Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood Below Little Caesar (1931)

Family, Gang By Silvia Dibeltulo

and Ethnicity in
Keywords gangster film, Italian-American,
gang, family, ethnicity, Hollywood cinema,
assimilation, Werner Sollors
Italian-themed
Hollywood
Gangster Films

The association of Italianness with family and family and anti-assimilationist attitudes. At the same time,
values is a long-standing motif in Hollywood cinema by considering the changing meaning of the concept
as well as in wider popular culture. In the context of family in its interconnection with the gang, I will
of crime films featuring Italian-American gangsters outline the evolving function of Italian ethnic iden-
the term ‘family’ has become a synonym for ‘crimi- tity both in cinematic crime narratives and, by exten-
nal gang’, especially since the release of Francis Ford sion, American popular culture at large.
Coppola’s blockbuster The Godfather (1972). The recur-
rence of the phrase ‘Mafia Family’ has reinforced the
idea of a link between the Italian-American ethnic
group and organized crime that dates back to the
Great Migration of southern Italians to the United
States and reiterates deep-rooted negative prejudices
and stereotypes about Italian-Americans. The impor-
tance of the family motif in gangster films has been
widely acknowledged. However, the Italian-American
gangster’s relationship with family and gang has not
been interpreted systematically as an indicator of
the degree of this ethnic character’s assimilation into
American society. As I will elucidate, the notions of
family and Italian ethnic identity are neither static
nor monolithic ones and the interrelation of these
two concepts has varied significantly throughout the
history of the depiction of Italian-Americans in Hol-
lywood gangster films. In this article I will analyse key
Hollywood films of this genre, from the 1930s classic
gangster cycle to contemporary cinema, with a focus
on the intersection of family, gang and Italian ethnic-
ity. Drawing on Werner Sollors’s theory of ethnicity
(1986), I will illustrate the various ways in which dif-
ferent concepts of family have been associated with
Italianness in order to express specific views about
Italian-Americans, as well as to signal the extent of
their assimilation into American society. My analy-
sis will shed light on how the notion of family has
been ambivalently employed both as a trait indicat-
ing positive values and as a signifier of clannishness

www.filmint.nu | 25
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood Below Kiss of Death (1947)

From the 1930s to the post-war period

Italian-American characters have been the protago-

nists of Hollywood crime films since the establish-
ment of the gangster film genre in the silent era and,
more prominently, in the early 1930s. Sharing the
stage with the Irish-American gangster, the Italian-
American gangster featured conspicuously in the
classic gangster film cycle  – the most representa-
tive examples of which are The Public Enemy (1931),
Little Caesar (1931) and Scarface (1932)  – that laid
the foundation of future ethnic characterization in
crime films. Italian-American film gangsters of the
1930s experience what Jonathan Munby calls ‘the
violent dilemma of living in two worlds and yet not
belonging fully to either’ (Munby 1999: 20). As ethnic
individuals, they embody the ‘urban working-class
American experience’ (1999: 20): coming from a pov-
erty-stricken urban environment, these characters
struggle to gain success, respectability and public
recognition. Many commentators (see Rosow 1978;
Ruth 1996; Munby 1999; Warshow 2001 [1948]) have
pointed out that the ‘criminalization’ of the work-
ing-class immigrant, especially during the first two
decades of the twentieth century, reflected anxieties
about urbanization, modernization and materialism
in American society. The protagonists of the classic
gangster cycle were Prohibition-era bootleggers and,
as such, they were associated with a period of per-
vasive consumerism and hedonism. According to
David Ruth, the gangster figure was the most promi-
nent example of this era’s lifestyle as ‘he illustrated
the possibilities for fulfillment and display offered by
the new consumer society’ (Ruth 1996: 66). But the
ethnic gangster was also a scapegoat for widespread
concerns about immigration in turn-of-the-century
America. The xenophobic undertone of the classic
gangster films  – especially Scarface, whose protago-
nist is Italian-American  – betrays the inconsisten-
cies of the society which produced them. On the one
hand, the American melting-pot ideology presented
the country as an all-welcoming paradise where
immigrants of all nationalities, races and religions
could start a new life as American citizens. On the
other, nativism was sanctioned by anti-immigration
legislation. By staging the opposition between the
ethnic gangster and the American Establishment,
Hollywood films inevitably pointed to the contra-
dictions of a country that promised full inclusion
through Americanization and upward mobility and
simultaneously hindered immigrants’ admittance to

In the context of crime films featuring Italian-American gangsters the

term ‘family’ has become a synonym for ‘criminal gang’…

26 | film international issue 70

Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
its highest echelons in an effort to preserve the privi-
leges of the WASP elite.
Although Irish- and Italian-American gangsters in
the films of this period are all identified as ethnic, there
are significant dissimilarities in their representations
and characterizations which shed light on the specific
connotation of Italian ethnicity at this time. My cen-
tral argument is that there existed different degrees
of ethnicity, whereby Irish-Americans were depicted
Below The Godfather (1972)
as ‘assimilated ethnics’, while Italian-Americans were
portrayed as ‘alien ethnics’. The positive identification
of the Irish group with assimilation and Americaniza-
tion resulted in more favourable characterizations
of Irish-American gangsters. At the same time, the
negative association of the Italian group with a set
of anxieties deriving from their non-native status
was translated into the creation of stereotypical and
unsympathetic Italian-American gangsters. Werner
www.filmint.nu | 27
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
Sollors’s binary consent/descent theory provides us
with a useful interpretive framework to analyse and
understand the differences in ethnic characterization
both in relation to different groups and in chronologi-
cal terms. In his seminal book, Beyond Ethnicity (1986),
Sollors argues that the American national character
has always been characterized by a conflict or tension
between ‘consent’ and ‘descent’:
Descent relations are those defined by an-
thropologists as relations of ‘substance’ (by
blood or nature); consent relations describe
those of ‘law’ or ‘marriage’. Descent lan-
guage emphasizes our position as heirs, our
hereditary qualities, liabilities and entitle-
ments; consent language stresses our abilities
as mature free agents and ‘architects of our
fates’ to chose our spouses, our destinies,
and our political systems. (Sollors 1986: 6)
In other words, according to Sollors, in American ide-
ology consent means Americanization, a conscious
choice to assimilate and to embrace non-familial
relations and institutions; descent is associated with
the ‘Old World’ and the retention of hereditary privi-
lege, linguistic and cultural insularity and is often
linked to notions of backwardness, closeness and
clannishness. Sollors rightly points out that Amer-
ica ‘has placed great emphasis on consent at the
expense of descent definitions’ (1986: 37). When the
films of the classic gangster cycle were produced,
American ideology put a positive emphasis on con-
28 | film international issue 70
Below The Godfather (1972)
sent, while descent held negative connotations,
since assimilation was equated with the rejection
of Old World cultures and ‘meant becoming more
like middle-class Protestant whites’ (Alba and Nee
2007: 129). It is therefore easy to understand why
Irish-American gangster characters were repre-
sented more favourably than Italian-American
ones. While the former symbolize consent and all
the positive aspects related to it (such as American-
ization, modernity and openness), the latter stand
for descent and all the negative features linked to it
(such as foreignness, backwardness and closeness).
