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2004 Embodying the Italian-American: An Analytical Look at Bodily Performances of Italian-Americans in Film Daniella N. Bozzone
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SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS AND DANCE
EMBODYING THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN: AN ANALYTICAL LOOK
AT BODILY PERFORMANCES OF ITALIAN-AMERICANS IN FILM
BY
DANIELLA N. BOZZONE
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF DANCE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
DEGREE AWARDED: SUMMER SEMESTER, 2004
The members of the Committee approved the thesis of Daniella N. Bozzone defended on April 9, 2004.
Tricia Henry Young Professor Directing Thesis
John O. Perpener Committee Member
Sally Sommer Committee Member
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of the ideas presented in this thesis are inspired by previous coursework. I would like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Sally Sommer’s courses on dancing in the movies and American Dance History as particular influences in my approach to this project. I am incredibly thankful for her tireless commitment to this thesis. I would like to acknowledge the contributions of Professors Jack Clark and Patty Phillips for their generosity with their time and expertise in movement analysis. I would also like to acknowledge the editorial feedback, support and encouragement from Dr. Tricia Henry Young. Dr. Young’s comments have been invaluable during the entire project. As final acknowledgements I would like to recognize my father, Ric Bozzone, my own personal Guido, for his consultation, inspiration and support in developing this thesis, and my mother, Laurie Bozzone for her input, support and editing.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents...... iv
ABSTRACT...... v
PREFACE...... vi
Introduction...... 1
Chapter 1: When the Italian became the Italian-American...... 9
Chapter 2 : An overview of filmic Italian-Americans types...... 16
Chapter 3 : Italian-American Men ...... 24
Chapter 4 : Italian-American Women ...... 38
Chapter 5 : Dancing ...... 56
Chapter 6 : Family and Church...... 68
Chapter 7 : Conclusion...... 82
REFERENCES ...... 87
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 91
iv ABSTRACT
This study provides an analytical exploration of the embodied performance of Italian-American ethnicity in film. The analyzed performances are taken from The Godfather trilogy, Moonstruck, and Saturday Night Fever. These films provide a wide range of characters expertly portrayed by the actors and directors. The purpose of this study is to illuminate the inherent presence of dance and movement in expressing ethnicity in filmic performances. This project utilizes movement analysis, cultural studies, gender studies and ethnicity studies to address the importance of the performer’s body in expressing character, gender and ethnicity. American folklore or mythology is largely created by the medium of film and many of these mythological characters are part of the hyphenated ethnicities that form our culture. The seminal performances found in The Godfather trilogy, Moonstruck, and Saturday Night Fever brought several Italian-American character types to mythological proportions. The movement of these character types as individuals and in ensembles, as well as the films’ mise en scene forms the primary focus of this analysis. This project also allies the inherently intertwined relationship between acting and dancing. Analyzing these performances as choreographic as well as dramatic broadens the scope of dance studies to include other bodily performances. A brief introduction and outline of this study begins the text of this thesis. This introduction elucidates the dance perspective given to the filmic analysis. The first chapter provides a brief history of Italians in America in the twentieth century. The following chapters contain an overview of the character types to be discussed, movement analysis of these characters as individuals, ensemble movement and the narrative venues for these portrayals of ethnicity. Finally a concluding chapter will tie together the overarching ideas of this project and consider future possibilities for this approach to performance studies.
v PREFACE
When I began the research for my thesis, it occurred to me that among the required reading for academic courses in dance there were several discussions of various types of ethnic movement, minority dance, and choreographed cultural rituals. There was not, however, any discussion about the unique movement habits of my own cultural group of Italian-Americans. Yet in my travels, both in the States and abroad, I have always been, and am, referred to as an “Italian-American" or "My Italian” friend. The description is true. Though I do not introduce myself verbally as “Daniella Bozzone, Italian-American,” the fact is my manner, my face, and my name indicate that aspect of my character. While scholars who study cultural movement were focusing largely on other ethnicities, a scan of popular culture writings showed that television, advertisements -- and especially films --were saturated with references to Italian-Americans. Magazine articles had pictures of Italian gestures with explanations and definitions. Television shows parodied famous Italian-Americans like Frank Sinatra, Mario Cuomo, Rudolph Giuliani, Joe DiMaggio and fictional Italian-Americans like Vito Corleone, Tony Soprano and “my cousin Vinny.” Clearly most Americans had been able to absorb at least some generalized and popular notions about what is Italian-American. So I decided to delve into the movies to learn more about how Italian-American ethnicity is portrayed. I chose five films depicting Italian-Americans in three different film genres -- drama, comedy, and the movie Musical -- to explore the popular culture perceptions of Italian- Americans. Obviously the American public is familiar with Italian-American stereotypes and images because parodies and impersonations abound. In order for a stereotype or parody to be successful, the subject must be familiar to the audience. Whether the parody takes place on Saturday Night Live or just comes up in general conversation, the impersonator always begins with a gesture, a bodily attitude, a pose. As a dancer and choreographer I find this fascinating. I began to more carefully observe the movements of actors portraying Italian-Americans and learned that the repertory of movements associated with Italian-Americans was fully legible to anyone educated in American popular culture. My questions about others’ perceptions of my own
vi identity initiated a research process. Since identifiable body behaviors are prominent in any Italian-American representations, dance analysis seemed the ideal method to use to uncover how Italian- Americanness is constructed. This type of movement study on popular representations of Italian-Americans had not been done before, so it was not only an interesting marriage of two of my favorite disciplines, dance and film, it was also a necessary study. The first three sections of this thesis lay a foundation for the discourse on Italian- American movement in films. The Introduction provides an overview of the specific films to be discussed and sets forth general ideas about the choreographic compositions of Italian-American ethnic portrayals. Briefly mentioned are some other disciplines, which are relevant to this study and have contributed to the interdisciplinary development of the approaches used here. These fields include film studies, dance studies, ethnology, cultural studies and popular culture studies. A discussion of Italian-American types in films requires a brief history of the immigration of Italians to America. Chapter One deals with the actual situation Italians found in America during the height of the Italian immigration wave, as this early period of Italian-American history (1880-1920) set the foundations for the current perceptions and images portrayed in films. Chapter Two is organized into the recurring types of Italian-American characters and images. In Chapter Three and Chapter Four I separate Italian-American Character types and their "choreographies" into males and females, discussing the body behavior of each as seen in film. This separation by gender is necessary because directors and writers treat the male and female characters very differently, giving the men roles that are more central to the story and more fully developed than those given to the women. Chapter Five and Chapter Six address the choreographic composition of the films. Chapter Five explores events in which Italian and American dances are performed by the characters, and discusses how the filmmakers use dance to depict character and ethnicity through dance scenes of ensemble choreography. Chapter Six addresses the omnipresent images of family and Catholicism in reference to the compositional structuring of ethnicity in the mise en scene. The concluding Chapter Seven, talks about the prevalence of the hyphenated-American reality and notes that popular culture has always dealt with these issues, long before it became chic in scholarship. Consequently, I hope that this
vii approach to studying ethnicity in its popularized forms -- and incorporating movement analysis as the methodology -- will suggest viable paths for other researches. This process has been an enriching one, and has given me a deeper understanding of my own ethnic heritage.
viii INTRODUCTION
Choreographing the Italian-American Body
A miracle. Well, that's news (Moonstruck).
This study will look at the physical representations of Italian- American ethnicity in film as a system of behaviors and gestures that are embodied and choreographed like dance. The benchmark Italian-American films, The Godfather parts I (1972), II (1974), III (1990), Saturday Night Fever (1977), and Moonstruck (1987) will be assessed in reference to their performances of ethnicity which, in some cases, are contexted in an ethnicized and religiously (Catholic) orchestrated mise en scene. In general, film performances have not been analyzed as dance. However, since actors create characters with the same bodily tools as the dancer -- utilizing weight, rhythm, gesture, action, stasis and pose in carefully articulated and structured rhythmic phrasing -- dance analysis provides detailed insight into how choreographed movement creates ethnic markers. The analytic tools of dance, such as movement analysis, the examination of spatial composition, imagery, body types and proxemics function exceedingly well describing the movement vocabulary of film actors. Likewise, methodologies from disciplines such as Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Ethnology, Gender Studies and Queer Studies have been informative sources of critical analysis and have offered fresh ways of looking at dance. For the past three decades, cross-disciplinary methodologies have broadened the definitions of “dance” and the scope of its scholarship. Pioneering dance ethnologists and anthropologists, including Adrian Kaeppler, Joann Kealiinohomoku, Judith Lynn Hanna
1 and choreometrics1 anthropologist, Alan Lomax, postulated that dancing is heightened everyday activity, which restructures and formalizes everyday human gestures and behaviors into highly codified and formalized movement. These scholars began practicing cross-disciplinary modes of analysis, which subsequently opened fresh areas of investigative opportunities. Such dialogue among the various fields has exponentially expanded the parameters of dance studies. With these types of approaches in mind, dance scholars today look at ethnic body-representations in film as highly choreographed dancing. Film is in every detail of its construction -- from the actors’ movement to the camera’s focus to the movement created in the editing process -- one of the most highly formalized choreographies that exist. Films (and the characters captured in celluloid) are important cultural artifacts. Films both create and disseminate popular images and ideas about stereotypes in which the physical signifiers are easily recognized and received by spectators as the definers of ethnicity. British scholar, Helen Thomas addresses the relevance of dance scholarship in terms of cultural studies in her historiographic book The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory (2001). The body as the primary instrument of expression for actors and dancers is one focus of her discussion. She addresses the centrality of the body as the most valuable reference for the simple reason that human beings experience the world through their bodies and communicate with one another physically. Joann Kealiinohomoku, in an important article, “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a form of Ethnic Dance” (1969-70), demonstrates how methods outside the traditional boundaries of dance scholarship -- in this case ethnology -- reveal previously unrecorded elements of cultural identity in the most familiar of movement systems. Two other notable studies, one by Kealiinohomoku (1965) and the other by David Gere (1999), apply
1 Choreometrics is, in part, the study of cross cultural movement styles using filmed data (Frosch 256).
2 methodologies of dance studies and choreographic analysis to “non- dance” or pedestrian bodily expression. Anthropologists, ethnologists, and social scientists have long argued that bodily movement communicates characteristics of specific groups. Gesture, posture, proximity and repeated movement patterns inscribe codes of culture. Kealiinohomoku’s work, Comparative Study of Dance as a Constellation of Motor Behaviors among African and United States Negroes (1965), applied dance analysis to the daily movement of Africans and African-Americans. Her approach connected the fields of dance, anthropology and cultural studies, expanding perspectives and blurring the lines of academic demarcation, making the discourse among them more flexible and informed. Thomas describes this historiographic development: Dance ethnographers (Kealiinohomoku, 1970; Youngerman, 1974; Williams, 1977) in the 1970s challenged the commonly held view that dance is a form of natural (essentialist) behaviour which, with its roots in ‘primitive’ cultures, has developed into a fully fashioned, stylized western theatre dance, commonly regarded as the most advanced ‘civilised’ form. In so doing, they contested the hierarchical us/them relation of the ‘west to the rest’, by pointing to the inherent incipient racism and ethnocentrism in viewing dance as a primary feature (natural and ubiquitous) of ‘primitive’ cultures (Thomas 79).
David Gere’s dance analysis of hate crimes against homosexuals looks at non-dance activity in dance terms. His analysis of the abduction and murder of Matthew Shepard as a prejudicial homophobic crime in “Matthew Shepard’s Body: Effeminacy, Hate Crimes and Queer Theory” (1999) foregrounded important specifics of this heinous crime by applying the tools of dance analysis. In approaching the event from a purely physical perspective, Gere illuminated the corporeal lexis that underlies the homophobic hate crime. By laying out the complex physical codes that marked the victim and defined “homosexuality” for the perpetrators, Gere
3 provides clearer insights in “readings” of body than scholarship has traditionally provided. Such studies as these demonstrate that dance methodologies and dance scholarship are viable tools that can reveal the physical coding of many kinds of performative representations. Thomas addresses the importance of assessing bodily habits in reference to identity: “The consequences of not reflecting on our taken-for-granted routine bodily practices can limit or inhibit our comprehension of the bodily activities of ‘others,’ and this once again emphasizes the need to enter the embodied field with some self- knowledge” (Thomas 78). Because movement is always communicative, always performative, and is composed of culturally embodied and accepted codes of motion, it is analogous to dance. With acknowledgement of cultural relativism, the term “dance” as a taken-for-granted universal construct was also called into question. Kaeppler (1991, 1999) for example, in her study of dance in Tongan society (1972), argued that the term “structured movement systems” was more appropriate to describe the movement and choreography of different cultures than the narrowly defined range of body movements in time and space that constitute western “dance.” Even if the principles that go to make up “dance” in a given culture can be analysed and described, it is not necessarily the case that these refer to dance alone (Thomas 80).
Kaeppler’s and Thomas’ “structured movement systems” would certainly include bodily signifiers of ethnicity. In this investigation, the tools of dance studies will be used to examine the performance of Italian- Americanness in five films that provide specific examples of how movement is used to indicate ethnicity and in the development of ethnic stereotyping. Film has become the most prominent generator of America’s cultural narratives. Certainly the stereotyping and mythology surrounding Italian- Americans in our national folklore has been largely constructed and reinforced through film. Several significant Italian-American films,
4 including Little Caesar (1930), House of Strangers (1949), Mean Streets (1973), Rocky (1976), and Raging Bull (1980) -- and including the films used in this study -- figure as major components in mapping this folkloric mythology. Assessing performative representations of Italian-Americans in film, in terms of dance and body analysis, combines Dance Studies, Film Studies, Cultural Studies and Popular Culture Studies. Actors portraying the ethnicity of Italian-American characters employ gesture, posture, and other movements with the same careful intentions as the ballerina. When assuming an ethnic “type,” convincing performers utilize the positioning of weight, points of relaxation, points of tension, tempo, and proximity -- all aspects of choreography -- to transform into the character. Since the expression of character is generated bodily, it is true that many of these characters are recognized as members of certain ethnic groups before a word is uttered. An interesting analogy can be made between the structuring of scenes, even the structuring of film itself, and in the structures in classical ballet. In both art forms, for example, solo performances and ensemble performances alternate with a rhythmic regularity, and little vignettes are choreographed just to highlight extraordinary physical virtuosity. Characters like Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando in The Godfather), Tony Manero (John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever), and Loretta Castorini (Cher in Moonstruck) are the premier movers in much the same way that the princes and princesses are the premier dancers of romantic and classical ballets. As in ballet, the soloist’s physicalized movement is more prominent than the ensemble, more individualized, and the soloists are given more stage/screen time than the ensemble. In ballet and in the Italian-American “wise guy” characters, a preparatory pause is inserted before important action. The Dons2 pause ceremoniously before executing life-altering pronouncements that set deadly actions in motion. With a
2 Dons are the dominant characters in most of these filmic scenarios, they are the male heads of house and business, and are one of the main types to be explored in this study.
