moonstruck (1988) and True Love (1989)

Recommended viewing: Once Around (1991)

Daniel Golden, “Pasta or Paradigm: The Place of Italian-American Women in Popular Film” in Explorations in Ethnic Studies 2.1 (January, 1979) 3-10.

Caryn James, “Embrace the Stereotype: Kiss the Movie Goodbye,” The New York Times (January 27, 1991)

From Films for Women (London: BFI, 1986), Charlotte Brunsdon, ed, “Introduction”

 

Week XIII (Apr. 13, 15)                               Queen of Hearts (1989)

No Readings

 

Week XIV (Apr.20,22)                               Do the Right Thing (1989)

                                                                    and Jungle Fever (1991)

No Readings

 

Week XV (Apr. 27, 29) Truth or Dare (1991); selected Madonna videos

Rev. Andrew Greeley, “Like a Catholic: Madonna’s Challenge to Her Church,” America 160 (May 19, 1989): 447-49.

 

Week XVI (May 4, 6)                                             Goodfellas (1990)

Maurizio Viano, “Goodfellas,” Film Quarterly 44.3 (Spring 1991): 43-50.

Henry Hill, “Goodfellas” (Premiere [November 1991]).

“Martin Scorsese Interviewed by Gavin Smith” from Film Comment 26.5 (September/October, 1990): 27-31.

 

Supplementary Viewing List

(other films about Italian Americans in no particular order)

 

 

Broadway Danny Rose

Absence of Malice

The Karate Kid series

Nighthawks

The Untouchables

Fatso

I Love You to Death

The Four Seasons

The Lords of Flatbush

My Blue Heaven

Good Morning, Babylon

Lovers and Other Strangers

Capone

Betsy’s Wedding

State of Grace

The Valachi Papers

The Sicilian

Oscar

Baby, It’s You

Above the Law

Bloodbrothers

Queens Logic

Arthur

 

Men of Respect

American Gigolo

29th Street

Grease

The Don is Dead

Mobsters

New Jack City

Miller’s Crossing

Five Corners

Risky Business

The Pope of Greenwich Village

Cobra

True Confessions

Easy Money

Things Change

The Color of Money

Staying Alive

Paradise Alley

Spike of Bensonhurst

Honor They Father

My Cousin Vinny

Harlem Nights

Love Story

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


[1]I cannot proceed any further without citing the following people for their coopera­tion, advice, and support. I would like to thank the Italian department at UC Berkeley for accepting my proposal, in particular Gavriel Moses for his encouragement and pedagogical suggestions and Juliane Monroe for her artistic fliers; the Democratic Education at the University of California program for making the bureaucratic process easier; my guest speakers (Marilyn Fabe, Lisa Erdberg, Michael Covino, Piero Garofalo, Steven Botterill, and Jesse Rhines) for their invaluable expertise; Meg Gallucci and Renate Holub for their friendship and female solidarity; and, last but not least, my students, whose enthusiasm and intelligence made it all worthwhile.

[2]Carlos E. Cortés, “Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons,” Melus 14.3-4 (Fall-Winter, 1987) and Daniel S. Golden, “The Fate of La Famiglia: Italian Images in American Film” in The Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups, Randall M. Miller, ed. (Englewood: Jerome Ozer, 1980) 73-97. Both these sources, aside from being excellent introductions to the topic, contain very good bibliographies from which to begin one’s research.

[3]Here is a more precise description of the DE-CAL program, as printed in their Spring 1992 catalogue: “Democratic Education at Cal works to reshape education at UC Berkeley to be socially responsible, and is based on critical thinking, participation and dialogue. In collaboration with students, faculty, and community members, DE-CAL creates opportunities for democratic learning both inside and outside the class­room. DE-CAL encourages the initiation of classes and internships that address those academic interests which do not fit neatly into the compartmentalization of study; “disciplines”; or those usually ignored as an active resource center for people inter­ested in education as a tool of empowerment. DE-CAL believes that when people are actively engaged in their educational process, and are encouraged to transform theo­retical knowledge into practical experience, they become more intellectually compe­tent and more active, responsible members of society.” Some courses offered during the Spring semester, 1992 included, besides mine, “AIDS in the American mind,” “Erotic literature,” “Modern Korean History,” and “Sexual Harassment: Policy, Issues and Conflict.”

[4]In fact, about 25% of the students enrolled in the class were of Italian/American ori­gin.

[5]I solved the financial problem by charging a $5 screening fee per student. This money covered the cost of video rentals (16mm prints were out of the question), pho­tocopies, and other expenses.

[6]See the syllabus at the end of this essay for a complete list of the course’s films and readings.

[7]While I did show four films by Martin Scorsese, I decided to stay away from the auteur approach to cinema, stressing instead themes and issues relevant to Italian-American studies. I used this emphasis to justify my neglect of the works of Michael Cimino, primarily because he has never dealt with Italian Americans in particular. For an excellent article on Cimino, see Ben Lawton’s “America through Italian/American Eyes: Dream or Nightmare?” in From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana, Anthony J. Tamburri, Paolo Giordano and Fred L. Gardaphé, eds. (West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1991).

[8]Carlos E. Cortés and Leon G. Campbell, Race and Ethnicity in the History of the Americas: A Filmic Approach, Latin American Studies Program, Film Series 4 (Riverside: University of California, 1979). The book also includes the course’s syl­labus, its requirements, and student papers.

[9]Ibid 5.

[10]For an excellent treatise on this idea of the constructed spectator, see Francesco Casetti’s Dentro lo sguardo (Milano: Bompiani, 1986).

[11]Race and Ethncity in the History of the Americas 6-7.

[12]Ibid 9.

[13]Ibid 9, my emphasis.

[14]Ibid 7.

[15]This plan worked out quite well, although attendance at the screenings did not necessarily correspond with that of the discussion sessions, as can be expected.

[16]See the supplementary filmography at the end of this paper.

[17]I have included a few excerpts from student papers at the end of this article.

[18]Unfortunately, I was faced with the unhappy task of having to send students away. I decided to abide by the following criteria: preference would be given first to those who came to class at the first meeting, then to Italian majors and finally to film majors or those with an emphasis in film. After about three weeks, final enrollment rested at 28.

[19]For an introduction to Italian American history, see Richard Gambino, Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of Italian/Americans (New York: Doubleday, 1975) and the introduction to From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana, Anthony J. Tamburri, Paolo Giordano and Fred L. Gardaphé, eds. (West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1991).

[20]For glossaries of film terminology, see Louis Giannetti, Understanding Movies (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1987) and James Monaco, How to Read a Film (New York: Oxford UP, 1977).

[21]For an interesting discussion of the covert and overt as well as the metaphoric and the metonymic in American cinema, see Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988) 12-16.

[22]Andrew Sarris, “Takes” (The Village Voice, November 22, 1976).

[23]Caryn James, “Embrace the Stereotype: Kiss the Movie Goodbye,” The New York Times (January 27, 1991).

[24]For a fascinating discussion of this subject, see Camera Politica 44-60.

[25]Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia UP, 1986) 245-59.

[26]Here I must thank Professor Moses again for his scholarly expertise on this sub­ject.

[27]For more on this subject, see Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989) 14-26; Jeanne Allen, “The Film Viewer as Consumer,” in Quarterly Review of Film Studies 5.4 (Fall 1980); and Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987) 22-33.

[28]Mario Puzo, The Godfather (New York: New American Library, 1969) and Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (New York: Pocket Books, 1985).