However, the equation of consent with ‘good’ and
descent with ‘bad’ is not as clear-cut and unprob-
lematic as it might seem. In fact, this equation is
questioned and problematized in the films analysed
in this article.
Hollywood’s different attitudes towards the two
ethnic groups in the 1930s were manifested in the
contrast between the relationships of the Irish gang-
sters and Italian gangsters with their families and
ethnic communities. In the films of this period the
gangster’s love for his family and ethnic community
is employed as a redeeming trait of the criminal fig-
ure. Irish-themed gangster films typically feature a
‘good-ethnic vs bad-ethnic’ narrative pattern where
the bad ethnic  – the gangster  – is not so bad after
all. Somehow, the Irish gangster is able to find a bal-
ance between two opposed entities  – the gang and
the family/community  – managing to belong to
both simultaneously. The attachment to the family,
in Irish-themed films, is linked to dedication to the
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
community and, by extension, to American society
at large. In this sense, the Irish family, although it
represents the gangster’s ethnic roots, is not tainted
by the negative connotations of clannishness and
‘amoral familism’,1 which would later be associ-
ated with the Italian ethnic group. Unlike his Irish
counterpart, the Italian-American gangster is unable
to find a balance between the family and the gang.
Little Caesar’s protagonist, Rico Bandello (Edward G.
Below The Godfather, Part II (1974)
Robinson), who was partially based on Prohibition-
era gangster Al Capone, has no family or community
ties whatsoever. Instead, as Gerald Peary notes, Rico
is ‘rewarded with a surrogate, nightmare version of
maternity’ (Faragoh, Burnett and Peary 1981: 18) in
the form of Ma Magdalena (Lucille La Verne), the sin-
ister, greedy woman who provides him with a hide-
out when he is on the run in exchange for money.
Rico is depicted as a loner, a narcissistic and selfish
www.filmint.nu | 29
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
character whose only desire is to ‘be somebody’. His
concept of friendship is so twisted that he tries to
keep his only friend close to him by preventing him
from leaving the gang and leading a legitimate life.
When Rico starts his career in the underworld, the
gang becomes his family  – a family that remorse-
lessly kills any of its members who are under suspi-
cion of having gone ‘soft’.
Another Capone-inspired figure, Scarface’s Tony
Camonte (Paul Muni), is possibly an even more ruth-
less and immoral individual than Rico. Tony’s ties
with the Italian community are quite strong, but this
does not hinder him from hurting those close to him
and estranging both family and fellow gang mem-
bers. His mother says that ‘he’s no good’ and that he
does not ‘belong’ to her any more. Mrs. Camonte’s
remarks refer to both Tony’s criminal activities and
his implied incestuous feelings for his sister Cesca
(Ann Dvorak). The Italian gangster’s brutal nature is
explicitly expressed in his abusive relationship with
Cesca: this clearly indicates his lack of familial val-
ues. In a crucial sequence, Tony, blinded by jealousy,
drags Cesca out of a club where she is dancing with a
man and brings her home. He subsequently verbally
abuses her, threatens to kill her and finally tears
her dress off and hits her. This climatic sequence is
just the preamble to the final catastrophe. Towards
the end of the film, Tony rushes to Cesca’s apart-
ment to kill the man she has moved in with. When
Tony finds out that the man in question is his best
friend and right-hand man Guino (George Raft), he
does not hesitate to shoot him dead. Guino is not the
only gang member to be a victim of Tony’s disloyalty
30 | film international issue 70
Below The Godfather, Part III (1990)
and violence. Earlier in the narrative Tony ‘steals’ his
boss’s woman and then kills him in order to become
the gang leader. Ultimately, unlike the Irish gang-
sters, the Italian gangsters die alone on the street,
shot dead by the police. Since they have hurt and
estranged family and friends, they cannot expect
any redemption or reconciliation.
The Italian gangster’s selfish individualism and
lack of familial values are aspects of a broader ten-
dency, as I have argued above, to portray this figure
in an unsympathetic manner. While the Irish gang-
ster is presented as more humane and likable by vir-
tue of his attachment and loyalty to his family and
ethnic community, his Italian counterpart is seen as
a self-interested monster who rejects those relation-
ships to seek personal success and fulfillment in the
criminal gang. At the same time, however, although
the Italian gangster discards his most direct source
of ethnic identity (that is, his family/community)
to follow the quintessentially American path of the
‘myth of (individual) success’, he is more ethnically
characterized than his Irish counterpart. In other
words, he is seen as more ethnic, alien, foreign and
ultimately ‘Other’. Such an unpleasant character-
ization reflects the widespread criminalization of
immigrant groups in the Depression era. But, unlike
other ethnic groups, Italian immigrants were often
criminalized and indiscriminately blamed for the
unlawfulness of a few individuals because of the
extensive negative publicity given to Italian-Ameri-
can criminals in the media. (Italians had been asso-
ciated with crime, especially with organized criminal
groups such as the Black Hand and the Mafia, since
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
the beginning of the Great Migration of southern
Italians in the 1880s.) Arguably, the agenda behind
the classic gangster films reflected the Establish-
ment’s efforts to produce an ethnic scapegoat during
a time of crisis, the Depression era, to divert people’s
attention from other issues. Jonathan Cavallero poi-
gnantly argues that in these films ethnicity is used to
allow WASP viewers to
[D]istance themselves from the subversive
challenges films like Little Caesar […] posed
to the myths of the Protestant Success
Ethic and the American Dream. As a result,
‘Americans’ mired in the economic chaos of
the Great Depression could gaze critically
on the myths that were so lauded by Ameri-
can mythology while blaming the failure not
on the myths themselves but on the eth-
nic character that corrupted the still viable
Anglo-American ideals. (Cavallero 2004: 53)
Italian-Americans were thus associated with an
anti-assimilationist standpoint and performed the
role of the ‘ethnic Other’. Sollors claims that ‘it is a
widespread practice to define ethnicity as otherness’
(Sollors 1986: 25). In light of this observation, it is not
surprising that the Italians were presented as signifi-
cantly more ethnic (read more ‘other’) than the Irish.