5 similar intent to build suspense, the male soloist pauses ceremoniously before springing into his grand jetes, impressive pirouettes, and tour jetes en l’air. Dance analysis can reveal correlations between the formal structure of soloist and corps in classical ballets (like Swan Lake, Giselle, La Bayadere, Les Sylphides, and The Nutcracker to name a few) and some of the films’ actions and groupings (as seen in The Godfather parts I, II and III, and Saturday Night Fever). Ensemble movement in these films relates to the corps de ballet. The families, gangsters and peer groups surround the soloist in compositionally purposeful frames. For example, in Saturday Night Fever, Tony Manero is followed or surrounded by his friends in order to expand or reinforce his centrality. Physically, they mirror and enlarge Tony’s motions in thematic variations, extending the influence of Tony’s presence and bringing his persona to bigger, even meta-heroic, proportions. The imposing presence of Tony Manero is intensified because he, in all his disco beauty, enters the club followed by his gaggle of friends similarly dressed and walking the “Brooklyn bounce.” This same phenomenon is used, for example, in Swan Lake, when the swirling, beautiful corps of identical swans surrounds Odette. For both Odette and Tony, their cohorts extend the parameters of their space, assigning power to the soloist with their formidably visible and physical reinforcement. Dance analysis deepens understanding of the pivotal role that choreography plays in the presentation of character and ethnicity in film. For example, Catholic rituals and ceremonies and “Family” celebrations with social dancing, function in these movies as occasions for crucial additions of ritualized communicative gestures. The ceremonial events of Italian-American culture in film echo the ceremonial crowd scenes performed by the corps in ballet. Even the placement and short structures of the divertissements in The Nutcracker are comparable to the gangster slayings in The Godfather. Choreographed into solos, duets or small ensembles, important secondary characters are presented in their most
6 memorable moments: Paulie, the absent-minded bodyguard in The Godfather embarks on his final car ride with Clemenza and his murderous triggerman. In The Nutcracker there are several small-ensemble divertissements performed in and for the court (Act II), which fulfill the same function as the car-riders seen in The Godfather. In the film, instead of being performed in and for the court, the “whacking” divertissements are intercut with the court scenes of the Don in his formal office. In Paulie’s case, his death solo comes after a court audience with Don Vito Corleone’s heir, Sonny, who is surrounded by his entourage of criminal cohorts. In both compositions, these subplot vignettes are charged with a high level of drama and action that draws the audience’s focus to the physical movement of the characters. Divertissements are bright moments of high-intensity and potent, tight actions that function as small concentrated spectacles, a show-within-a-show. The most prominently distinctive movements in Italian-American films are gestures. These gestures have specific meaning in Italian culture and comprise a system of signs that are dialogic and physical conversations. In the same way, ballet uses historical and specifically codified gestural signs as tools of conversation that stand in for verbal words. Pantomime in ballet has particular meaning, as do the gestures in Italian-American films. The informed ballet audience can read these gestures in the same way that the movie watcher can read the signs of stereotypical Italian-Americanness. Of course there are many important differences between dance performance and film performance. Visually, film always controls the point of view, the commentary, and the focus of the camera’s eye -- which the live ballet performance cannot offer. The only the frame-focus for ballet is the proscenium arch. The camera acts as a movable frame for the characters and the actions. At any given moment in the camera’s eye, the body can be shown in its entirety, or segmented into close-ups of the most pertinent and communicative body-parts that will advance the narrative or
7 fill out an emotional portrait. All scenes are shot to generate the feeling that best serves the film’s goals. Two commonalities between dance and film, which are fundamental rationales for this study, are the fact that the content is first and foremost visual, and the body is the primary vehicle of communication. The differences between dance and film are the technical crafts of filmmaking and stage production that create the moving image. This study examines the performed ethnicity of the Italian-American in the five well-known films mentioned above. Incorporating choreographic analysis, detailed movement analysis, and the analysis of compositional imagery and framing, proxemics, and body type, it seeks to explain how these elements reflect the accepted constructs of ethnicity while simultaneously delineating Italian-American stereotypes and mythology. The approach is interdisciplinary, merging acting and dancing, filmmaking and choreography into a compositional whole. Movement assessment distinguishes and provides insight into the popular visual definition of Italian-American ethnicity as it has been created and accepted by our culture -- both inside and outside of the Italian-American community.
8 CHAPTER ONE
When the Italian became Italian-American
“I believe in America; America has made my fortune.” (The Godfather)
Images created by acting performances and the camera’s eye reveal society’s opinion of ethnic “types.” Italian-Americans are featured as the subject of films so often that Italian-American movies have become their own subcategory of American cinema. Gesture, posture, movement and dance are central to the creation of Italian-American identity as reflected in these films. These depictions of ethnicity represent an important part of popular culture, especially as it is depicted in film. This study will analyze bodily performances of Italian-American ethnicity to assess how movement creates an Italian-American iconography in film. The Italian-Americans portrayed in American Hollywood films are stereotypic images that are immediately recognized by audiences. Mostly these characters are from the twentieth century, and generally no earlier than the mid-1920s. These Italian-Americans are often gangsters in suits, overcoats and hats, round maternal women in black dresses, blue-collar workers wearing saint Christopher medallions and crucifixes, buxom brunettes in high heels, and scores of children. They are residents of Italian neighborhoods in urban areas -- predominantly in New York, and even more specifically in Brooklyn and the Bronx. One could wonder why images of Italians before the mid-1920s, and even pre-World War II are not more prominent since the majority of Italian immigration to the United States occurred between 1880 and 1920. This time period must have been full of compelling, movie-worthy
9 characters and stories. The number of Italian immigrants was so large that Italians became the second largest white ethnic minority in America (Pileggi 117). The largest percentage of Italian immigrants coming to urban centers at this time were Southern Italian men who left their families behind in order to come to the United States to earn enough money to return to Italy and provide their families with a more comfortable life in Italy. “Approximately 80 percent of them came from the poor, backward southern portion of Italy known as the Mezzogiorno –‘the land that time forgot’” (Cosco 4). These “temporary immigrants” 3 did not really consider themselves American. They were Italians who were passing through the land of opportunity to make their fortunes. It was through these Italians, however, that the generalizations and stereotypes about Italian-Americans began to emerge in the American consciousness. For the most part these immigrants were burdened with dire poverty and illiteracy. They could not earn enough money in Italy to support their families, so they were forced to risk their luck in America. As Nicholas Pileggi points out, they often came without passports, bearing only the name of a paesano 4 for whom they planned to work. At the turn of the century millions of southerners immigrated to the United States bearing a slip of paper with the name of the padrone or work foreman to whom they had been assigned and through whom they would be indentured to railroad gangs and factories. It was on these slips of paper that immigration officials rubber-stamped “WOP” (With Out Passport) for Calabrians and Sicilians (Pileggi 128).
The padrone was their employer and the man who served as a support and introduction into the country. He provided them with work and community and was generally well respected. The immigrants were packed together in tenement buildings which they shared with many of the same neighbors they had in the old country. This ghetto environment
3 Gloria Russo coined this term in reference to southern Italian immigrants to Boston. 4 A paesano is a person from one's hometown or the vicinity in Italy.
10 suffered with overcrowding and organized crime. The immigrants’ English was thickly accented and, as is generally the case with groups who recently immigrated, the locals (whose families had also been immigrants but less recently) were suspicious of, felt superior to, and disliked this newer group of immigrants. In the following statement Joseph Cosco quotes an article by William Rogers in Harper’s Weekly and refers to Jacob Riis’ book, How the Other Half Lives: ‘The poorer classes of Italians are ignorant, but they are not all lazy or bad. They are keenly grateful for any kindness that is shown them, and most of them are not mentally vigorous enough to be evil.” These comments are indicative of certain attitudes toward the Italian at this time, many of which are echoed by Riis (Cosco 26) 5
As time passed, some Italians began to see a future for themselves in the United States and sent for their families. Most of them still did not have a strong sense of American identity, but as areas of Italian residence began to gain a sense of a cohesive community, the potential for the acceptance of their new national identity began to grow. America began to have a feeling of “home” to some of the Italian immigrants. By the mid- 1920s, though still considered immigrants and not Americans, Italians who were comfortable and nearly “at home,” began to have visible representation of their ethnicity. Film star Rudolph Valentino, an Italian immigrant, enjoyed immense popularity and success with female audiences. However, if elegant, refined and successful, the immigrant had to be reconfigured. As Gaylyn Studlar explains, in order to be contained within and controlled by the hegemonic masculine parameters, Valentino had to be neutralized and demeaned. He was therefore dismissed as nothing more than a commodity for female pleasure (i.e., emasculated by majority opinion). “As a former paid dancing partner to café society matrons, he was easily dismissed as one of
5 Joseph Cosco quotes an article by William Rogers in Harper’s Weekly and refers to Jacob Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives.
11 the menial and sensual immigrants who made their living by exploiting women’s desire for pleasure” (Studlar 27). Though he was deemed a plaything for women -- a negative and dismissive judgment -- he was wealthy, polished and successful, three adjectives that were not usually given to the Italian immigrant. In truth, it is probably his success that caused the public to think of him as Italian, not American. Certainly the attitudes towards the Italian in Italy were vastly different from the attitudes towards the Italian in America. It hardly seemed possible that the two Italians could be born of the same country. In 1907, a few years before Valentino’s success, Henry James expressed this prejudice with a sense of wonder at its paradoxical truth. Many of the aliens that James encounters are Italians, immigrants from a land that James knew and loved so well. James had been acquainted with and written about Italians for decades, but these Italian immigrants were, for James, something quite different, something entirely alien, from the picturesque contadino of the Roman Campagna (Cosco 88).
The American dominant classes, which included Henry James, held prejudicial sentiments against Italians in America as being common and stupid, while they simultaneously thought the Italians in Italy to be warm, gracious, and beautiful. Another important factor that influenced the shaping of Italian- American identity was the political turmoil in Italy. During the Depression, Italians (both in America and in Italy) were watching with either hope or trepidation the effects of Fascism in Italy. “While they were hard hit and victimized, like other Americans, by the economic earthquake of the Great Depression in the late 1920s and 1930s, they continued to hear of uninterrupted ‘triumphs’ claimed by the Fascists in Italy” (Salomone 215). Hope in Mussolini was the overwhelming sentiment of an oppressed people living in a hopeless decade. The reactions to
12 Mussolini by American Italians went from hope in a man that brought prosperity to Italy, to fear of a man who bought it at too high a price. With news of the acceptance and soon emulation of Germanic-Nazi anti Semitism and racism by the totalitarian ruling class of Fascist Italy (1938) – in a country justly proud of its tolerance of all ethnic origins – the foundation of faith and hope in the ideology and activism, in the thought and action, in the “accomplishments” and promises, indeed in the very sanity, of Mussolini’s regime began to crack and flounder both in Italy and abroad, particularly in the United States, where, despite dark areas of antagonism and conflict, the pluralism of races and creeds and systems of civil and spiritual values had deeply impressed the old and new immigrants (Salomone 216).
The effects of Fascism in Italy and World War II marked the point when Italians in America truly began to assume “American” as part of their identity. Their opinion of Mussolini’s role, for a short time split between opposition and support, soon turned to a majority of opposition as his regime proved to be oppressive. “The tragedy of the Second World War quickly reunited the temporarily divided Italian-American community itself. The roots of its members had sunk deep into American life. It was now their America at war with the land of their parents, but half a million of them enlisted…” (Salomone 217). They had begun to find national allegiance and to have a sense of community in a new land full of disparate peoples. The promotion of racism in Italy’s Fascist regime bred worry and fear for their homeland. They understood oppression from the perspective of the down trodden and did not want a similar fate for Italy. It was an insult to their struggle and though they loved Italy -- even because they loved Italy -- America’s acceptance of them, even though burdened with hardships, became more poignant. And America became home. By the time Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, they felt that their identity was both American and Italian. By the time the war was over and the soldiers had returned, Italians were no longer the mistrusted immigrants.
13 They were just one more type of hyphenated American in the minds of both Americans of Italian descent and non-Italian descent. This portrayal of the Italian-American culture seen in films today is based on this history of immigration, negotiation, and assimilation, whether the scenario is set in 1944, 1994 or 2004. Codified character types are portrayed largely through the physicalized, bodily performance of ethnicity. The physicalized behaviors that are passed down from parent to child and across cultures create the bodily equivalent of a verbal dialect. Social identity is understood from movement dialects as much as by spoken dialects. Anthropologist Ted Polhemus eloquently explains this type of indication of ethnicity: At least in so far as an individual’s first and most rudimentary experience of his or her society is via bodily manipulation and physical education in its broadest sense, the deepest and most fundamental foundations of being a member of a particular society are inevitably corporeal. Muscular tonus, stance, basic movement styles, gestures and so forth once learned are, like any physical activity, remarkably resistant to change and constitute not only the essential component of personal identity but of social and cultural identity as well. Furthermore, movement and other physical styles are in any society imbued with symbolic meaning with the result that how we use and move our bodies is inevitably the occasion for the transmission of all sorts and various levels of socio-cultural information including, most importantly, those meanings which exceed the limits of verbal language (Polhemus 173).
The evolution of these characters into their modern environments has not diluted the physicalized ethnicity. The image of the Italian-American that is part of America’s array of multi-ethnic icons -- the image that is shown in films -- is the post-1920s Italian who has claimed America as home. It is this iconic image that is considered American as well as Italian. The image is created by body behaviors, gestures, movements, dancing, physical proximities, religious and food rituals that are largely affected by specific cultural values and beliefs. These behaviors are a communicative and symbolic body language consisting of movements that have specific
14 meanings and are used at specific times. At times they can be thought of as improvised because they occur spontaneously throughout conversations. Jane Desmond alludes to the importance of studying these types of culturally patterned movement in the following: By enlarging our studies of bodily ‘texts’ to include dance in all its forms -- among them social dance, theatrical performance, and ritualized movement -- we can further our understandings of how social identities are signaled, formed and negotiated through bodily movement (Desmond 29).
The Italian-American ethnicity is rich with interactive and ritualized behaviors that are immediately recognized by film audiences. Through the marriage of body and film -- Italian and American -- we can assess the iconic image from both sides of the hyphen.