Ultimately, the double standard in the portrayal of
family/gang/ethnicity relations in Irish-themed and
Italian-themed gangster films of the 1930s reveals
an inconsistency between the American ideology
Below Mean Streets (1973)
described by Sollors and its ‘application’ in cine-
matic depictions. Moreover, it suggests the mutabil-
ity of consent/descent significations in relation to
different ethnic groups.
The relationship between family and ethnicity not
only varies between different ethnic groups but also
in the representational history of one specific group.
The fact that Italy was fighting against the United
States during World War II put Italian-Americans in
a difficult situation. Many were believed to be faith-
ful to their country of origin, making them enemy
aliens (see DiStasi 2001). While, with the transi-
tion into the second generation, Italian-Americans
became increasingly Americanized, their ethnicity,
which was perceived as an indicator of allegiance
to Italy, was looked upon with suspicion. This was
reflected in 1940s and 1950s Hollywood films in
which Italian-American characters remain trapped
in the image of the ‘dangerous Other’. However, some
www.filmint.nu | 31
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
post-war crime films, such as Henry Hathaway’s Kiss
of Death (1947), Robert Siodmak’s Cry of the City (1948)
and Nicholas Ray’s Knock on Any Door (1949), do mani-
fest a different, more complex attitude towards the
Italian-American criminal, especially in comparison
with 1930s gangster films. Film scholarship on 1940s
and 1950s crime films has focused overwhelmingly
on the emergence of film noir. Even when the mar-
ginalization of the ethnic criminal in films of this
period is acknowledged (Clarens 1980; Munby 1999;
Shadoian 2003), issues of ethnicity are generally not
addressed. And yet, this was a crucial time in the
representational history of the Italian-American film
gangster as it saw the emergence of the figures of
the ‘gangster-as-family-man’ and the ‘gangster-as-
32 | film international issue 70
Below Goodfellas (1990)
business-man’ which were later merged in the most
popular incarnation of this character in the Godfather
saga.
Films like Kiss of Death and Cry of the City reveal
an effort to highlight the positive features of the
Italian ethnic group, although they ultimately fail
to subvert conventional ideas about Italian-Amer-
icans’ association with crime. The protagonist of
Kiss of Death for example, small-time criminal Nick
Bianco (Victor Mature), is portrayed as a likable
and humane figure because of his devotion to his
wife and children. In this case, although Nick’s wife
belongs to the same ethnic group, their familial
relationship has been created through consent, not
inherited through descent. As Sollors claims, ‘Amer-
ican identity is often imagined as volitional con-
sent, as love and marriage, ethnicity as seemingly
immutable ancestry and descent’ (Sollors 1986:
151). Therefore, we can argue that the positive value
attributed to Nick’s status as a family man lies in
the fact that this consent-oriented relation signifies
a favouring of his American identity over his Italian
one. Cry of the City foregrounds the assimilationist
drive within the Italian ethnic group by opposing the
criminal figure to the consent-oriented policeman,
Italian-American Lt Candella (Victor Mature), who,
along with the gangster’s law-abiding family, tries
to save him from his lawless lifestyle. On the other
hand, the persistence of 1930s representational pat-
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
terns is evident in the film as the criminal, Martin
Rome (Richard Conte), finally estranges his loving
and honest family while trying to gain personal suc-
cess, just like Tony in Scarface. The film is ambivalent
in its representation of the Italian-American family
as an ethnic entity. Martin’s parents, who are first-
generation immigrants, retain close ties with the
culture and customs of the Old World but have also
adjusted to the American way of life so much so that
they diligently live by its rules. Although his ethnic
characterization is not as heavily marked as Tony
Camonte’s, Martin Rome still embodies the figure of
the dangerous ethnic ‘Other’ who chooses to live in
opposition to the laws of his hosting country, that is,
he refuses to assimilate.
In the early 1950s a key event occurred which had
significant repercussions on the perception of Italian
criminality and its screen portrayals. The Kefauver
Committee (1950–51) was established to investigate
criminal activities across state borders. The Commit-
tee’s hearings introduced and popularized the idea of
a national organized crime syndicate dominated by
Italian-American criminals. It was at this time that a
different incarnation of the Italian-American crimi-
nal emerged in films such as The Big Heat (1953) and
The Big Combo (1955). The Italian mobster became a
modern businessman who fitted the image of the
boss of a nationwide criminal operation much bet-
ter than the likes of Little Caesar’s Rico, whose range
of action was confined to the limits of his ethnic
neighbourhood. This new type of Italian-American
criminal appears more ruthless and dangerous than
his 1930s predecessors. He has neither family nor
friends; he is a greedy impersonal individual whose
only concern is to gain money and power. Neverthe-
less, he is still, albeit less explicitly, characterized as
being ethnic. In the context of the Italian ethnic rep-
resentation, such a depiction reflects anxieties over
the upward social mobility of an ethnic group which
was still looked upon with suspicion. The fact that
this kind of gangster is able to extend his power and
control beyond the underworld and into the high-
Below A Bronx Tale (1993)
est spheres of respectable WASP America signals an
acknowledgment of the growing assimilation of Ital-
ian-Americans. However, the Americanization of the
Italian-American criminal does not make him less
sinister. On the contrary, by virtue of his movement
out of the urban ethnic ghetto and into mainstream
upper-class society, the Italian-American gangster
becomes a more subtle and widespread threat to the
country’s welfare. Importantly, because of his ethnic
otherness, he is made to symbolize an alien evil, a
corruptive entity whose roots are not in American
soil, and thus needs to be eradicated. This new image
of the Italian-American gangster-as-businessman,
along with the idea that his gang has turned into a
nationwide organization, reflects a shift in terms of
notions of crime as well as an indication of Italian-
Americans’ upward mobility. It also comments on
the predicament experienced by the post-war ethnic
individual, who, on the one hand, was encouraged to
assimilate, but on the other, was still not welcome in
the highest echelons of American society.
The 1970s and Italian-American film-makers
The concept of family played a predominant role in
Italian-themed crime films of the early 1970s, when
Hollywood saw a resurgence of the gangster genre.
In Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and The God-
father Part II (1974) and Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets
(1973) the family and the gang are conflated: the
gang is now understood as a ‘Mafia Family’, and the
boundaries between the ‘blood family’ and the ‘crime
family’ are blurred. Unlike 1930s gangster films, the
Italian criminal is no longer faced with the dilemma
of choosing between a legitimate life (in harmony
with familial loyalty) and an individualistic criminal
lifestyle. Now the family is tightly linked to crime
and the gangster’s dilemma is whether to remain in
the family’s criminal environment or to break free
from it. In different ways, Coppola and Scorsese
innovatively2 employ the generic frame of the gang-
ster film to offer their vision of Italian-Americans
and their immigrant experience, while also address-
ing conflicting aspects inherent to their hyphenated
identity. For both film-makers the gangster’s attach-
ment to the family and its traditional values is an
indicator of his Italianness. Thus, family loyalty is a
metaphor for ethnic allegiance as opposed to assimi-
lation into mainstream America. From the vantage
point of later-generation ethnics, Coppola and Scors-
ese subvert preconceived and fixed notions about
the negative association of Italian-Americans with
descent. Their works aptly dramatize the tensions
between the American and the Italian identities of
www.filmint.nu | 33

Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
Irish-Americans were depicted as ‘assimilated ethnics’, while Italian-
Americans were portrayed as ‘alien ethnics’.
their characters, at a time when the promotion of
multiculturalism and a renewed interest in ethnic-
ity, driven by the so-called ethnic revival (see Novak
1972; Jacobson 2008), allowed ethnic individuals to
voice their own personal ideas about the immigrant
experience.
For Coppola the family is the archetypal expres-
sion of Italianness. In adapting Mario Puzo’s hom-
onymous novel for the screen, Coppola’s intention
was not to make ‘another’ Italian-themed gangster
film, but rather ‘a family chronicle’ (Evans 1994:
226). This is indeed the case and the Godfather tril-
ogy can be defined as a family melodrama within
a gangster film frame. The predominance of the
family and the conflictual dynamics within it are
the basis of the Godfather narratives. The Godfather
deals with a son’s initial rejection of his own fam-
ily, followed by his embracing and taking charge of
it, replacing his father in the role of the patriarch.
At the beginning Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is not
involved in the ‘family business’, he is an outsider
and a ‘civilian’. Ironically, Michael is the only male
of the family who, having heroically fought in World
War II, has been anything other than a civilian. The
34 | film international issue 70
Below Robert De Nero directing
A Bronx Tale (1993)
fact that Michael served America but decided not to
serve his family makes him even more estranged.
A dialogue between Michael and his older brother
Sonny (James Caan) in a flashback scene at the end
of Part II reveals the contrast between Michael’s and
his family’s views about joining the army. Sonny
believes that soldiers are ‘saps, because they risk
their lives for strangers’. When Michael responds
that ‘they risk their life for their country’, Sonny
claims that ‘your country ain’t your blood’. Clearly,
Sonny’s ethos is in line with ‘amoral familism’. How-
ever, Michael’s reluctance to get involved in the fam-
ily business vanishes after a failed assassination
attempt on his father, Don Vito Corleone (Marlon
Brando).
Unlike Italian-American screen gangsters of the
1930s and 1950s, Michael (initially) is not presented
as a greedy, ambitious individual who chooses crime
as an easy way to become rich and powerful. Instead,
he is forced into becoming a criminal for the sake
of his family. With his brother Sonny killed and his
father retired, Michael embraces the role of the
head of both the blood family and the crime fam-
ily and becomes the new Godfather. Part II is about
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
losing one’s (blood) family: it narrates the progres-
sive destruction of the family due to the patriarch’s
alienation and (more or less direct) murder of some
of its members. As Michael expands his business
empire, he increasingly neglects and eventually
alienates his (WASP) wife Kay (Diane Keaton) and his
siblings, Fredo (John Cazale) and Connie (Talia Shire).
Although, tragically, Michael always believes himself
to be acting to protect the interests of his family, he
has in fact become a greedy and ambitious business-
man who has betrayed his father’s teaching that ‘a
man who doesn’t spend time with his family can
never be a real man’. Michael is supposed to keep
his family united but he fails. The paradox and trag-
edy of Michael Corleone is that the more successful
he becomes in terms of his ‘business’, the more he
is miserable in his family relations. Unlike previous
gangster films, where the mobster is destroyed or
punished, either by being murdered by rivals or by
being killed by the police, here the gangster’s capital
punishment is the loss of his family.
The Godfather narrative has often been interpreted
as a critique of capitalism (Jameson 1992; Man 2000;
Freedman 2011). According to this reading, which has
The fact that Italy was fighting against the United States during World War
II put Italian-Americans in a difficult situation.
Below Donnie Brasco (1997)
also been sustained by Coppola,3 the Mafia acts as
a metaphor for capitalist America. Other commen-
tators have stressed the progressive nature of The
Godfather, presenting the gangster as an anti-estab-
lishment hero who refuses to live by the rules of a
repressive society (Ray 1985). Clearly, the Godfather
films lend themselves to multiple readings. However,
as I have noted above, the family and its dynamics
are of key importance to the Corleone saga. If we
consider the fact that for Coppola the most signifi-
cant aspect of Italian identity and culture is the fam-
ily and its values, it becomes clear that in his vision
losing one’s family means losing one’s ethnic iden-
tity. Thus, if we interpret the family as an indicator
of Italianness we can read Michael’s story in terms
of his assimilation into American society: initially he
wants to assimilate (by placing himself outside the
family), then he embraces Italianness (by pleading
allegiance to the family and the gang) and finally he
becomes too Americanized (by adopting an ‘Ameri-
can lifestyle’ and thus estranging his family). Michael
is unable to find a balance between following the
American way in his (criminal) business and follow-
ing the Italian way in his private life. Ultimately, he
www.filmint.nu | 35
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
fails because he has rejected his ethnic identity. In
other words, Coppola suggests that pleading alle-
giance to America instead of being loyal to one’s
ethnic group can have disastrous results. Michael’s
tragedy is that of the hyphenated ethnic, the second-
generation Italian-American who is inclined towards
the values and lifestyle of the country he was born
and raised into, rather than those of his ancestors.