15 CHAPTER TWO
An Overview of Italian-American Filmic Types
Twice I took the name of God in vain, once I slept with the brother of my fiancé, and once I bounced a check at the liquor store – but that was really an accident. (Moonstruck)
Though the Italian-American in film is portrayed as an American, somehow, he/she is still shown as an exotic other. The body behaviors and dark Sicilian coloring of most Italian-American film characters are distinctive and facilitate the identification as an “other.” This ability to visually define the Italian-American has contributed to the creation of a series of Italian-American “types” seen in films time and time again. There are a number of commonly used terms that distinguish these types. Gender, age, intelligence and social dexterity are among the characteristics that differentiate one type from another. Some of the terms stem from mafia folklore, so popular in Italian-American filmic representations, and some of the terms are slang vocabulary that has circulated generally in the Italian-American community for decades. The terms chosen below were based on familiarity and frequency of use in popular culture. All of the terms and their characteristic types are used to describe individuals who have mob associations as well as those who do not. Italian-American men journey through the stages of adulthood as a Guido, Goomba, Don, and Vecchio while the women tend to fall into the categories of tomato, daughter/sister, and mama/wife. The iconic images of the Guido, Goomba, Don, and Vecchio burst with testosterone. They are dark, muscular, hairy-chested and confident. Whether young or old, they carry themselves as though they are old-country patriarchs. Robert
16 DeNiro, Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone, and John Travolta all embody what America deems the Italian-American man. The picture is not complete until their bodies become fully animated. Their stance is confident and aggressive. Whether they are agile or oafish they own their bodies. They often appear to be relaxed and formal at the same time. It is as if they would be comfortable playing an athletic sport in a suit and tie. They are at home and unrestricted in a good suit. The space between Italian-American men can be extremely close without becoming intimate or causing them to lose that relaxed posture. Rites of passage or signs of age and status also take place in the body. Characteristic gestures that alert a viewer to the Italian-American ethnicity morph throughout the stages of life. The Guido, most recognizable of the types, is a young man full of mischief and energy. He is the most glamorous character in the films. He is young and flashy, and if he is smart, his movement is quick and agile. If he is not, his movement is clumsy and blunt. John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever is a perfect example of a smart Guido. He moves like a cat and his body is capable of anything from show-stopping dance solos to a death-defying feat of swinging off the Brooklyn Bridge. Andy Garcia’s character in Godfather III is also a smart Guido. His control over reflexes is sharper and more precise than any other character. He thinks and moves quickly. The smart Guido will graduate to Don or consigliere. On the other hand, the dumb Guido is oafish and clumsy. His body behavior is slower and more deliberate than the smart Guido, not for a lack of physical prowess but because of his slower wit and larger belly. If the smart Guido looks and moves like a cat, the dumb Guido looks and moves like a bulldog. The Guidos run in family-like groups, hang on each other’s shoulders, kiss each other’s cheeks and smack each other’s behinds in friendly gestures of familiarity, greeting, or just kidding around. A famous example of a pack of filmic Guidos is the group Tony Manero (John Travolta) runs with in Saturday Night Fever. The Guido, young and brash,
17 gestures with bravado. Whether in a group or on his own he wants to be noticed and appreciated by anyone nearby. If the dumb Guido lives past his youthful Guido days, he might make Goomba (often employed as a thug, hit man, or bodyguard). Goomba status is not determined by intellectual maturity. Instead, the transition from Guido to Goomba is made by age and perhaps his growing speed and accuracy with “whacking”6 and related activities. The Goomba, with his chubby ringed fingers and thick build, does the dirty work. He wields an arsenal of weapons, digs holes for the bodies, and reports to the Don. In the mobster class structure he is the peasant, and he looks the part. His movements are efficient but not beautiful. Alone he seems to have talent and style, but next to the smart Guido he is a buffoon. Goomba qualities often appear in non-mobster Italian-American film characters. This character is no less a Goomba than the mob hit man, but is merely less dangerous to those around him. If a Guido who aspires to become a Don proves himself a capable and mature man, the gestures remain, but the bravado does not. This change in body behavior signifies that he has matured to the next stage -- the Don. In this stage he commands attention without the conscious attempt to attract it, and only when he needs it. His gestures, though they take less energy and space than the young man, carry more weight. Michael Corleone in his Don stage can determine the fate of his enemies with the tiniest flick of his wrist. When Vito Corleone pauses to think, his hands open slowly as his head angles to the side. This slow, deliberate motion accompanies his purposeful and life-changing decisions. These men form the central characters, carry the plots, and dominate the action of the films. Don Vito Corleone and Don Michael Corleone are characters whose every word is awaited with suspense. They embody their psychological control. Their gestures are understated and the Don will employ menacing pauses for
6 Whacking is the assassination of an enemy of the Mafia family for whom the Goomba works.
18 brilliant effects. The reaction to these slowed gestures is one of suspense. These characters and their calculated movements are steeped in potency. At the subtlest of physical indication, lives are taken or spared. In the next stage of life, when he is an old man, the gestures change again. I Vecchi (the old men) represent life after potency has begun to wane. Some of them still have influence but for the most part they are done with the suspenseful intensity and have become grandfatherly. The Vecchio has reached the point where bravado in his gesture is long in the past, and the weighted gestures of menace are also past. He now has all the time in the world to tell his stories and enjoy his family. His gestures are softer while remaining as sweeping as his arthritis will allow. With old age and the wisdom that accompanies it, the gestures imbue his stories and bits of advice with added significance. He can give his opinion without a word with just a flick of the eyes or a tilt of the head, and no one questions the meaning. In the case of the Italian-American women they, like the men, disclose their status and stage-of-life in their gestures. The terms for the female “types” in Italian-American movies represent their relationship to the men. The women tend to fall into the categories of tomato, daughter/sister, and mama/wife. The film Moonstruck marks a significant event in Italian- American movie making because the anchor of the plot is the female character. More often, however, the female roles are secondary and supportive. Their gestures often carry the majority of their communication. For the women, movement most definitely speaks louder than words, and they can actually motivate the men in plot-related actions. The tomato’s role is as mistress or floozy. A woman will let a man know if she is a “nice girl” or not by her body language. The film tomato flaunts her appetites. Her gestures in reference to good food, a beautiful present, or a good-looking man are, at their mildest, coy and flirtatious or, when bolder, they resemble responses to sexual pleasure. In these instances the shoulders raise, the eyes close, the hand raises in a “please
19 give me a moment” indication. Arms generally press against her side to enhance and frame cleavage. Though it is possible for the “less discriminating” woman to grow out of the tomato stage, it usually does not happen and there are tomatoes of all ages. She is usually of a lower class than the mama/wife, a lower intelligence level than the daughter/sister, and has more overt sex appeal than anyone, except maybe the Guido. Interestingly, she may or may not be Italian-American. The tomato character exists primarily to highlight the macho appetites and characteristics of her Italian-American lover. As she ages, her sex appeal is more manufactured than natural, but she still leaves the audience knowing what kind of girl she is. Her body language is not subtle. Her back arches, her hips sway, and she moves unhurriedly. If she is smart it is street-smart, and she does not show it to the men. Women who behave according to their fathers’ wishes are a different story. They represent the daughter/sister characters. The prettier ones are more subtle, they accent anecdotes with lively gestures, express enjoyment of food and gifts with girlish enthusiasm, both hands up in gratitude or pleasure -- happy, but not orgasmic. Their demeanor, whether girlish, elegant or sexy, does not accentuate the figure as brashly as the tomato would. However, the daughter/sister allows the eyes of the men to come to her without brazenly attracting it. She may be boldly sexy, but she does not force the issue. Her hands will give her away. She will draw attention to herself with gesture, posture, and especially, with the direction and intensity of her gaze. Her movements and postures are suggestive rather than shouting out her meaning -- although the meaning is still understood. The Italian-American woman can relay messages to the men in her life that even they (the men) do not realize; yet they respond as her gestures directed. It is a complete language with subtlety and nuance. The daughter/sister character is the woman with the most intellectual capability. The most intelligent of them maintain their intellectual strength even after becoming wives and mothers. They support and, more
20 importantly, influence the men in the story with intellect. Her body is more like the Don. She is usually a daddy’s girl and picks up many of his mannerisms. For example, a scene in Moonstruck shows Loretta Castorini and her father Cosmo in an animated conversation. The gestural interaction between the two of them seems like a physical “call and response.” One accompanies a statement with a gesture of a certain level of intensity and speed, then the other will respond accordingly, seeing, raising or lowering the intensity to physically illustrate points in the argument. This type of father/daughter comparison is possible in interactive father/daughter scenes in both Moonstruck as well as in The Godfather part III. Connie, the daughter/sister, uses gestures that give her the impression of strength. Her gestures are not a part of frenetic energy or awkward nervous habits; they punctuate the ideas and decisions that propel the story forward. In both examples, the daughter/sister stands tall, and self-assured. The gestures of an Italian-American mama/wife are clearly and consciously understood whether in close proximity, across a crowded kitchen, or even across the street. When she wants her child to stop misbehaving, even the kids in the next block sense it is time to behave. Her emotions and motions are simultaneously dramatic and matter-of-fact, as if to say, “Your actions are making me waste away into an endless sorrow, but hey, what are ya gonna do?” This happens in a two-beat gesture that will be accompanied by loud words. The mama/wife type is secure in her position and provides emotional support for the male characters. She is not in the prime of her beauty even if she married recently in the storyline. As soon as she becomes pregnant, she also becomes matronly, and remains matronly throughout her life.7 Physically she is approachable and non-threatening. Her gestures are definitive. No
7 Some women can maintain their daughter/sister status throughout life, even after marriage. The relationship to the primary male characters determines this, and the movement relays it.
21 one wonders what she means; she is very clear. Mrs. Castorini (Olympia Dukakis) in Moonstruck is a perfect example of a mama/wife. Her husband is cheating on her, her daughter is behaving poorly, but she remains constant. In a conversation with a roguish younger man she states, “I know who I am.” The statement appropriately accompanies her matter-of-fact body language. In the final stages of life, the women only change their demeanor to accommodate the slowing of old age. There are also group uses of gestures that are executed by individuals when they are in the midst of larger groups. Gesture is required in group situations when communicating to an individual across the highly animated crowd. Reactions to jokes are made with bodily movement as much as with laughter. Animated discourse, whether in a group setting or between two people, contains aerobic levels of hand activity. Groups of family and community are the heart of the Italian-American screen image, and the active communication of bodily movement and dance is an important part of the visual impact. Italian-American dance traditions do not, as in some other cultures, center on rituals that are exclusively danced; however, dance is part of many of the family and community rituals. Unlike the gestures of the characters mentioned above, each of which represents a specific feeling or idea, the dancing does not contain movements that signify specific sentiments and meanings per se. This is not to say that dance is not significant; quite the contrary. The significance of dance lies more in its context -- when, where and with whom the dance takes place. As in classical and romantic ballets, the rituals that bring a person from one stage to the next stage in his or her life are marked with celebrations that include dance. Engagements, weddings and celebrations all include dancing. Connie Corleone’s (Talia Shire) wedding (The Godfather) and Princess Aurora’s birthday party (Sleeping Beauty) mark major turning points in their lives. Participants dance with people who are central or potentially central in their lives. (The tomato and the Guido are exceptions to that. They are generally more promiscuous dancers.)
22 Dancing for the filmic Italian-American is simply a full-body gesture signifying celebration and relationship. The movement and gesture, and the physical arrangements of family groups which are at once ceremonial and casual are also present in Catholic ceremonies. The gestures of Catholicism are incorporated into the daily dialogue of gesture when needed -- whether to add a dramatic flair or to implore celestial aid. The films, especially the epic trilogy, The Godfather, echo the Catholicized gestures and symbols within the frames of the shots. Moonstruck propels the plot forward with Catholic ritual, and Saturday Night Fever creates tension with Catholic gesture. These five films are representative of different performances of Italian-American ethnicity through three different genres of filmic storytelling -- drama, comedy and the movie musical. They contain the most influential Italian- Americans types in films. The character portrayals in these films have formed the definitive iconic images of Italian-Americans in popular- culture. The body behaviors and types to be discussed in the following chapters are well represented by these films and can be applied to scores of other Italian-American films.
23 CHAPTER THREE
Italian-American Men
Will you just watch the hair? Y’know I work on my hair for a long time and then ya hit it. He hits my hair (Saturday Night Fever).
He bounces with a weighted rhythm taking accented steps on every beat. The Bee Gees falsetto rises with the camera’s eye to reveal a tall, lean, black-haired, blue-eyed Adonis. His spine is straight and his chest is open. His arms swing freely at his sides, riding the rhythm of his strut. A paint can hangs from his swinging right hand like an accessory to his leather and polyester plumage. His face, with its full lips and quizzical expression, turns to follow each he encounters on his pedestrian odyssey. He is an image of the raw and the smooth contained in one remarkable figure. He is an Italian-American Guido, a peerless example of an American iconographic character codified in America’s folkloric medium -- film. John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever is one of the most recognized, ridiculed and adored film Guidos of all time. The Guido represents the adolescent and post-adolescent Italian-American man. It is this stage that serves as the passage to maturity. These young men are presented as bucking stallions: overtly macho, sexual, stylish, and street smart while simultaneously vulgar and violent. Their brains are often in their brawn. The character is highly physicalized. Stylized gesture, posture, and movement relay to the viewer what it means to be young, Italian-
24 American, and male. The result is a stereotypic portrayal that is at times negative and at other times beautifully romanticized. All these films represent Italian-Americans as a distinct urban group whose ethnicity is created and maintained by working-class men who learn everything they need to survive on the streets of their neighborhood. Ironically, this image of Italian-Americanness calcified at a time when most Italian-Americans had already moved into middle class suburban spaces and sent their children to learn survival skills at universities rather than through fistfights and gunplay (Baker and Vitullo 213).8
For the purposes of clarification the definition of a filmic Guido is as follows: he is a pre-marriage male; he is from a blue collar socio- economic family, or a gangster family; he is vain and often very good looking; he is street smart; his dress is meticulously coordinated; he is over-sexualized -- both in his objectified beauty and predatory aggression; he is Catholic; he is urban; and, of course, he is Italian-American. There are two types of Guidos in film, those whose talents take them to Don status, and those who make Goomba. It is intelligence, social agility, and often blood ties that determine the difference. A Guido destined for Don status is graceful and intuitive. A future Goomba has a less dexterous wit, and though his movements are effective, they have less finesse than his Don-bound counterpart. Both types of Guido move with great bravado and assurance, but when the Don-bound Guido executes the movements, he is appealing and glamorous. A dilemma of masculine representation exists for the filmic Guido. The mainstream American ideal of masculinity is physically more subdued and less observable than that of the Italian-American man.9 Laura Mulvey’s gaze theory as presented in her influential and often-quoted article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) discusses, from a
8 The authors are referring specifically to The Godfather; Mean Streets; The Godfather, Part II; Rocky; Rocky II; and Raging Bull. 9 This is also true of other ethnic American men, including African-American men, Latino men, and men of other Mediterranean heritages.
25 psychoanalytic perspective, the ideal perception of male observers, while the women are the ones observed. In representations of Italian-American masculinity, the men are shown grooming themselves, strutting, and gesturing in a performative fashion. They are overtly observable. As men of ethnicity and “the exotic other,” they are allowed a certain level of display. But, as they are also members of mainstream popular entertainments, these characters compensate for their feminized display with high levels of aggression and overt (hetero) sexual appetites. Ramsay Burt made this comment in reference to male dancers, but the idea pertains to men in film as well: “What is at issue is not that men should be looked at but how they are supposed to appear when they are the object of a spectator’s gaze” (Burt 51). Certain defenses are created to protect the American hegemonic ideal of masculinity within these displayed men. Burt alludes to this idea in the following statement where he discusses Johanna Boyce’s and Bill T. Jones’ choreographic works. Boyce connects being on display with a loss of power, while Jones connects the performer’s gaze with objectification (being a ‘commodity’), and implies that being ‘extremely aggressive’ is a way of reimposing control and thus evading objectification (Burt 51).
Tony Manero (John Travolta), referred to as “Nureyev” in one of the disco scenes of Saturday Night Fever, displays agile and graceful movement in the way he walks, gestures and dances. His body is a showcase of Italian- American masculinity. Tony, the stylish Guido, is both the subject and object of the gaze. This subject/object duality is reflected in the physical act of shifting focus, his blatant admiration of many women (which also protects his machismo) combined with the self-conscious beauty of the Guido. Because he is male, because he is the thing observed, and because his style is the result of study and effort, he is read as narcissistic. He is striking, and the camera’s eye often objectifies him by following segmented portions of his figure, a filming technique usually reserved for women, especially in love scenes or erotic scenes. In essence, he is being
26 observed because he is confident. And, because he wants the observation, he controls the observer. His narcissistic control deflects his non-ideal status as object of gaze. The gaze feeds the Guido’s ego. Tony Manero’s walk at the beginning of Saturday Night Fever is a perfect example of narcissistic reception of observation even when his body is segmented (objectified) by long upward panning shots. The camera rises up his sleek black pants to the tight leather jacket that hugs his slim figure as he rhythmically bounces through the streets of Brooklyn. He accepts observation. It empowers him. Tony and the other Guidos exert their narcissism with confidence, even arrogance. This (over) confidence is expressed clearly in the body language in the aggressive scenes. The narcissistic confidence fuels the aggression and therefore puts the Guido, the object of the gaze, distinctly into a position of strength. Inasmuch as films do involve gender identification, and inasmuch as current ideologies of masculinity involve so centrally notions and attitudes to do with aggression, power, and control, it seems to me that narcissism and narcissistic identification may be especially significant. Narcissism and narcissistic identification both involve phantasies of power, omnipotence, mastery and control (Neale 11).
Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia) in The Godfather Part III is another illustration of the suave Guido. Like Tony Manero, Vincent Mancini shows bella figura10. The film reveals his transition from Guido to Don. While still in the Guido stage he is heated with an aggressive temper that explodes through his demonstrative body language. He leans into the personal space of those he confronts with bold confidence and loud, unruly movements. With an unwavering gaze, he is always eye-to-eye with the confronted (unless of course he is biting an ear off). He is not, however, facing the opponent with a frontal body position (Clark). His
10 Bella Figura, translated as “good figure” refers to a possession of both physical beauty and social graces.
27 unwavering gaze peers from a turned head with a shoulder leaning into the aggressive, but obliquely angled relationship to scene partners. This intense eye contact from an oblique angle occurs in many different Guidos. Tony Manero also addresses others from this perspective. It is aggressive in the eye contact, and self-protective in the body aversion. It is a stance used by fighters. The eyes are intensely focused on the target (or potential target) and the shoulder of the dominant hand is back with the opposite shoulder forward. This position readies the dominant hand to strike at any moment and the body weight is in place for the force of the body to support a striking dominant hand (R. Bozzone). A pivotal Guido scene in Godfather part III shows Vincent Mancini in front of his revered Don and his primary rival. He shifts his weight from foot to foot like a boxer. This action serves two functions: one, it allows him to move in any direction at any moment; he does not settle back into a position but is always ready to pounce. The second result of this movement tells the audience that, though bright and resourceful, he is still a frenetic Guido and not a composed Don. Through his geographic movement -- forward and backward, bouncing from foot to foot, and never planting his feet on a single point -- he shows his streetwise aggression immediately followed by his understood lack of authority. He advances with bravado, and retreats immediately afterward. This advance/retreat action is in response to his relationship with his enemy, Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna) and his relationship with his Don. The Guido’s frenetic, boxer- like behavior is partly due to the fact that he, unlike the Don,11 has to protect himself. He is constantly alert to those around him and he moves back and forth in order to keep the other men under his observation. As the film progresses, this constant movement is replaced with a calmer, cooler demeanor that can (and does) pounce from a motionless position.
11 The Don has a staff of Goombas protecting him by watchfully guarding the premises around him.
28 The Guido’s movement is young and athletic, whether he is Don- bound or Goomba-bound. The pre-Goomba Guido can be as driven as the pre-Don Guido. He is not the central character of the films, but he strives to be. The term Goomba is of uncertain derivation, but probably stems from the word compadre, which through clipping the word in slang usage (a common practice in Italian and Italian-American conversational habits) the word ultimately became Goomba (Schirripa 4). He is the peasant of the class system suggested by these narratives (the suave Guido is the heir apparent). His movement is blunt and to the point. His body and gesture lack some of the nuance that his more dashing counterpart possesses. The Godfather Part II is comprised partly of flashbacks to Vito Corleone’s pre-mafia life. His two primary Goombas, Salvatore Tessio (Abe Vigoda) and Pete Clemenza (Richard Castellano), are shown in their Guido stage12. Clemenza is shown spilling his espresso down his face as he attempts to impress the calm Vito with his guns and favors. He grows fatter throughout the films’ depiction of his life. His already wide stance widens with his belly, and his arms hang at a diagonal angling away from his shoulders as they navigate around his girth. His growing mass does not cause him to lose his ability to perform the traditional Goomba tasks, even though his movements become less athletic with his evolution. As an adult and fully realized Goomba in The Godfather part I, Clemenza teaches a young Michael Corleone whacking skills with a joviality that complements his massive form admirably. The Goomba is not the object of the gaze. He returns to the traditionally masculine position of observer once his Guido days of sweeping bravado are over. This is primarily due to his loss of youthful beauty. In many cases he still dresses his clumsy form well, but it does not merit the “gaze.” He seems to have lost the need to impress the ladies and his fellow former Guidos with his agility and lean body-mass. His frame is
12 Tessio and Clemenza in their young days are more Italian than Italian-American (they never speak English), but nonetheless they do demonstrate the transformation.
29 capable of efficient movement, but no finesse. The loss of the need to impress may stem from many different sources. The Goomba never had as much success with flash as the Guido counterpart of his younger days. He is usually married, but rather than romance or family life, his business dealings require more screen time. Because the Goomba is not the primary character, the specifics about his personal life are not usually explored during the course of the film -- unless they directly relate to the plot lines of the primary characters (most often the Guido and Don). An instance of a reference to a Goomba’s personal affairs occurs in The Godfather part I, when other Guidos and Goombas wait for Goomba Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) and try to explain his absence with the statement “ Maybe he’s shacked up.” He is not as they assumed “shacked up,” but instead, “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes,” explains that his absence is due to a “whacking” and not a “shacking up.” The Goomba’s body presents an interesting quandary for the viewer (and probably in casting as well). The Goomba’s coarseness is enhanced. The camera and costume feature qualities that are inelegant. More often than not, the Goomba is obese. If he is not noticeably overweight, he has some other characteristic that makes him both awkwardly endearing and unsexy -- like a bulldog puppy. Clemenza in the Godfather parts I and II, is a mountain of a man. His massive form fills the screen in an obvious way. In an ensemble scene in part I, his girth is enhanced by his being placed in the foreground, in front of the primary action and dialogue. The viewer feels the need to look around him to see Michael and Sonny Corleone’s discussion even though Clemenza is not a primary participant in this encounter. His mass creates a wall of obstruction that serves three functions. One, the viewer strains to involve himself in the dialogue. Two, the barrier created by Clemenza’s body gives the conversation a sense of privacy and intimacy. And three, the Goomba’s awkwardness is indirectly noted.
30 Many things determine the destiny of the Guido. The filmic class structure of Italian-American men reflects the classic American dream scenario. The son of a Goomba can become a Don if he is talented and ambitious enough. Tony Manero’s father is a blue-collar Goomba in Saturday Night Fever. Mr. Manero shows no evidence of the elegance or cunning his Don-bound son possesses. Tony’s talent on the dance floor and his resolve to leave his Brooklyn neighborhood to go to Manhattan cause him to rise above the class of his father. Vincent Mancini, through his savvy and smooth ambition, becomes head of the Corleone family -- the ultimate Don. Though his parentage is of Don aristocracy (he is Sonny Corleone’s son) he is illegitimate and must climb to Don status rather than inherit it. This phenomenon is shown most effectively in the Godfather trilogy because the family is followed through three generations of Dons and Goombas. It is also possible for the son of a Don to fall short of his father’s success and charisma. When this occurs, it is not usually Goomba status that the less powerful son manages. There are a few paths that the mythic Italian-American has had that contain strength, but in a different manner than the Don. Anthony Corleone, Michael’s son, fights his father for the opportunity to pursue a career as an operatic tenor. Tom Hagen’s13 son enters the priesthood. Aside from a couple of characteristics they have the makings of a Don, but they do not possess charisma worthy of the leading- man. Their characters are either talented or intelligent (or both), but not ambitious for the power the Don craves and achieves. Their characters are sidelined in the narrative, yet they are strong enough to be the sons of Dons without apology. The less successful alternative is what I have labeled the “Fredo phenomenon.”
13 The Tom Hagen character (Robert Duvall) does not have Italian blood, but was adopted by Vito Corleone. He is a high-ranking member of the class structure, and his body behavior reflects his Italian-American counterparts. His wife is Italian-American, so his son is half Italian-American in blood, but all Italian-American in family behavior.
31 Fredo (John Cazale), Michael Corleone’s elder brother, did not achieve a Don’s career because he was not brave enough or smart enough. He did not become a priest because he was not moral enough. He did not become a singer because he was not talented enough. His character is shown as a tragic failure. His body language is slumped and weak. He is self-indulgent, and uncontrolled. His destiny was foreshadowed as he fumbled and dropped his gun when his father was gunned down, slumping into a helpless heap and crying as the onlookers gathered around. He does not face other characters eye-to-eye, but rather has a shifty, noncommittal gaze that slips into his generally slouched and hesitant body posture. His gestures have no dynamic strength. He gestures without conviction, perhaps to question or to dismiss ideas that always seem too challenging for him. Fredo falls short of the American ideal of masculinity. He also grooms himself and pampers himself but cannot compensate for the feminized behavior with either confident narcissism or aggression. He is disempowered in every way, and in popular culture representations of both ethnic and mainstream American men, this is an emasculated image. In a scene from Godfather part II showing the family at a party in Michael’s Las Vegas home, Fredo’s weak character is demonstrated through his physicalizations. He hides meekly in the shadows observing his wife’s loud, drunken harangue on the dance floor. He confronts her by holding her elbows and telling her to behave. She, utterly unconvinced, wrestles her elbows free of his grip without much effort. Because Fredo is unable to resolve the situation himself, Michael whispers to one of his Goombas. The Goomba tells Fredo that he will handle it if Fredo cannot. Fredo’s downcast eyes look up momentarily, his slumped posture and pocketed hands show no sign of rising to explain or defend. With an unchanged expression and a posture that sinks into the depths of a slouch, Fredo watches the Goomba lift and carry his wife off the dance floor. His posture is that of a man defeated. His lack of control over the poor
32 behavior of his non-Italian wife is a scenario that emasculates him further in the patriarchal ethnic rendering of Italian-American manhood. He has neither the agility nor the muscle of Guido or Goomba, and is not self- possessed enough to become something unique. Another male type -- the Priest -- is a character who serves the role of audible conscience for the central characters. He does not have a visible personal ambition, a characteristic that makes him distinct from all the other characters. His long robes obstruct the view to most of his body. He moves slowly and piously. His age is unimportant in his movement. He never moves with flash like the Guido. His character functions to illuminate portions of the main character’s life and thoughts. The priest serves to present a religious or philosophical soliloquy that leads characters in a conversational way. It is as if the confessing main characters are alone, and the priest is simply a sounding board for their thoughts and fears. Even in a soliloquy, the Italian-American ethnicity of the speaking character is often suggested by the presence of the Priest. The priest’s body is asexual. He does not have the charisma or beauty of the Guido, nor is he awkward like the Goomba. Alone, he is benign. Only his hands and his face are expressive, and that only to reveal the appropriate response to the confessions of the main characters. In Moonstruck the priest’s hands are the only section of his entire body visible on the screen. The rest of his body is off camera, but his hands emphasize the alarm at Loretta’s confession. He points his finger as if to say, “Wait a minute,” and asks her to repeat her second sin in the list of confessions. The second sin “Once I slept with the brother of my fiancé,” causes him to clench faceless hands in slow and deliberate concern. The hand movements visually accompany the worry in his voice when he implores Loretta to reflect on her actions. The sign of the cross ends the thought like a period at the end of the sentence. The Don is the paramount character in the film mythology of Italian- Americans. He is the head of the house, the head of the business, and the
33 idol of his inferiors. His status is the envy of the entire cast of characters. Though the word is associated with a mafia scenario, the Don type is not necessarily only in gangster films. Though it is not one of the films selected for analysis in this thesis, Lorenzo Anello (Robert DeNiro) from A Bronx Tale (1993) is a prime example of a non-mafia Don. However, the most fully realized Dons (possibly of all films) are Vito and Michael Corleone (Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro as old and young Vito, and Al Pacino as Michael) who are mafia Dons. Their performances inspired the popular usage and stereotyping of the name by the media and public. Both Vito and Michael use stillness more than the other characters. Extended pauses in their action build suspense and show them as intimidating, giving weight and intensity to what will come. The large gestures of the Guido are absent. Michael and Vito Corleone are able to remain perfectly composed and still while being presented with requests or disturbing business situations. The action, or lack thereof, builds mystery and reflects the advice Vito gives to his son, the “hothead” Sonny, “Never let anyone know what you are thinking.” 14 This composed and contained posture makes it impossible to read emotion. When it is time to move, the actions erupt quickly from stillness. Johnny Fontane (Vito’s famous crooning godson) requests that Vito arrange for a stubborn movie director to give Johnny a role in a film. The scene shows Johnny crying and pleading to Vito. For the entire duration of Johnny’s account Vito listens intently, but without reaction. Suddenly he jumps from his seat into full animation, slapping Johnny’s face and telling him to “act like a man.” His action reflects the agility of the Guido (even as a middle aged man) and the control of a Don. The Don is the portrait of ideal old-world masculinity combined with the ideal of new-world power. He is attractive enough to be appealing, but not ostentatious enough to be considered glamorous. He has control in
14 In The Godfather part III Michael Corleone gives the same advice to Vincent – his nephew and Sonny’s “hotheaded” son.
34 every area of his life, and in the cases of Vito and Michael, their devotion to reason and family that projects a quiet nobility -- even though they orchestrate all the "whackings." The Don’s movement describes his characteristic control, power and intellectually superior sense of reason. His body, by design never reveals what he is thinking if it needs to remain secret. However, if he wishes to be understood, he often needs no words, and is actually a man of few carefully chosen words. In reference to the American ideal of masculinity the Don fulfills every expectation. He is as iconic as the cowboy, and like the cowboy, he is strong and silent. His economy of words places more importance on the movement for communication, creating a suspenseful mystery around him (which gives him control and disempowers everyone near him). He has an air of shrewd, cunning intelligence. Though it is a different type of narcissism than the Guido, it is still narcissism. The Guido, by his confidence and beauty, controls the visual focus. The Don, using physical stillness and quietness controls and shifts the focus of the eyes, ears, and the concentration of those around him. The Guido is admired, but the Don is feared. Steve Neale describes this phenomenon in reference to Alain Delon as a gangster hit man, and Clint Eastwood in several of his “Spaghetti Western” roles15: “The kind of image that Delon here embodies, and that Eastwood and the others mentioned earlier embody too, is one marked not only by emotional reticence, but also by silence, a reticence with language. Theoretically, this silence, this absence of language can further be linked to narcissism and to the construction of an ideal ego” (Neale 12). The Don’s control makes the action seem predictable only to him. Yet the reactions of others to his movement are known and expected. He is confident, secure and in control of the situation most of the time. During
15 The references here are to Alain Delon in the film Le Samourai (1967), and Clint Eastwood’s films A fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1967).