In this sense, Michael Corleone is a tragic figure who
cannot help being what he is: an American of Italian
ancestry whose purely Italian blood is not sufficient
to make him as Italian as his father.
Coppola’s narrative challenges the notion of
descent as something given and consent as some-
thing chosen: here descent inevitably yields to the
power of consent. In Michael’s case consent is not
something one consciously chooses, but something
one is unavoidably subjected to. Since the gang and
the family are conflated in the Godfather films, the
contrast here is between positive Italian values and
negative American ones, whereby Americanization
is portrayed as a corrupting and deteriorating pro-
cess. Coppola’s vision needs to be put in the context
of the ethnic revival mentioned above. At a time of
deep disillusionment about and distrust of author-
ity, both ethnics and non-ethnics looked at the
Old World culture as a repository of more benevo-
lent and just values – a refuge from an impersonal,
deceitful and profit-driven society. Coppola’s films
question the traditionally negative image of the Ital-
ian-American gangster by situating this character
in the context of the (ethnic) family. Certainly, the
massive success of the films can be partly attributed
to the positive approach to ethnic diversity, as well
as a nostalgic attitude towards familial unity and
stability, prevalent at the time of the films’ release.4
As Fredric Jameson has noted, at a time when tra-
ditional social and familial structures have appar-
ently disintegrated, ‘the ethnic group can seem to
project an image of social reintegration by way of
the patriarchal and authoritarian family of the past’
(Jameson 1992: 32–33). However, arguably, part of the
films’ success amongst WASP audiences was due
to the fact that the criminals are ethnic  – that is,
‘Other’ – which offered them the vicarious pleasure
of simultaneously identifying with their actions and
distancing themselves from the gangsters by virtue
of their otherness.
Scorsese’s notion of his ethnic background is cer-
tainly less nostalgic and romanticized than Coppo-
la’s.5 Nevertheless, like Coppola, Scorsese employs
the generic frame of the gangster film in an inno-
For Coppola the family is the archetypal expression of Italianness.
36 | film international issue 70
Below Donnie Brasco (1997)
vative manner in order to address issues related to
the ethnic group he belongs to. However, he does not
offer a straightforward favouring of ethnic allegiance
over assimilation. Instead, in Mean Streets Scors-
ese dramatizes the conflicting nature of hyphen-
ated identities, presenting an unresolved dilemma,
rather than a tragic resolution. The film-maker’s
ambiguous attitude towards his ethnic background
is expressed through the depiction of the fam-
ily and the ethnic community as simultaneously
comforting and oppressive. Mean Streets follows the
random adventures and small-time criminal activi-
ties of Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and his neighbour-
hood friends in New York’s Little Italy. Charlie, who
works for his uncle, the local Mafia boss, wishes to
rise through the ranks of the gang and thus ‘become
somebody’ in the neighbourhood. Scorsese conveys
a positive sense of the characters’ belonging to a pro-
tective Italian community. At the same time, though,
he suggests that the overwhelmingly pervasive pres-
ence of the family/community in the characters’
private lives hinders their freedom. Unlike his girl-
friend, who wants to move out of her parents’ house
and, most importantly, out of Little Italy, Charlie is
deeply anchored and loyal to his family and com-
munity, so much so that he cannot break free from
them.
Scorsese’s vision of his old neighbourhood and
his ethnic community is not univocal. Indeed,
Mean Streets  – which is inspired by Scorsese’s real-
life experiences – reveals feelings of nostalgia for a
familiar place and the happy memories associated
with childhood friends. However, the film’s nostal-
gic tone is paralleled by a detached critique of the
traps and entanglements inherent to a violent and
crime-prone environment such as Little Italy. Like
the ethnic community, the family is seen in ambiv-
alent terms. The family is tightly linked to crime
through the connection of Charlie’s only relative,6
Uncle Giovanni, to the Mob. Therefore, just like in the
Godfather films, family and gang here are conflated.
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
Indeed, the protagonist’s involvement in crime stems
primarily from blood relations. Crime for Charlie is
‘normal’ and a habit, mainly because of its link to
his family. By depicting Giovanni as an authorita-
tive and commanding figure, Scorsese signals the
obtrusiveness of the Italian family into the private
lives of its members. In this way, and by associat-
ing the Italian family (and community) with crime,
he denounces the negative aspects of Italianness.
Nevertheless, the family is also seen as the source
of ethnic identity and heritage. Therefore, for a later-
generation ethnic like the film’s protagonist (and
Scorsese himself), moving out of the neighbourhood
and leaving the family also means rejecting one’s
ethnic identity. In this sense, not unlike Coppola, the
film-maker dramatizes the dangers of Americaniza-
tion in that the price of becoming assimilated into
WASP America is the loss of ethnic identity. The com-
plex dynamics related to the portrayal of the family/
gang in the film can be read as the cinematic trans-
figuration of Scorsese’s intricate feelings towards his
ethnic identity and the influence of an overbearing
Italian-American heritage on his personal journey
of assimilation into larger American society. Ulti-
mately, Scorsese’s filmic representation questions
the possibility of a univocal choice between consent
and descent  – that is between American and Ital-
ian identity – showing that, from the perspective of
a hyphenated individual, those concepts can have
simultaneously conflicting meanings.
Below Scarface (1932)
Contemporary representations
A recurring pattern in contemporary Italian-themed
crime films is a tendency to establish the ‘blood fam-
ily’ and the ‘crime family’ as two separate, conflict-
ing entities. In films like GoodFellas (1990), A Bronx
Tale (1993) and Donnie Brasco (1997) the Mafia fam-
ily is presented as the source of ethnic identity. In
these narratives the gang is able to preserve its eth-
nic heritage by constructing itself as a clan, a self-
enclosed group that is seemingly impermeable to
the influences of WASP America. In contrast, the
blood family stands for Americanization by virtue
of its tendency to lead a legitimate lifestyle, that is,
to accept and follow the rules of American society.
In this way these films challenge and problematize
clear-cut notions of consent and descent, suggest-
ing that even a descent-oriented group such as the
family can symbolize consent and Americanization.
Moreover, they subvert univocal concepts of Italian-
ness by associating it with both assimilationist and
non-assimilationist standpoints simultaneously.