35 moments where certain individual behaviors of his inferiors displease him, he changes the scenario with unwavering control. When Vinnie’s temper lashes out at Joey Zasa in front of Michael, the Don clearly commands them to behave in a civilized manner. He also sees the raw talent in Vinnie’s hot tempered, Guido ways and takes it upon himself to help Vinnie transform into a Don-type. In every aspect of his life the Don is cool, or even cold. He is cool in the slang sense -- suave, controlled and smooth. He is also cool in the sense that logic and reason guide his behaviors. The Guido, who is hot in every sense of the word -- sex appeal, explosive temper and high level of frenetic energy -- simply harnesses that heat when he matures. Physically, this is seen by the fact that he moderates and calms his mannerisms and uses stillness to his advantage. The Godfather part III shows this transition in Andy Garcia’s performance of Vinnie. In an interview with James Lipton, Garcia discusses this transition. He stated of Vinnie that from the beginning of the film to the end he caused the character to behave more and more as Michael did. His transformation occurs slowly over the entire course of the film. There is one final transformation that takes place in the male characters. The transformation into Il Vecchio16 occurs to all male characters who live long enough. It is usually the case that the viewer meets these characters already in this stage, but there are a few characters in this discussion who make the transformation (The Godfather part I, II). The state of life and movement evident in Il Vecchio are associated with nothing other than age. Their bodies allow for limited movement, lessened urgency and importance in their actions and discourse. The character they were when younger is simply slowed, relaxed and perhaps stiffened with slight arthritis or other age-related limitations on their movement. Certainly Italian-American men are more frequently portrayed and more fully developed characters than the Italian-American women in the
16 This is the Italian word for “old man.”
36 majority of these films.17 The choreography that makes up their movement has been imitated in parodies, other films, and television.18 The films discussed in this chapter have explored these characters in terms of their respective stereotypes, as well as portraying them as characters who are individuals with full dimension. The combination of parody-ready types and charismatic, unique portrayals makes particular performances stand as seminal Italian-American characters. Vito, Sonny and Michael Corleone, Luca Brasi, Pete Clemenza, Tony Manero and his gaggle of Guidos are characters that have reached mythological notoriety. The memorable performances of these characters have transformed the Italian-American narrative into one of our most popular filmic genres.
17 Moonstruck and The Godfather part III are notable exceptions to this and will be explored for the analysis of Italian-American women in the following chapter. 18 Analyze This, Analyze That, Mickey Blue Eyes, and skits on television shows like Saturday Night Live contain comic parodies of Italian-American types.
37 CHAPTER FOUR
Italian-American Women
Tony: What are you anyway? Are you a nice girl of are you a c—t Annette: I don’t know. Both? Tony: You can’t be both. I mean that’s the thing a girl’s got to decide early on. You gotta decide if you’re a nice girl or if you’re a c—t. (Saturday Night Fever)
The portrayals of Italian-American women in the earlier films (The Godfather parts I and II, and Saturday Night Fever) are primarily two- dimensional impressions of characters rather than complex, fully explored individuals. There are many reasons for this, but the phenomenon is largely a result of the fact that the female characters are secondary, dependent and relatively undeveloped. In film, most often the Italian- American woman is a sidekick or an accessory to the male characters. The later films, The Godfather part III and Moonstruck, do, however, contain female characters that are depicted in full dimension, but even the modernized Italian-American women in these films still live and behave according to the needs of the male characters in their lives. Whether or not they are modern or archaic, the female characters maintain strong elements of the “old-world” in their behavior and movement. The physicalization of this “old-world” femaleness echoes the lack of individual power and their importance as retainers of tradition in the plot lines. Freedom is limited and fixed for the female characters. As Tony explained to Annette in Saturday Night Fever, once a girl is what she is, there is no variation or degree. If she changes, she must change completely
38 -- but according to Tony the change is only from one stereotype to another. According to the way women are usually depicted in the genre of Italian-American films, the image of her on screen is either as a representative of a particular type, or of her in transition from one type to another. But (especially in the earlier depictions) she is rarely fully developed. This is not true of the male characters who are written with intricate complexity and contradiction. In The Godfather trilogy, Sonny Corleone was portrayed as an attentive family man even though he had an illicit affair and an illegitimate son. His sister Connie changed from one stereotypical extreme to another. She was clearly a “nice girl” (according to the philosophy of Tony Manero) in The Godfather part I, but a tomato in part II. In The Godfather parts I and II, and Saturday Night Fever the women are stereotypical images referencing the home, or, a threat to the home. It is interesting to note that Mulvey’s take on the gaze seems to be entirely contradictory to the portrayal of respectable Italian-American women. They are not the object of much observation at all, which disempowers them even further. The Guido and, to a lesser extent, the Don, own the gaze. They are able to draw attention and they use it to build their own confidence and to attract or intimidate others. The Guido looks blatantly at scores of nameless women throughout the films, and occasionally at specific characters within the plot, but his gazing actively draws the attention to himself and not to the women. The camera watches him watching. The objects of his observations are noted in brief visual asides as is seen in Tony Manero’s walking scene at the beginning of Saturday Night Fever. From the perspective of the camera, the women are only noted in order to show what Tony sees, and this reinforces the characterization of Tony as a highly sexual Guido. Tony’s attention shifts from one woman to another as replaceable objects. Immediately replacing one woman with another in his gaze demonstrates active disregard. For the women, the loss of the gaze to the Guido gives them essentially no
39 influence outside of domesticity. Mulvey’s theory, though influential, has several inherent limitations. The disempowerment of respectable Italian- American women, because of the absence of the gaze in their depictions, is an illustration of one such flaw. Rather than being disempowered by male regard, Italian-American women in film are disempowered by male disregard. Moonstruck expanded the roles of female Italian-Americans most significantly by focusing on a woman, Loretta Castorini (Cher), as the central character and giving her character full dimension. Like the male characters discussed in the previous chapter, the women of The Godfather part III and Moonstruck fall within a particular type, but they are also developed individuals within those types. Domestic life is heavily emphasized in their characters yet they are thinking individuals, responsible for important dialogue and actions within the plot. Although they still remain within the same categories of ethnicity and gender, the differences in their character-depictions, from the earlier films of the 1970s to the later films of the 1980s-'90s, illustrate a marked evolution in the popular representations and perceptions of women. Italian-American women in films, regardless of their age, have a matter-of-fact “it is how it is” manner. If their position in life is that of a respectable woman (daughter/sister or mother/wife) they are generally very open and clear in their body language. Their faces and gestures plead the causes of their children, family members and even their own hearts with an unguarded and sincere demeanor. The respectable women, regardless of their age, act in nurturing ways. As they feed, serve, admonish, and constantly see to practical services, food, drink and utensils become extensions of their gesturing hands. Love and sex are sincere acts that are not sensationalized like they are with the Guido or the Tomato. This generally reads on screen, not as sexy but as true. Anything that would read as naughty or dirty is extracted, even in love scenes. Loretta Castorini, as the brother-of-her-fiancé carries her into his bed, maintains
40 the matter-of-fact gesturing although she is emotionally and literally being swept off her feet. The ordinary light of mid-day cools the room. There are no atmospheric elements (seductive lighting, music or textures) to create a lusty scene, only the intensity of the characters’ feelings, and the directness in their actions. The daughter/sister character is the most significant of the female characters in terms of screen time, centrality to plot, and semi-autonomous power. Her characterization (like all of the female types) comes from her relationship to the hierarchically dominant male characters. Even Loretta, who falls in love with Ronny in Moonstruck, goes to him as the “brother of her fiancé.” It is a relationship she expects will be fraternal or familial. These women are more independent and individual because certain male characters show trust in them. In The Godfather part III, Connie, even though she is a woman, is a counselor to Michael and Vincent. She is in essentially the same power position as a male consigliere. This legitimizes her in the eyes of the audience despite the fact that she is a woman. This is a notable contrast to the earlier Italian-American representations where a woman is a personage who is powerless outside of domestic life. The look of the young daughter/sister character is one of pure or pristine beauty. She is very pretty, but not in a way that demands prurient thoughts. She seems like someone’s sister and romantic pursuits can only be for love -- preferably a marriage-bound love. However, she is treated as though she is incapable of making an appropriate choice in the object of her affections. Brothers and fathers step in to either stop a romantic connection or to introduce her to an appropriate man. In The Godfather, Sonny introduces Connie to Carlo (Gianni Russo) and, when Carlo turns out to be abusive, Sonny is there to defend his sister. In The Godfather part III, Michael advises Mary to leave Vinnie. In Moonstruck, Cosmo
41 reprimands Loretta for being at the opera with someone other than her fiancé saying that he will not allow his daughter to act like a putana.19 Whether well educated or not, the daughter/sister has an intellect and can articulate her thoughts. She is the only female character with this freedom, the only female with intellectual influence over Guidos and Dons. The daughter/sister dresses well, but never in an inappropriately or in an overtly sexual manner. Sexuality is understated even if her beauty is remarkable. For her character of Loretta Castorini, Cher is transformed into a more subtle and classic beauty. In the opera scene in Moonstruck, Loretta is stunning, neither garish nor over the top. This is communicated to the viewer largely through her movement. Though her body is capable of moving in overtly sexy ways, Loretta remains physically open and candid. She faces Ronny with a direct facial expression and guileless postures. She stands upright and tall, and does not sway toward and away from him. Her face is extremely expressive and clear, and her gestures reinforce what her face indicates. Her hands move in small distinct gestures and remain in her own space. She also stands in her own space. With more sexually aggressive characters, their movement fluctuates in and out of the personal space of attractive prospects. However, with both the daughter/sister and the mama/wife, close proximity is reserved for familial relationships. Children, parents, nieces and nephews are all touched and hugged closely. But the nature of the relationships, and the eternally guileless manner of the respectable Italian-American women, indicate only ingenuous intentions. In Moonstruck Loretta is in love with Ronny, but because this is inappropriate in the family hierarchy, she maintains a body language that is friendly but not necessarily romantic in reference to proximity. Regardless of her relationship to others she is frank and direct in her manner. This directness is read in her choreography by the fact that her physical language tends to be frontal rather than oblique.
19 Putana is Italian for whore.
42 Because The Godfather trilogy was filmed over time, Connie Corleone presents a timely evolution of the Italian-American woman. Because The Godfather trilogy shows three generations of an Italian-American family, and was shot over the course of twenty years, it is able to exhibit modern and archaic interpretations of the same characters and to document some of the shifting views of Italian-American women in popular culture. In The Godfather, Connie is a helpless, meek and pitiful character. In the Godfather part II, she transforms herself into a tomato in her rebellion against Michael. The Godfather part III, Connie, once again, is the sexually virtuous daughter/sister character. However, in last stage of her evolution, she is influential and autonomous -- characteristics which have been seen only in the male characters in the earlier films. The types of roles and characterizations that Connie has in the three movies illustrate a shift in attitudes. In The Godfather, her role exists solely for the purpose of revealing Sonny’s character and ultimately baiting him (unknowingly) into his murder. Petite and delicate, she is pretty enough to be understandably attractive to Carlo although her beauty is not intimidating or lusty. In this stage, Connie has the ear of Sonny, solidifying her character as a daughter/sister. All of the men in her life are big and by contrast her petite frame seems even tinier and more fragile. She is the personification of meekness. Like the ideal of femininity for the ballerina, Connie, as an early daughter/sister presents an image of delicacy and fragility. In the tradition of old-world cautionary tales, classical story-ballets and Italian- American films are patriarchal. Kings and princes, or Dons and Guidos govern the domain and drive the story. Ann Daly points out the secondary positions of Balanchine’s ballerina and her predecessor, the Romantic ballerina, which are communicated by their delicate physicality and position within the larger narrative frame. The Romantic ballerina – an important forerunner of the Balanchine ballerina – is similarly seen as dominant because of her legendary celebrity. Both Erik Aschengreen
43 and John Chapman have debunked this myth. Only superficially, Aschengreen argues, did the Romantic ballet in France belong to the ballerinas; rather, Romantic ballet in France was the expression of a masculine society’s desires. “Both La Sylphide and Giselle are named for the leading female characters, but the heroes, James and Albrecht, bear the problems of the ballets.” They bear the problems and they make the choices: they act, while the heroines are acted upon. In La Sylphide, for example, James loves, and the Sylphide is loved: James rejects, and Effie is rejected (Daly 282).
In The Godfather part I, Connie’s helplessness, her beauty, and naïve demeanor sustain this iconic feminine ideal. She, like Giselle, is breakable. She remains dependent upon her father and brothers (especially Sonny) to rescue her from her own weakness. The narrative function of Connie’s character is to serve as the vessel that will carry and create conflict between Sonny and Carlo. The two men have an active dispute and Connie’s existence provides the fuel for their male conflict. Physically her body and behavior reinforces the “goodness” and helplessness of the daughter/sister character. Both Sonny and Carlo, Connie’s brother and husband, are head-and-shoulders taller than she. She looks up at them -- always. Whether she is arching her head back or peeking at them with upturned eyes, her head is inclined slightly forward. She appears defenseless, as though she would never survive without strong men fighting for her. Her small frame, demure dresses and hairstyles emphasize her helplessness. So does her marital situation. Connie is married to a thug-like Goomba and wife-beater. A particularly disturbing scene occurs when she discovers that Carlo is cheating on her. Her already pitiable fragility is emphasized by an obvious, third trimester pregnancy. They argue. Connie is pathetically frantic, running from Carlo and hurling things at him while he towers over her menacingly, belt in hand, screaming and hitting her. She feebly attempts to protect herself by hiding behind silk drapes, breaking dishes and vases, and running away. She is completely hysterical, and though she
44 is expending large amounts of energy, she is flailing uselessly. The scene ends with the camera focused on the bathroom door and the sounds of her crazed screams and Carlo’s furious shouting. Connie’s scene of hysteria is reminiscent of Giselle’s mad scene. She may die for love and she goes crazy when she learns that she is betrayed. Both show helpless women in grave distress, and the outcomes of both situations are tragic. Giselle’s delicate heart fails, and Connie is severely beaten. In the patriarchal narrative, every bodily movement, and every character with whom Giselle and Connie share space, focuses attention on their feminine fragility. Annette in Saturday Night Fever is similarly portrayed. Even though Annette seems less helpless than Connie, in her street-tough stance and boldness she is still a vulnerable daughter/sister. More than anything she wants to be like her married sisters -- a fact illuminated by an accusatory Tony. Unlike Connie, Annette tries to cover-up her “nice girl” persona. She wears sexy dresses that accentuate her curves and decides to “make it” with Tony. This is an offer he does not accept, and it marks the moment that launches his philosophy of the “nice girl” versus the “c—t” lecture.20 At the end of the film Annette “makes it,” but with Tony’s friends in the backseat of the car as the whole gang of Guidos drive down the street. A sudden realization passes across her face and she becomes distressed and devastated; she is re-fragilized by her own behavior. Her devastation is her punishment for stepping outside the bounds of her role. She never realizes her wish to be with Tony as a lover and dance partner, and her attempted change from “nice girl” to “c—t” only brings her distress. By the Godfather part III, Connie has transformed into a modern American woman with an Italian heritage. She has her own voice; she has become an autonomous thinker and doer. This is a sharp contrast to the Godfather part I version of Connie. She has transitioned from being merely a source of reaction and/or motivation for male characters in the patriarchal plot line. In The Godfather part III, she performs actions as