This ambivalent vision of ethnicity indicates the
complexity and multiplicity of the meanings of Itali-
anness and other ethnic identities today. As we shall
see, the films of this period share a narrative pattern
whereby the protagonist, typically a young later-gen-
eration Italian-American, is torn between loyalty to
the family and loyalty to the gang. Unlike the blood
family, the crime family satisfies a need to belong to
www.filmint.nu | 37
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
a close-knit group which makes these films’ protago-
nists opt for affiliation with the gang and the ethnic
identity the gang stands for.
The preference for the ethnic side of one’s hyphen-
ated self needs to be analysed in the context of
what has been labeled a ‘postmodern ethnic revival’
(Halter 2000: 83), that is a phenomenon of renewed
interest in ethnicity in the 1990s, which can itself
be seen as a reiteration of the 1970s revival. At this
time, Italian-Americans, having moved further up
the ladder of assimilation, were far away from the
first stages of immigration and their image no lon-
ger complied with the role of the dangerous ‘Other’
that Tony Camonte embodied in Scarface. Sociologist
Mary C. Waters claims that later-generation Ameri-
cans of European ancestry consider ethnicity ‘as
family writ large’ (Waters 1990: 53). She observes
that:
[T]he idea of being ‘American’ does not give
people a sense of one large family, the way
that being French does for people in France.
In America, rather than conjuring up an
image of nationhood to meet this desire,
ethnic images are called forth. (1990: 53)
The films I discuss here challenge the assumption
formulated by Sollors in the mid-1980s that in Amer-
ican culture there exists a predominant tendency
which ‘has placed great emphasis on consent at the
expense of descent definitions’ (Sollors 1986: 37). The
narrative trend of young Italian-Americans opting
for their ethnic identity rather than their assimilated
American one signals a shift in terms of the relation-
ship between the individual and dominant culture.
It also reflects the changes that have occurred in the
last few decades to the general conception of ethnic-
ity and assimilation. Thus, if Sollors’s claim can be
applied to 1930s representations, it seems to clash
with contemporary ethnic narratives.
38 | film international issue 70
Below Scarface (1932)
The contrast between blood family and Mafia fam-
ily is explicitly articulated in GoodFellas, where the
protagonist, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta)  – whose mother
is Italian-American and father is Irish-American  –
refuses to follow the path of his honest but poor
parents and joins the local gang. Instead of going
to school, Henry works for the mobsters, thus earn-
ing both money and respect in the neighbourhood.
Henry’s real family wants him to pledge allegiance to
America by going to school (that is, favour consent),
while his acquired (criminal) family teaches him not
to abide by the rules of the country (that is, favour
descent). The assimilationist desires manifested by
Henry’s parents conflict with his need to belong which
cannot be satisfied by affiliation to (WASP) American
society. Henry claims: ‘People like my father could
never understand, but I was a part of something. I
belonged.’ The conflict between the two families is
also voiced by Henry’s Jewish-American wife Karen
(Lorraine Bracco), whose voice-over during the wed-
ding ceremony scene explains that ‘it was like he
[Henry] had two families’. Karen describes the clan-
nishness and closeness of the extended Mafia family:
‘We were all so very close. I mean there were never
any outsiders around. […] We always did everything
together and we were always in the same crowd.’
However, far from presenting the Italian Mob as
a big happy family, Scorsese exposes the complex
dynamics of membership and belonging within
the gang. Henry knows that he can never be ‘made’
(become an official member of the crew and rise up
in the gang’s hierarchy) because he has Irish blood.
Thus, in a sense, Henry is and will always be an out-
sider. He will never be given that ‘honour’ – and thus
totally fulfil the need to belong – which can only be
obtained through descent, blood. At the same time
though, the fact that his friend Tommy (Joe Pesci) is
going to be ‘made’ makes Henry feel as if he were
going to be ‘made’ too. Therefore, the gang is pre-
sented as a consent-based group whose members
have different ethnic backgrounds but share the
same lifestyle and experiences. But being fully Ital-
ian does not make one untouchable. Instead of being
made, Tommy is killed as an act of revenge for the
murder of a ‘made’ mobster. Ultimately, Scorsese
demystifies the Italian-American Mafia family by
exposing the inconsistencies inherent to a group of
people who are supposed to love you and care for
you like a real family, but instead exploit you and
finally betray you. In this sense, GoodFellas employs
the trope of the ‘gang-as-family’ to explore further
the negative implications of an obtrusive and clan-
nish ethnic family/community for the life of an indi-
vidual, an exploration started in Mean Streets. And yet
the film-maker also presents an image of the Italian-
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
American (blood) family as a source of love, warmth,
comfort and identity. By exposing the dark side of
Italianness and simultaneously highlighting its posi-
tive elements, Scorsese comments on the dilemma
many later-generation ethnics are faced with in find-
ing a balance between the need for ethnic belonging
and the fear of remaining trapped within the limits
of one’s ethnic identity and heritage.
A narrative similar to GoodFellas is found in A Bronx
Tale, in which the young protagonist, Calogero (Fran-
cis Capra/Lillo Brancato), is drawn towards the local
Mafia gang and, especially, its boss, Sonny (Chazz Pal-
minteri), who everybody in the neighbourhood loves
and respects. In opposition to the Mafia boss is the
protagonist’s father, Lorenzo (Robert De Niro), an hon-
est but poor bus driver, a ‘working man’ who, accord-
ing to the mobsters’ mentality, is a ‘sucker’. Calogero’s
biological father represents assimilation into the
American way of life, while the neighbourhood gang-
ster stands for ethnic identification. And yet, Sonny is
not in total conflict with the assimilationist (and law-
abiding) mentality advocated by Lorenzo. The gangster
believes that Calogero should get two kinds of educa-
tion, ‘one from the street and one from school’, so that
he ‘would be twice as smart as everybody’. Moreover,
he encourages Calogero not to follow his criminal life-
style. When, at the end of the film, Sonny is killed by
the son of a man he had murdered in the past, Calo-
gero realizes that he would rather follow his father’s
example than live and die like the gangster. George
De Stefano claims that A Bronx Tale ‘condemns […]
organized crime’ (De Stefano 2006: 237). But the film’s
attitude towards the Mafia is not univocal. Indeed, the
film offers a multifaceted image of the Italian gang-
ster. While pointing out the dangerous aspects of the
gang, the film nostalgically indulges in the representa-
tion of a time when the Mafia was a local entity not
yet corrupted by a corporate mentality and the neigh-
bourhood gangster was a benign, protective fatherly
figure who really looked after his community. In A
Bronx Tale, unlike GoodFellas, the gang wants the young
protagonist to go to school and follow his blood fam-
ily’s work ethic. In other words, they want him to fol-
low the traditional (legitimate) path of assimilation
and upward mobility. However, since he refuses to live
by the rules of American society, Sonny still embodies
anti-assimilationist views. The gangster in De Niro’s
film encompasses both consent-related and descent-
related features, which suggests the possibility of find-
ing a balance between living according to the customs
of mainstream America and retaining ethnic identity.