20 This is the dialogue at the beginning of the chapter.
45 well as reactions -- the opposite of her earlier incarnation where she was either acted upon or reacted to a man’s dealings. In reference to action, in the third film of the trilogy, she is at times a leader and at times still a follower. Physically, the Connie of part III plants her feet, she gestures like a Don, and like him, she is ambitious for the Corleone family. Ambition was not an attribute of the female characters in the earlier films. She no longer emphasizes her diminutive stature by her body language. She does not peek up at men from a meekly inclined head. She is direct and forceful, frontally focused. Now she possesses an elegance that is mature rather than sexualized. It is also interesting to note that she is romantically unattached in this film, which allows her to be important to the business of the Corleone family. In the third film of the trilogy Connie, like a man, can be depended upon. This is a much different portrait than was seen in the first film of the trilogy where Connie was ruthlessly ruled by her incompetent husband Carlo. Loretta is an amusing and wry incarnation of the modern daughter/sister character. Like Connie, Loretta’s gestures are reminiscent of a Don. Her character is strong and autonomous, reflective and self- aware. Unlike the Italian-American women of earlier films, male characters support her or play a sub-plot character. Loretta Castorini shows the daughter/sister within modern, urban, American life. She is a character who embodies, luxuriates even, in her ethnicity and her individuality. Loretta’s gestures stay within her own spatial zone. She rarely thrusts her hands outside her personal space in general conversation. If and when she does, it is with a particular purpose -- the act of showing her father her engagement ring, or acts of mutually shared space, such as a hugs and salutary kisses, are moments when she involves herself in another person’s personal space. Still, the women remain occupied with props like eating or serving utensils, plates, glasses, carafes, or in one instance, in The Godfather part III, Connie handles Michael’s insulin syringe. In the ritual movements of the films, serving spoons are as
46 relevant to the dance as castanets are for flamenco. The handling of these domestic props serves as physical reminders of the “old-world” heritage. The women sit on the edges of their seats awaiting the next opportunity for manual occupation. It is not an anxious posture, but an alert and prepared posture. It gives the impression of conscious self-possession because they are so upright and perched. This constant flux between readiness to serve and busy hands is the feminine behavior inherited from the older culture. There are many parallels between the behavior and roles of the daughter/sister and the mama/wife characters. The primary differences are determined principally by their differing relationships to the male characters. The daughter/sister does not necessarily graduate to mama/wife. Her character is largely determined by the fact that she has the ear of and some intellectual influence on the male characters. In the case of Connie from The Godfather trilogy, even though she is a mother, she is centered on Sonny and Michael, her brothers. The influential power of the mama/wife resides only with her children and in these cases, about home, health and marriage. Both the daughter/sister and the mama/wife give certain kinds of instruction. They both might be heard saying lines like “Don’t stand directly under the sun. You’ve got a hat. Use your hat.” (Loretta in Moonstruck). But the daughter/sister has the confidence and attention required to say something like, “I’m telling you your life” as Loretta says to Ronny in Moonstruck. The difference is not intellectual ability as much as it is the power of her intellectual influence. Rose Castorini (Olympia Dukakis), Loretta’s mother, is the quintessential mama/wife character. And though she is as perceptive, witty and intelligent as Loretta, she has no intellectual credence in the eyes of her husband. Because of this, her attempts to get his attention and make her points must be couched in sharp, brief and memorable announcements. After determining that men (Cosmo in particular) chase women because they fear death, Rose relates her insight with a resigned countenance, in a
47 matter-of-fact tone of voice, with unflustered gestures, from a relaxed seated position: “Cosmo, I just want you to know that no matter what, you’re gonna die, just like everybody else.” “Thank you Rose.” “You’re welcome.” The mama/wife is comfortable in, or at least resigned to, her situation. She knows she only has domestic power and accepts it. She seems to sense no alternative to her lot in life and makes no attempts to create one. This reads to the audience through body language and tone of voice. Rose’s movements are unhurried and efficient. She comfortably wields spatulas and easily prepares drinks for family and guests. Her manner is not frenetic or rushed, even so, food and drinks appear from her unhurried hands promptly. She has the domestic expertise that makes household actions look easy. Occasionally she has to defend the undervalued space she governs in her familial position, as is the case for Rose, when she finally tells Cosmo outright and in front of Loretta and Ronny, “I want you to stop seeing her!” It is a domestic situation and in the presence of his daughter, a character who is able to affect his decisions. Rose Castorini is a mama/wife whose situation, and attitude toward that situation, is depicted with depth and specificity. In contrast to the other mama/wife characters in the other films under discussion, Rose has a fuller range of personality. Her role is exponentially larger than the other mama/wives in terms of dialogue, screen time, and character development. For example, Mrs. Vito Corleone in the first two films of the Godfather trilogy, and Mrs. Manero in Saturday Night Fever, are never on screen for more than a few seconds at a time, and they never utter more than a few lines. Their performances are mostly a physical embodiment, relayed in a matter of seconds. Physically, these women are pictures of generic and iconic mamas, and like Mary in Michelangelo’s Pieta, they are large, stoic and somber. Their bodies are stout and grounded. They move in direct, goal-oriented patterns and their faces and bodies commit to conversations and activities with full frontal participation. If they are
48 humorous, it is out of irony. For both Mrs. Manero and Mrs. Vito Corleone their worlds and physical presences exist on screen only in reference to family and church. However, Rose Castorini moves out of the domain of family and church in one pivotal scene. Because her family is not eating at home one evening, she goes out to dinner alone. At the restaurant a man in his mid- forties is having dinner with a beautiful girl in her twenties. Perry (John Mahoney) is a character who was seen at the beginning of the film in a similar situation with a different girl, who was also young and beautiful. In both scenes, the younger woman becomes irate, throws a beverage at him, and storms out. In the earlier scene, Loretta, also dining in the same restaurant with her fiancé comments that the girl is too young for him. In the later scene it is Rose who witnesses the ordeal. She responds exactly as Loretta did -- only she says it directly to Perry. She invites him to eat with her. Because the scene is shared with a character not connected to her family, the audience sees a side of Rose from the position of an outsider. She is witty and perceptive, comfortable and secure with herself. This is true in the family scenarios as well; but, because of the context of familiarity and everyday conflicts, it is not the central focus of her character. She has an intelligent conversation with Perry about his life. He listens to her and by doing so, he proves that she is worth listening to. Perry’s full attention is given Rose in this scene, a moment which sharply contrasts with the active disregard normally allotted to Italian-American women of the earlier films. This scene is a rare instance of autonomy for the mama/wife character. Throughout the conversation Rose’s posture is open, completely free of the artifice of ornamental gesturing. It is this calmness that Perry seems to respond to strongly. His slick and pompous behavior is highlighted when confronted by Rose’s candor. Candor is written across her face and it is physicalized in her comfortable posture and her frontal facing. Rather than using a guarded oblique posture, or having her arms crossed in front,
49 Rose inclines into the conversation directly. She only employs her hands to eat, or when she speaks, and she faces Perry straightforwardly throughout their dinner. When Perry explains to her why he chases women, she listens intently. As he reaches the end of his story he instinctively produces whimsical but manufactured romance. A line like, “She’s as young and fresh as moonlight in a martini,” reaches Rose’s ears like the insincere statement it is. Her physical and verbal responses correspond, and in her natural and forthright manner, she smiles, shakes her head, props it on her anchored arm, and says, “What you don’t know about women -- is a lot.” The mama/wife in all of these films -- but seen most fully in Rose -- is free of bravado. Her gestures are uncluttered and distinct, within her own space, meant strictly for communication. The clarity in her body behavior shows she does not move in order to make an impression about herself. She moves simply in to plainly relay information. She is a character that has pride rather than a delicate ego to protect. Rose Castorini’s statement “I know who I am” puts into words the meaning of the mama/wife’s gestures and body language. The mama/wife does not walk fast or with excess swaying or movement. In a purposeful gait she walks at a moderate rate. She embodies propriety by the way she sits, and gestures. Her dress is conservative and appropriate. Her seated positions are lady-like and modest. Her gestures are clear and for communication only, rather than being an adornment or used to highlight her body. She gestures within her own space, but without touching and thereby drawing attention to any portion of her body. She is relaxed but attentive, and her unassuming body posture affords her no mystery. She has no sensationalized allure. Rose Castorini is lovely but nonetheless, devoid of obvious sexuality. This is not because men do not respond to her but because she is not flirtatious or coy. She responds to them straightforwardly. Another difference exists between the daughter/sister and the mama/wife. The daughter/sister is beautiful, and regardless of her sexual
50 past, she maintains her virginal appeal. The mama/wife does not share this quality. Her behavior seems as practical and sexless as a nun’s. Though all of these characters are (or have been) sexually active, they do not seduce with posture or gesture. This is true of Mrs. Vito Corleone (The Godfather), Mrs. Manero (Saturday Night Fever), Rose Castorini and Rita Capomaggi (Rose’s sister-in-law in Moonstruck). It is a matter of propriety that they do not reveal this side of themselves, and it also keeps intact their images of sanctity as mama/wives. Rita Capomaggi (Julie Bovasso) provides a memorable insight into this deliberate downplay of sexuality. She and her husband are discussing their romantic interludes, and when his amorous intentions are spoken too loudly, she shushes him in embarrassment. She urgently waves her hand at him, physically underlining the importance of his immediate silence. She then retreats away from him and quickly busies herself by measuring a hard cheese, using action and food to redirect the attention away from the discussion of her sex life. Still, it is affectionate and loving and though it is about sex, it is not sexy or alluring but funny and endearing. The tomato, a female character also known as a floozy, mistress or putana is opposite to the daughter/sister and mama/wife in almost every way. She is overtly sexual, and garishly glamorous. Whatever physical attributes she has are enhanced in her costuming. Mona (Anita Gillette) in Moonstruck highlights her décolleté of plunging necklines by using blusher. Unlike the virginal beauty of the daughter/sister, or the stoic sanctity of the mama/wife, the tomato’s beauty is not idyllic or pure. Her image immediately codifies her relationship to the men. She embodies an entirely different ideal of femininity than the pristine ballerina or the pure daughter/sister. Physically she is an exaggeration of the female, she embodies excess. Janet Wolff’s reflection on Mary Russo’s discussion of the “feminine in excess” can also be applied to the image of the tomato in these films.
51 She concludes that these figures are deeply ambivalent. As she says, “women and their bodies, certain bodies, in certain public framings, in certain public spaces, are always already transgressive – dangerous and in danger.” These cases and images of women “in excess” of the idealized feminine may operate as a threat (as well as example to other women) (Wolff 88-89).
Tomatoes may or may not be Italian-American, however, their characters are two dimensional enough that the most essentialized element of their existence is their physical relationship to Italian-American men. Their cultural background is only made clear in the plot when it serves to reveal something about their Italian-American lovers. A tomato’s dress and behavior make clear the kind of girl she is. The majority of her communication is bodily. Only the most unfortunate Italian-American men are foolish enough to marry a tomato. In The Godfather part II, poor Fredo is married to a particularly brash tomato who accentuates the pathetic state of his life. Guidos, Goombas and Dons may have tomatoes as mistresses, but only those lost in the “Fredo phenomenon” find themselves married to a tomato. The body of a tomato is obvious, in every way. If her hair is red, like Mona’s in Moonstruck, it is persimmon red or some other lurid shade. Mona’s hair color is made even more obvious by the various pink hues she wears. She is an array of warm, clashing colors. Mona foregrounds her cleavage in a pointed way by her necklines, make-up and postures. At a fancy restaurant with her blue-collar Goomba, Cosmo, she draws attention to her impressive décolleté and the plunging neckline of her peach-pink sweater when she squeezes more depth into her cleavage as she leans forward towards Cosmo. Her posture is suggestive and lazy. She moves languidly in s-curves, arching some portion of her torso at all times. Her body never faces directly forward or directly towards her fellow characters. She will turn to Cosmo long enough for him to have a full prospect of her figure and then, with a curvaceous twist, she angles her body away which leaves her face peering up at him coyly.
52 A tomato in The Godfather part II, Deanna, Fredo’s wife, is drunk and disorderly in her primary scene. Marital fidelity is not part of the life of a tomato, and Deanna is no exception. She is in hot pursuit of another man in front of Fredo and his whole family. With a vacuous facial expression, platinum blonde hair, and her zaftig body clad in a form-fitting dress, she bounces and sways on the dance floor, making no attempt to disguise her sexually aggressive behavior. The tomatoes are not usually played as individuals but as caricatures. In Mona’s case she is a comic parody, in Deanna’s case she is a pathetic parody -- but neither is shown with depth or sympathy. They are guilty pleasures and expect no respect from anyone. In The Godfather part II, Connie starts behaving like a tomato in a deliberate rebellion against her brother. Her character in part I was good, naïve and sweet; in part III she was virtuous, loyal and intelligent; but in part II she ignores decorum and her children, and lives a decadent life. During her tomato stage Michael firmly advises her not to marry her current beau and to return to live with her children on his property. He tells her that he disapproves of her whoring around the country without regard for her children. In her case, as in Annette’s (Saturday Night Fever), the transition of a good Italian-American daughter/sister into a tomato is tragically disappointing to the important men in their lives. In both films the important men show or discuss their disgust. Both Annette and Connie are visibly distressed by the disappointment expressed by the important men in their lives. The physical mark of their regret at the men’s disappointment is made in loaded, small movements. Connie and Annette quietly turn their heads away to hide their emotion. This turn of the head shows shame and defeat. Because they are not able to face down the men’s disappointment with direct bravado, the viewer gets the sense that the rebellion is a phase that will eventually end because it has been forecast by their turning away in embarrassment.
53 The women, like the men, move in culturally explicit and improvisatory choreography. Their look determines their role to a certain extent and is magnified by costuming, hair, and makeup. For the female characters, especially in the earlier films, because they have very little dialogue, most of their performances are in bodily movement -- a dance of gesture, posture space and proximity. It is rhythmic and communicative. The character portrayal contains literal movement that is clearly read and is without abstraction or exaggeration, formulated into representations a choreography that relays ritual ethnic movement, narratives and relationships. The relationship between male and female is particularly central in the portrayal of Italian-American culture. There is a dichotomy between the body behaviors of the men and the women. These behaviors reflect the interpretations of gender within the culture. Ted Polhemus comments on this cultural dichotomy. In emphasizing the obvious role that gender must play in the definition of cultural reality I do not want to fall into a physiological reductionism. Gender is itself, of course, culturally defined. We are not referring here simply to differences of genital equipment and so forth. However, the fact that, in any society, ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ is a socio-cultural-physiological phenomenon and the fact that gender roles differ considerably from one society to another does not alter the fact that for any given individual the experience of gender identity is an absolute boundary which is existentially insurmountable. Some distinction between the sexes is universal in all human societies, and inevitably, therefore, culture is bifurcated into male culture and female culture (Polhemus 176).21
These filmic interpretations of gender and ethnicity are performative renderings of culturally specific definitions of gender that exist within the group and also reflect certain clusters of actions that identify the
21 There are now more facets than simply “male” and “female” in Gender Studies, but Polhemus’ observations are relevant to the depictions of the dynamic between Italian- American men and women on screen.