Scorsese’s notion of his ethnic background is certainly less nostalgic and
romanticized than Coppola’s.
Donnie Brasco deals with the predicament of a
hyphenated individual who is torn between his Ital-
ian and his American identity. Here the protagonist,
Joe/Donnie (Johnny Depp) is not a gangster, but an
FBI agent who infiltrates the Mob, and eventually
‘becomes’ an active member of the criminal orga-
nization he is supposed to fight against, to such an
extent that his allegiance to the FBI is questioned
by feelings of loyalty towards the Mafia. Donnie’s
involvement with the gang is paralleled by a pro-
gressive estrangement from his WASPish wife and
daughters. The gang is set in opposition to two enti-
ties standing for consent: the American institution
of the FBI and a family acquired through marriage
which, as I have noted above, is, according to Sollors,
one of the quintessential consent relationships. The
film presents the Mafia gang as a family and, more
importantly, as a welcoming and inclusive group that
satisfies the protagonist’s need to belong. Donnie’s
criminal mentor, Lefty (Al Pacino), claims: ‘This is my
family. More even than my own family.’ The relation-
ship between the aging wiseguy, Lefty, and the young
FBI agent, Donnie, develops according to a familial
pattern: it is a father/son relationship. This emphasis
on the family motif allows for ethnic identification
through the typical association of Italian-Americans
with familial values. At the same time it establishes
a contrast between the two organizations that Don-
nie is part of, the Mafia and the FBI. The romantici-
zation of the Mafia, along with a negative depiction
of the FBI, also helps justify the protagonist’s pro-
pensity towards ethnic allegiance as opposed to loy-
alty to America. As the narrative unfolds it becomes
clear that Donnie does not belong with the FBI: he
has little in common and no human connection with
his colleagues, maintaining only a professional rela-
tionship. In contrast, under Lefty’s guidance, Don-
nie goes from behaving, dressing and talking like a
mobster to actually becoming one of them. Thus,
the protagonist undergoes a transformative process
which culminates in a newly-found consciousness
of his ethnic identity. Throughout the film Donnie
is increasingly drawn to descent relations – his con-
nection to the Mafia Family  – while he rejects con-
sent relations  – his professional involvement with
the FBI and his marital commitment. In other words,
he embraces his Italian identity and repudiates his
American one. Nevertheless, in spite of a progressive
view of ethnic identification vis-à-vis Americaniza-
tion, the film perpetuates long-standing prejudices
against Italian-Americans. The emphasis on the
www.filmint.nu | 39
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
wiseguys’ brutality and on the tribe-like structure7
of the gang betrays a reliance on negative Italian
stereotypes that inevitably perpetuate the image of
Italian-Americans as the dangerous ethnic ‘Other’.
Unlike the other films discussed in this section, The
Godfather Part III (1990) tackles the issue of the impos-
sibility of keeping the blood family and the crime
family separate. In the last episode of the Godfather
trilogy Michael Corleone tries to break free from the
Mafia family in order to reclaim his estranged blood
family. However, Michael’s vain efforts to reject the
gang are not paralleled by a will to reject his ethnic
identity. More extensively than the previous episodes
of the saga, Part III enacts a return to ethnic roots
and, like the films analysed above, manifests a desire
40 | film international issue 70
Below The Sopranos (1999–2007)
for ethnic identification. In his quest for legitimacy,
Michael seeks public recognition from a foreign-
based (read ethnic) authority, the Catholic Church/
Vatican, rather than from an American one. In this
case Italianness is expressed through its association
with Catholicism but also through Michael’s involve-
ment with Italian politics and the local Mafia when he
is in Sicily. The protagonist’s unwillingness to become
legitimate through further Americanization needs
to be read in the light of the events that occurred in
Part II. Arguably, Michael has realized the dangers of
Americanization and thus tries to establish a connec-
tion with (legitimate) upper-class institutions repre-
senting his ethnic heritage. Unfortunately, he finds
out that all the (apparently) legitimate representa-
tives of his ethnicity (the Catholic Church and Italian
politicians) are corrupt and, as such, instead of help-
ing him break free from his criminal past and purify
both his business and his conscience, they involve
him in a criminal scheme that has tragic repercus-
sions for his loved ones. In this way Coppola suggests
that Michael cannot escape his ethnic heritage, as
if this was a curse. The worst possible punishment
for Michael is having his children pay for his sins.
The film’s operatic ending enacts the destruction of
Michael’s blood family with the murder of his daugh-
ter Mary (Sofia Coppola) and establishes the con-
tinuation of the Mafia family under the leadership
of Michael’s nephew, Vincent (Andy Garcia), the new
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
Godfather. Ultimately the gang has triumphed over
the family and the Corleone dynasty is bound to con-
tinue as a criminal entity.
In comparison to the first two episodes of the tril-
ogy, in Part III Coppola’s vision of ethnicity is quite
bleak. While in the first two parts of the saga assimi-
lation was viewed as the corrupting influence of the
American lifestyle on positive Italian familial val-
ues, here the origin of Michael’s failure in protecting
his family lies in his ethnic roots. Coppola lingers on
the dark side of Italianness and depicts both Italian-
American and Italian characters as belonging to a
world marked by crime. Michael cannot break free
from crime because it is in the history of his family
and the land of his ancestors, Sicily. In other words,
it is something inherited through descent. Ultimately,
the ruin of Michael’s blood family is brought on by Ital-
ians and Italian-Americans only, with no interventions
by American representatives. Coppola’s shift towards
a more critical representation of Italianness suggests
that, like Scorsese, he had matured to an awareness of
the complexities entailed in finding a balance between
one’s ethnic and American identity. Thus, if the first
two parts of the Godfather trilogy illustrate the dangers
of Americanization, the last part juxtaposes the long-
ing for ethnic identification with the disastrous conse-
quences of extreme anti-assimilationism.