54 ethnicities. The depiction of both males and females, and the dynamics between the genders in Italian-American films perpetuates the image of the Italian-American community as a whole. And like other folkloric tales, the characters dancing the lead roles fall into predictable categories, and instead of having Odette, Prince Siegfried or Odile as seen in Swan Lake, these character are daughter/sisters, Guidos, and tomatoes.
55 CHAPTER FIVE
Dancing
Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home on the wedding day of your daughter. And may their first child be a masculine child (The Godfather).
The choreographic composition of these films utilizes group movements, and both static and moving tableaux, to visually create environments and reinforce character and status. These scenarios, like those found in story ballet, are often ceremonies, parties, religious rituals and other group activities. The movement in these situations sets scenes and moods with small and large groupings of people that are arranged to impart important information quickly and visually. This chapter and the following chapter will explore the compositional constructs of these films through dance, family functions, and Catholic ceremony and ritual. In filmic representations of Italian-Americans the use of what is traditionally considered dance (social dance specifically, on a dance floor, performed to music) serves to create a social atmosphere that propels the plot forward, and especially, develops character. The directors use dance to reveal information in a quick and wordless manner. Because visual images of bodily movement indicate personality far more efficiently and indelibly than verbal text, the directors discriminately choose those dances, venues and styles of dance that reveal the characters. As in verbal text, the kinesthetic text expresses gender, culture and class characteristics. From the moment of birth an individual begins the long and complex task of learning how to use his or her physical body. This is obvious and we note in ‘baby books’
56 significant moments of his process such as the first time a baby manages to stand or walk. What is less obvious, but by no means less important, is the fact that such physical development is a cultural as well as a biological phenomenon. How one should stand, walk, hold the body, etc. differs from one society to the next and in a fast changing society such as our own, from one era to the next (Polhemus 172).
Dance is a fully animated, whole-body use of movement. From the perspective of the film director, it is a perfect vehicle for introduction to characters. Dance creates the images of the characters at their most vigorous, physical and self-expressive moments, providing a kinetic image of and instant insights. The performance is not only of individual character but of individual characters within culturally specific traditions (weddings, social life, family gatherings, etc.), moving in culturally specific styles. By introducing characters at a celebration in The Godfather part I Coppola places a strong emphasis on first visual impressions, using dance to explore specific individuals. These first scenes occur at the Corleone house during Connie and Carlo’s wedding reception where the camera crosscuts from various fleeting moments of plot-based dialogue to visual introduction of individuals moving in distinctive ways. The scenes alternate between the interior of Vito’s office where he is conducting his “business” and the exterior dance floor. As the shifts are made, different styles of music and corresponding dancing are shown. The dance styles executed by the characters reveal their value and status, their respectability and hierarchical class standing. Coppola shrewdly shot and edited the images of dancing Italian-Americans to indicate social hierarchy. Social dancing is generally a marker of society -- high, low and culturally specific. Julie Malnig comments on the history of society hierarchy as seen through dance. “Dance -- particularly social dance -- has long had an association with the attainment, or at least the preservation and display, of social status, from the Renaissance court spectacles and balls of Queen Elizabeth, to nineteenth-century New York Cotillions” (Malnig 271).
57 Impressions of grace, elegance and poise, or bulkiness, bounce, and eccentricity correspond to the characters' social class. In The Godfather part I boisterous dances to Sicilian music are done by the henchmen Goombas or the older men, who dance with traditional peasant-like movements. The more elegant old-world waltzes (usually the traditional waltz, liscio) are danced by the more regal characters, and trendy modern American dances are performed by characters of little merit. The long-standing tradition of correlating dance and class defines the history of dance, both on and off-stage. An interesting parallel of class display can even be made between ballet and The Godfather films. The communication of class through dancing styles is a significant phenomenon in classical and romantic ballet. “Social class influences were evident in the typecasting which evolved in classical ballet in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dancers were either noble, demi- caractere (i.e. bourgeois) or folk-character, (i.e. peasant-plebian)” (Adair 8). Giselle, in particular, distinguished the aristocrat from the peasant choreographically. The peasants perform character dances with a weighted sense of movement. They seem far more grounded than the aristocrats when dancing. The nobility has a light and weightless sense of elevation, and the movement is fluid and unbroken; this contrasts the peasants’ geometric and punctuated gestures. This is comparable to the smooth and elegant waltzing that the Don dances with his wife and daughters. The peasant-like Goomba characters, on the other hand, tend to have an accentuated “commonness” in either the types of dances they perform, or the low level agility with which they throw their bodies through the dances. Traditional old-world dances in The Godfather trilogy are performed by characters who merit respect. The Don most often dances in a slow, closed-position partner dance (the liscio) to traditional music. Don Vito (The Godfather part I) moves across the floor with commanding ease, without frills or showy behavior. He engages in conversation with
58 Carmella and the closed position is never broken. It is a fleeting moment which, with quick efficiency, reveals his role as a serious husband interested in his wife, who lives, and dances, as the old-world culture recommends. An essential sense of his character gets distilled in this momentous image, which is crosscut and imbedded in the middle of a series of dialogue scenes that demonstrate the Don’s criminal power. The combination of the two sets of images -- Vito at work and Vito dancing with his wife -- elucidates the fundamental make-up of his character. He is a powerful Don, protective family man, self-assured and traditional. Another impression of nobility occurs in the dancing when Vito is presented during the father/daughter dance with Connie at her wedding reception. With his omnipresent air of authority he escorts Connie onto the floor to perform the father/daughter dance with the liscio. He opens the dance with a presentational gesture toward his audience, then pulls her into the protective closed-partner position. They slowly revolve around the floor in a regal, dignified, upright stance to the melancholy strains of traditional Sicilian music. He is focused on her, his daughter, and he does not break the position during the course of the scene. With filial affection she wraps her arms around his neck as they dance, succumbing to him as an attentive, loving father. Connie, the bride at the wedding celebration, dances with both her father and her new husband during the mélange of dancing images that comprise the wedding scene. She, as the follower, adapts to whatever style her partner dances. Her presence as the partner of both men creates a pointed comparison between them. She and Carlo are seen dancing to popular swing music with simple and popular swing steps. They do not maintain the somber closed-partner stance that is ever-present in Vito’s dancing. They break away from one another and in a less serious alliance they “get down” a bit more. This modern American popular dancing gives Carlo the appearance of a flighty adolescent. Carlo’s dancing versus the formal venue of the wedding contrasts the flippant, juvenile Carlo-in-
59 motion with the serious gravity of marriage in Italian culture. Using popular dancing to characterize Carlo demonstrates that he is of a lower class and respectability than his father-in-law. Following this first impression of Carlo as juvenile, the plot unravels to show that he is, indeed, exactly that. He is unworthy of being depicted in traditional old- world dancing. Michael, like his father Vito, always dances in the same protective closed-partner stance and slow circling pattern. The various characters choose their partners based on significant loves in their lives. They only dance with their spouses, their children, or parents. Michael dances with Apollonia at their wedding in Sicily in part I. He, like Vito, circles the floor in the traditional liscio with commanding ease. He is fully engaged by his wife and is unaffected by the eyes of the crowd. Two decades later he dances this same dance with his daughter, Mary, in The Godfather part III at the fundraising benefit. The two of them circle the floor in the same pattern as Vito and Carmella and the younger Michael and Apollonia in part I. There are differences in part III because an inclusive filial feeling is added when the toddling grandniece hangs on Mary’s legs until she is included in the dancing. At this point as they circle the floor, the three form a linking unit that accommodates the little girl. In The Godfather part II Michael is shown dancing with his second wife Kay. In contrast, it is notable that though he does dance the usual slow, circling, closed- partner pattern, it is not the waltz, the liscio, that he dances with Apollonia and Mary. This serves to disclose two potent impressions: both his first wife and his daughter have Italian blood. Kay does not. So Michael dances with Kay to the popular American music that plays at their party in Lake Tahoe. Also, part II shows Michael as he is hardening into a cold criminal. Although this image of the couple does not show Michael as cold, it does show him moving away from the traditional. Kay is apprehensive during this interaction. Her reticence and the non-traditional dance create a fleeting image of unease that preludes the end of their marriage.
60 In part I a few transient images also show Goombas, Clemenza and Tessio, dancing at Connie’s wedding. Goombas are the peasants of the crime family as their movements suggest. The first sight of Clemenza presents him throwing his massive form through a boisterous and bouncing dance to lively Sicilian music. He drips with sweat and skips around his wife and a few others in turn, linking elbows and lifting his knees. Sweating, completely out of breath, he gestures and yells to Paulie, a lower-ranking Goomba, to bring him some wine (in a pitcher) to quench his thirst. Paulie compliments Clemenza’s dancing. Clemenza responds with the breathless and acerbic question, “What are you? A dance judge or something?” His movement, reminiscent of a rhythmic hippopotamus, contrasts to Vito’s commanding and graceful ease with an endearing but less noble aesthetic of movement. Tessio is also presented dancing in an endearing, if not graceful, manner. His choice of partner is approximately nine-years-old and she plants her feet firmly on top of his. Like Vito and Michael, he dances slowly and in a circling pattern, but rather than dancing with commanding ease, he awkwardly lumbers through the movement concentrating on the precarious balance the little girl has on his feet. As he takes rigid steps around in a circle his face shows a sweet amused expression, his bushy eyebrows moving prominently up and down with his ungainly dancing. Both Tessio and Clemenza, through dance, illustrate their personalities and their status on the hierarchical ladder while eliciting sympathy for the engaging qualities of their dancing. Their old-world dances indicate their respectability, but their unrefined movement indicates their class. Dance, however, reveals less about the individual personalities of the female characters in The Godfather trilogy. Just as the female characters exist in their relationships to the male characters, the dances they perform are done in relationship to the male leads. The respectable woman only dances with significant loves in her life, but beyond the choice of partner, little about her specific character can be read in her dancing. The dancing
61 in these films situate her as a woman in a patriarchal community. An observable element of her lower status is that her dancing is more a commentary on her belonging to the culture than on her as a person. The parts and stylistic choices danced by the couples reveal the gender dynamics within the culture, a point that Ted Polhemus discusses. “Dance -- the distillation of culture into its most metaphysical form -- always embodies and identifies this gender-generated division of cultural realities. Whenever men and women dance together therefore, cultures collide: male culture and female culture” (Polhemus 176-177). Connie’s dancing reveals her position as “follower” while also creating a venue for comparison between her two dance partners, Vito and Carlo. Still, her dancing reveals more about them than about her. These dances highlight the differences between the men: Connie is the constant while the men and their choice of dances are the variables. Her presence is the controlled means of contrast. Though individual character traits of Coppola’s women are not explicitly shown by the manner in which they dance, their dancing does generally occur at transitional moments in their lives. Connie and Apollonia are seen dancing at their weddings, a transition from single girl to married woman. In The Godfather part III Mary’s dances with her father at the fundraising party when she is named as the figurehead of the charitable foundation. This title indicates a more modern transition from girl to woman than the traditional shift by marriage for Apollonia and Connie -- but it marks a transition nonetheless. Kay’s dancing with Michael in The Godfather part II signifies the point at which she realizes Michael will not, as he promised, leave the crime business. The intricacies of character are not revealed in the women because the women follow, leaving the dance, instead, as significant markers of major transitional points in their lives. The images Coppola chooses to display in the dancing scenes are shrewdly selected. The Godfather films contain too many characters to
62 develop through the unfolding of the plot and dialogue. In order to illustrate characters who were fully described in Puzo’s novel -- a genre that has more time in which to tell the story and introduce character -- Coppola had to use pictorial indications at every opportunity to present character impressions economically. Thus, Coppola utilizes dance to its fullest storytelling and character-developing potential. Dancing events are central in his compositional structure to explain the cultural subtleties of class, gender, and social interaction. In real (non-filmic) Italian-American family weddings, everyone can be seen dancing to any type of dance. If the music is traditional the dancing is traditional, if modern then the dancing is modern. For the purposes of storytelling, this reality would have been too amorphous and generalized. If Vito had been shown in a fleeting image doing the boogie-woogie, the rest of the film would be squandered in order to counter-balance that image. Audiences had to accept him immediately as a formidable Don capable of determining other people’s fates. Therefore, his dance is traditional, regal and only performed with his wife or daughter. Though that transient dancing moment passes very quickly, an important element of his persona is indelibly impressed. By contrast, Saturday Night Fever is filled with dancing and provides a supreme opportunity to observe a Guido dancing. Tony Manero’s story is entirely based on his talent on the dance floor. His choice of partners and the modernity of his dances exhibit the bravura of the Guido stage of life. Saturday Night Fever is centered around Tony’s odyssey of moving away from his home, ethnicity, family, and blue-collar background. Appropriately all of his dances are contemporary 1970s disco forms -- the opposite of old-world sensibilities in every way. Tony attempts to escape his ethnicity throughout the movie. Unlike The Godfather films and Moonstruck, Saturday Night Fever shows the Italian-American ethnicity in a restrictive, negative light. The Manero family life is aggravating, the food is bad, and religion is superstitious.
63 Dance is Tony’s escape from the oppressive and archaic mindset of a family that engages in conflict and discord in their interactive scenes. The only traditional movement left in the ensemble scenes of family in Saturday Night Fever deal with a frenetic combination of squabbling and superstitious religious habits. Yet Tony does have a healthy relationship with his siblings. His sister is still a child, his brother leaves the priesthood (an ever-present element in filmic Italian-American culture) and plans to move away from the family. The characters who advise Tony and are respected by him (Stephanie and Father Frank Jr.) actively remove themselves from Italian-American life in Brooklyn and direct Tony to do the same. Tony’s pedestrian movement-choreography highlights the suave Italian-American street character. He and his Guido cohorts move in the close, familiar proximity that is characteristic of Guido ensembles. Certainly they move with a more intimate proximity and touching than the WASP adolescents who share their borough and their disco. Their gestures are typically Italian; their conversational points are underscored with gestures like the shaking of their hands in a prayer position or the upward pointing of all fingers together shaking back and forth. Also typically Italian-American is their boldness in addressing others, and their exhibitionist postures. Off the dance floor they are still residents of Italian- American bodies. But on the dance floor their movement blends with -- and in Tony’s case, surpasses -- all of the ethnicities around them. The Disco dancing scenes draw a parallel to party scenes in classical and romantic ballets. The soloist variation is a bright spot of virtuosic and showy steps, while the ensemble/corps dances are unison. During the disco “party scene” Tony is involved in both the solo and ensemble choreography that showcase him as the star and as a part of the community. In Tony’s biggest solo he wears the famous white suit that boldly contrasts with the rest of the disco. He employs large stylized movements to draw the attention to his long lean frame. Occasional
64 isolations pulse from various parts of his body to highlight physical features -- hands, pelvis or feet. Tony easily claims the attention of the crowd with big traveling movements that propel him across the under-lit dance floor, changing levels and dynamics, while always displaying his beauty. Though the steps and clothes are not specifically Italian-American, they are in keeping with Tony’s version of narcissistic Italian-American masculinity. He is, in fact, beautiful and mesmerizing to watch. Tony is so secure in his machismo, so skilled in the shapes and lines of his poses and movements -- which are so studied, so curvilinear -- that were his character of Anglo-American heritage, his dancing would be read and dismissed as feminine. But like Valentino, Tony can be feminized and eroticized -- and still be strong and irresistible. Many of the ensemble/corps dances in Saturday Night Fever are disco line dances. Occasionally a dancer in the line will embellish a movement and draw the eye for an instant. But the overall sense created by the group choreography at the disco is of a happy, faceless crowd. The music and movement of these dances pulse evenly, with a trancelike repetition, accentuating the disco's escapism. Disco levels out all dances into a non-ethnic element of pop culture. Even the “Tango hustle,” named after the Argentinean dance, lost its ethnic flavor. While on the dance floor Tony Manero, like the “Tango hustle” maintains ethnic identity in name only. However, though disco culture is not ethnicized it provides Tony a venue where he can fully engage in the narcissistic exhibition of the male body which is popularly associated with the "ethnic" and exotic male. The dancing in the film extracts all specific physical and musical indications of ethnicity, implying that ethnicity, especially Italian-American ethnicity, is something that is best overcome or hidden in generic popular culture -- if the character is to succeed. During the course of the film Tony experiences a growing realization that he must get away from Brooklyn, his friends, and family, and the club is the perfect transitional/liminal space in which this
65 transformation can occur. The disco is a ritual space and a theatrical space. It is decadent and deliberately superficial. The combination of music, light, and space are hypnotic and eroticized, a place where sex, drugs and non-stop music form the governing trinity.