Conclusion
Some sociologists claim that, with the transition of
European-Americans into the third and fourth gen-
eration, ethnicity has lost significance (Gans 1979;
Alba 1990; Waters 1990). In contrast, other commen-
tators (Vecoli 1997; Ferraro 2005; Anagnostou 2009)
argue that ethnic identity still plays an important
role in modern-day America. In relation to this, Sol-
lors has noted that ‘ethnicity is continuously created
anew’ (Sollors 1986: 245). Certainly, as my analysis
has shown, ethnic identity continues to be of crucial
importance in contemporary Italian-themed gang-
ster films. Indeed, from an ethnic perspective, films
like GoodFellas and The Godfather Part III stage the
predicaments of hyphenated identities as much as
Scarface and Little Caesar. At the centre of these nar-
ratives is still the conflict between assimilation and
ethnic allegiance. Throughout the history of Italian-
themed Hollywood gangster films, the intersection
of the family and the gang has been the locus for the
negotiation between two cultures, the Old World one
and the New World one. As I have discussed here,
both family and gang, and the Italian gangster’s rela-
tionship with them, have been given various mean-
ings according to American society’s changing views
on the Italian ethnic group, shifting conceptions of
assimilation and individual film-makers’ approaches
towards ethnic identity. Ultimately, the interrela-
tion of the family and the gang is a privileged lens
through which one can explore the complex dynam-
ics of consent and descent relations in the history of
cinematic representations of Italian-Americans.
The extremely successful television series The
Sopranos (1999–2007) has shown the extent to which
the trope of the Italian-American gangster torn
between blood family and Mafia family is still a pow-
erful image in popular culture. Even though, with the
arrival of the new millennium, the Italian-American
gangster seems to have abandoned the big screen to
move onto the small screen, he continues to fascinate
audiences. The family/gang binary persists as one of
the most prominent and distinctive features of Ital-
ian ethnic identity as portrayed in popular culture,
despite the fact that the social reality of the Italian
Mob is in decline (Walker Fields 2004: 611). Argu-
ably, in the context of Italian-themed narratives, the
gangster genre’s enduring appeal lies in its potential
to offer a comprehensive picture of both the positive
and negative aspects associated with the ethnic group
represented. At the same time, as we have seen, the
Mafia mythology lends itself to multiple metaphori-
cal functions varying from a critique of capitalism to
a refuge from/rebellion against an unjust and value-
less society. In any case, from a critical point of view,
the gangster film is of significant use in the analysis of
issues of ethnicity since it typically enacts the opposi-
tion between the gangster and the American Estab-
lishment. The conflict between the (ethnic) criminal
and representatives of the law not only stands for a
denunciation of the ills of American society, but can,
and should, also be read as the enactment of the con-
trasts between the ethnic and the American side of
the hyphenated individual’s psyche.
Contributor’s details
Silvia Dibeltulo is a researcher at Oxford Brookes
University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Film Studies from
Trinity College Dublin with a dissertation on cinematic
representations of Irish-Americans and Italian-
Americans in Hollywood gangster film. Her research
mainly focuses on the representation of identity on
screen, specifically in terms of ethnicity, nationality,
gender and culture. Her work also centres on film genre
theory and history, and audience studies. She is
currently co-editing a book on genre film-making in
contemporary cinema, while also working on several
projects emerging from her doctoral research.
www.filmint.nu | 41
Articles Family, Gang and Ethnicity in Italian-Themed Hollywood
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Endnotes
1. The concept of ‘amoral familism’ was introduced by
Edward C. Banfield in his 1958 book The Moral Basis of a
Backward Society. In the mid-1950s Banfield studied the
life of a poverty-stricken village in the south of Italy. He
concluded that the village’s extreme poverty and
backwardness were mainly due to its inhabitants’
inability ‘to act together for their common or, indeed,
for any end transcending the immediate, material
interest of the nuclear family’ (Banfield 1967 [1958]: 10).
He labelled this behavioural pattern ‘amoral familism’.
2. Other Italian-themed gangster films released in the
late 1960s and early 1970s were not as original as
Coppola’s and Scorsese’s works. Films such as Roger
Corman’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) and
Martin Ritt’s The Brotherhood (1968) are sterile re-
enactments of recurring cinematic stereotypes about
Italian-American criminals.
3. In relation to this, Coppola has claimed: ‘I always
wanted to use the Mafia as a metaphor for America. If you
look at the film you see that it’s focused that way. The first
line is “I believe in America.” I feel that the Mafia is an
incredible metaphor for this country. Both the Mafia and
America have roots in Europe. America is a European
phenomenon. Basically, both the Mafia and America feel
they are benevolent organizations. Both the Mafia and
America have their hands stained with blood from what it
is necessary to do to protect their power and interests.
Both are totally capitalistic phenomena and basically have
a profit motive’ (Coppola, quoted in Farber 1972: 223).
4. In his analysis of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (2009
[1969]), John Cawelti identifies the elements of the new
crime mythology created by the Italian-American writer
and argues that the book’s appeal to its contemporary
readers is largely due to the conflation of the gangster
figure with the authoritative patriarch/family man type.
He claims: ‘The Don and his authority represent an
image of an organization that can be seen in opposition
to those aspects of contemporary social institutions
commonly perceived as signs of social failure: the
impersonality of the modern corporation on the one
hand and the declining authority of the family on the
other. […] There is a tribal closeness about the criminal
organization as it is portrayed in The Godfather, and the
Don is its theocratic center. […] Unlike the modern
American family with its generational conflicts, its
confused sexual roles, its absent fathers, neurotic
mothers, and nuclear isolation, the tribe-family ruled by
the Don is a patriarchy with absolutely clear roles and
lines of authority’ (Cawelti 1976: 66).
5. Coppola’s nostalgic attitude towards his ethnic
heritage can be read as a manifestation of what
Herbert J. Gans calls ‘symbolic ethnicity’. While
discussing the different ways of feeling ethnic and
expressing ethnic identity for later-generation ethnics,
Gans claims that symbolic ethnicity ‘is characterized
by a nostalgic allegiance to the culture of the
immigrant generation, or that of the old country’ (Gans
1979: 9).
6. Although Charlie lives in his mother’s house, she is
never seen in the film. Charlie’s father is also totally
absent from the narrative and, with Uncle Giovanni
taking on the paternal role, we are led to assume that
he is dead.
7. Mike Newell has described the mobsters he met
while preparing the film as ‘wonderfully charismatic
and charming’, but also as ‘a tribe up the Amazon’
(Newell, quoted in George De Stefano 2006: 91).
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