In the disco, Tony becomes the exotic, the beautiful and celebrated “other.” The disco’s appeal resides in its “otherness” as a place to go to live out fantasies, to become something else, and most importantly, to escape mundane reality. Tony’s parents and ethnicity do not haunt him at the club. His talent on the dance floor, performing mainstream dances, literally moves him away from the old world.
Tony, as is fitting for a Guido, is a girl-magnet. His erotic prowess as a dancer and his good looks have the girls flocking to him. His burgeoning ethnic epiphany causes him to avoid girls from his own neighborhood and to pursue a girl aspiring to be a Manhattanite. She is a good dancer and she is in the process of crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on a permanent basis. His admiration of her is not returned in equal measure though she appears to be the only girl from the discos without a romantic interest in him. In the scene where they finally meet, Stephanie points out that there is a world of difference between them, not only chronologically (she is older than Tony), but also emotionally and culturally. For her, dating a Guido would be a social step backward. [Tony] is defined by his sexualized dancing and blow dryer; the woman he desires compares him unfavorably to ‘real men’ in Manhattan known less by how they look than what they do. The emphasis on personal style in both films suggests that working-class and ethnic men cannot embody an ideal masculinity of position and achievement, but represent instead a type of sexual inbetweenness (Baker and Vitullo 221).
Stephanie perceives herself to be too good for Tony. The fact that he attempts to move to a societal position that is more like hers proves that he agrees with her.
66 In The Godfather trilogy and in Saturday Night Fever dance is used effectively to express opposite sentiments. In The Godfather films, dance anchors the characters to their Italian heritage. It shows the ancient roles of class and gender as they have been passed down through the generations. The steps and music that Michael and Mary dance are from a bygone era and distant land, and the dancing is a visual reminder that they are members of this ethnic community. In Saturday Night Fever, dance helps Tony escape that same bygone era and far-off land. His appearance - - his mastery of the definitive Italian-American Guido role is so sure that he can use it expertly to flavor his execution of dances from a disco culture rather than from his own culture. In these films social dancing is used to make commentaries about Italian-Americanness. Dance and dancing also form a large part the compositional structure of character, and narrative depiction.
67 CHAPTER SIX
Family and Church
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli. (The Godfather)
When using dance analysis to examine choreographic structures in film, the powerful component of stasis has equal weight with movement. Tableaux vivants are instances of arrested motion. They echo past actions or foreshadow important actions to come. Stasis punctuates and varies the choreographic rhythm of the film. The pose is enriched and complicated by the composition of the mise en scene in Italian-American films, which is often centered in familial or religious settings. Even if the setting is not a home or church the atmosphere is imbued with the omnipresent allusion to family structures and the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the sense of family and religion is largely generated through the composition of individual and ensemble movement. Many actions that seem as if they would or should be devoid of religious or family references are actually the scenes that most pointedly echo religious rituals and images reminiscent of Saints from Renaissance paintings, or references to crucial familial relationships. Scenes as disparate as gang-related murders and joyous celebrations are carefully composed, visually and kinesthetically, to refer to family and church. Catholic iconography is one of the elements that most strikingly signifies Italian-American ethnicity because it is, and has traditionally been, one of the group’s most evident distinctions from mainstream American identity. The habitat of the Italian-American is found in ensembles of family and paesani, and the omnipresent atmosphere of Catholicism.
68 The family in Italian-American films functions scenically as a corps de ballet and as a metaphor for strength and unity. For example, both Vito and Michael Corleone’s extended families justify and fuel their ambition and ruthlessness. In Moonstruck, the family supplies Loretta and Rose the strength and support, and occasionally the conflict, required to rewrite their fates. In Saturday Night Fever, the family is the negative and restrictive force that compels Tony to leave his past, his home and his ethnicity behind, thus fueling his ambition for self-improvement. Whatever the emotional ambiance, the family frames the movements of the focal character. The presence of large numbers of people all gesturing, eating and talking in the films creates an atmosphere of community and levity, or just as easily creates an atmosphere of intimidating gravity. And in physical complement, the compositional arrangement of all the family members together forms a visual spectacle that is grand and impressive. The metaphor of family is often extended beyond blood relations. The Corleone crime business and the other four Italian-American crime businesses in The Godfather are referred to as the “five families.” Loretta in Moonstruck spends all of her non-work hours with family and love interests. In Saturday Night Fever Tony’s friends, “the faces,” are a group of Italian-American Guidos that move in a family-like unit. In these films, family groups frame central characters in much the same way that soloists are framed by the corps. At the height of their Don-ships, Vito and Michael Corleone sit behind their large desks in imposing offices. Decorating the scenes and dispersed compositionally to frame the Don are a few Goombas and the Consigliere, present for protection and legal advice. The Don’s requests are made, recorded, and noted with attentive expressions and knowing nods by the consigliere, and by the readied postures and sharp-eyed faces of the Goombas. The criminal family in The Godfather trilogy serves to support the Don in any situation, just as the blood family does. The difference between them is a lack of visible conflict: the criminal family only
69 disagrees in the form of surreptitious betrayal. The blood family disagrees in loud arguments around the dinner table. Food becomes yet another visual element that signifies ethnic identity and draws the members of each family together. They sit in their hierarchically determined positions. In the blood family, the father sits at the head of the table, the mother either next to him or at the other end, the oldest son sits at the father’s side and the other children are dispersed. Daughters sit in seats conveniently close to the kitchen. In the criminal family, the Goomba assumes the domestic role. It is he who cooks and cleans for the army of Guidos and other Goombas. The criminal family dinner is less formal, but the hierarchy still exists and is reflected in compositional arrangements of the players around the table and the room. The blood families in Italian-American films usually eat wholesome food in abundance. Wine, pasta, salads and meat are filmed as though they were love objects -- in the most flattering lighting. Shots savor the food’s texture, color and steam rising from the sauces. The wine is a shade that compliments the meal and the compositional aesthetic of the shot. The filming of food in these movies is tantalizing, it is corporeal and beautiful, and it is consumed enthusiastically. Italy’s most famous food is usually the focal point. The Godfather and Moonstruck have ever-present carafes of wine, bunches of grapes, pasta with luscious red sauces, lasagna, bread and green olive oil. Saturday Night Fever is a purposeful exception to this. It is a pointedly made fact that Tony’s mother is a bad cook. “Your mother’s sauce don’t drip. It don’t taste, but it don’t drip.” Obviously Tony’s desire to shed his ethnic restraints is not deterred by the allure of sumptuous food in the Manero household. Some of the most animated and energetic choreography of Italian- Americanness occurs around the table. Raymond Capomaggi’s story of moonstruck love (in the film Moonstruck) occurs with his rapt family/corps sitting around the dinner table. The thematic focus of the film, the focus on luck and destiny, all come to light around the dinner
70 table, as does the narrative apex at the end of the film. In Moonstruck most of the important discoveries are made around a table. The audience becomes acquainted with Rose as she interacts with her family around the breakfast table, and then they get to know her better when she is at another dinner table with Perry. The discovery of infidelity with the introduction of Mona, Cosmo’s tomato, is made at a café table. Loretta becomes engaged, unengaged, and again engaged at tables. She and Ronny fall in love over the steak and pasta that she cooks for him at his kitchen table. The Manero family in Saturday Night Fever have the most memorable and hilariously choreographed argument at the dinner table. They sit orchestrated around pork chops and Mrs. Manero’s famous “non- drip” sauce. The prelude to the argument consists of Tony’s smart-alecky comments to Mrs. Manero who crosses herself each time her son, Father Frank Jr., is mentioned. Tony’s little sister then accuses him of being jealous of their brother. Tony yells “Shut up!” at her -- and the virtuosic cannon of slapping ensues. Mr. Manero begins the chain of slapping when he hits Tony right in his coiffure. A rapid-fire series of slaps coming from every member of the family and directed at their nearest relative finally culminates when their grandmother shouts “Basta!” 22 Tony’s hairdo receives one more paternal blow and the slap-cannon ends with Tony exclaiming, “Will you just watch the hair! Y’know I work on my hair for a long time and you hit it. He hits my hair!” The movement in the scene is based on sharp timing. The slapping begins and ends very quickly and comically. The choreography is based on ensemble movement and exact rhythms. Each slap inspires or responds to another, and occurs simultaneously with the juggling of a pork chop from plate to plate. The tables and the food anchor the ensemble interaction and serve as a delicious reminder that the subjects are Italian-American. The table becomes the animated family portrait that grounds the action and discloses the relationships within the hierarchical family. Family
22 Basta is the Italian word for “enough.”
71 portraits are also present in static photographs. Like a mirror-within-a- mirror this stasis is an important repetitive element of the films’ choreographic structure. Like the ballet equivalent -- the final poses that are briefly held at the end of ensemble variations to create balanced compositional images -- these static images leave a solidified impression of the hierarchical relationships of the individuals to the group. In all three of The Godfather films, and in Moonstruck, a tableau is created with members of the family when they pose for a photo. The group stands posed and, with a flash of light, a brief print, often shown already framed and mantle-ready, takes the screen for a few seconds. In The Godfather, the hierarchy of influence is depicted in the photos in much the same way as the dinner-table seating arrangements. The focal point is the person or people of most importance, with supporting characters placed according to their status within the plot. Positions of importance can be on the horizon line, or in the center, and are sometimes enhanced by an elevated step, contrasting colors in their clothing, more light on their faces, or having a place downstage of the other characters. The arrangement varies, but the characters who first draw the eye are at the top of the hierarchy. Like visual allusions to family, images related to Catholic rituals are present in all the films. Mrs. Manero constantly embellishes her gestures by prayerfully crossing herself. The clasped hands of prayer are shaken in moments of frustrated conversation between Loretta and Cosmo Castorini. Both Saturday Night Fever and Moonstruck maintain an atmosphere of low Catholic ritual in the scenes of daily life. But in Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, detailed images are orchestrated into rich tableaux vivants of Catholic saints in the death scenes. In actuality, the film violence is choreographed more tightly than the actual dance scenes, and with more attention to detail. The camera’s eye can catch the smallest references and movements. Gilt and grandeur accompany decadent gore to create these Renaissance-like images. Saint Sebastian, Christ and Judas are repeated themes.
72 Characters who in some way betray the family by conferring with enemies are killed like Judas Iscariot from the Bible. After betraying Jesus with a kiss, Judas hung himself then fell turbulently from the noose. The mob deaths that refer to Judas are strangulations because strangulation is also (if it is possible) a more respectful way of “whacking” since no blood is spilled. The strangulations are deaths that are important to plot development or resolution, and of people who have a close relationship to the Don. Two characters in particular whose strangulations refer to Judas are performed in very different ways -- one did not actually betray the Corleone family and the other did. Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) and Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo) both die in a Judas scenario. Luca Brasi, a Goomba eternally loyal to the Corleone family, is asked to spy on the family’s enemy, Solozzo (Al Lettieri), by pretending to betray the Corleones. Luca remains loyal to the Corleone family, but to Solozzo he is a betrayer. When his alliance with Solozzo proved to be a charade, Solozzo has him strangled. However, because of his true alliance to the Corleone family, the image of strangulation is not all that is seen. Luca’s loyalty to Vito Corleone earns him a reference to Christ as well. Before the strangulation, the camera moves to a close-up of Luca’s hand to show it being pierced with a knife. He first receives a stigmata then is strangled like a betrayer. The stigmata is shown again before he dies slumped on the floor, his hand still pinned to the wooden bar. His death is alarmingly abrupt, and is the film’s first murder23, which signifies the beginning of the war among the families. In Carlo’s case the use of strangulation, in reference to respect, was done in deference to his wife (and Michael’s sister), Connie. Alluding to his betrayal, his Judas-like execution was carried out because he deliberately lured Sonny Corleone to his death. Because his was a severe betrayal that eliminated the Don’s heir, Carlo’s death scene is without
23 The film producer, Woltz, wakes up with his horse’s head in his bed in a scene previous to Luca’s death.
73 dignity. Once he whimpers his confession to Michael he walks daunted, but unsuspecting, to the front seat of a car. Clemenza sat straight-faced, but prepared, in the backseat. As soon as Carlo sat down, Clemenza wrapped the chord around his neck. Carlo begins to thrash until he is essentially lying on his back in an emasculated position, struggling and convulsing as his foot kicks through the windshield. Unlike Luca, Carlo’s face is not shown, and thus it cannot inspire sympathy in the viewer. His unsympathetic and undignified death, coupled with Michael’s unruffled stride away from his newly dead brother-in-law, show the coldness due a betrayer according to the Corleone family. Fredo is the subject of another Judas image in The Godfather part II. His Judas image was not in his death, but in the moment where Michael confronts Fredo with the betrayers’ kiss. The Godfather part II shows Michael’s cold rationality being solidified, and it is his brother’s betrayal that is the catalyst for his transformation. Both brothers are damned. In kissing his brother, Michael assumes the role of betrayer, Judas; and Fredo, in receiving the kiss, is acknowledged as a betrayer. Fredo dies like a common thug when a Corleone family Goomba shoots him with a single bullet. Nevertheless his death is used to demonstrate Michael’s conflict between bitterness and guilt. There is no attempt to avoid spilling Fredo’s blood, yet, his death occurs at a time when Fredo is praying. He is killed during his superstitious practice of saying a “Hail Mary” while fishing. Because he is killed during prayer, it saves him from further damnation; but because his blood is spilled, it shows that Michael disowned him from the family. His betrayal was so grave that he did not even merit as much dignity in his death as Carlo. Saint Sebastian is a martyr of Catholic iconography who appears frequently in both Renaissance paintings and in Coppola’s murder scenes. References to Saint Sebastian occur in characters who are strong and celebrated. Sebastian, the most artistically depicted of all martyrs, and the Corleone men, the most revered characters in The Godfather trilogy, are
74 riddled with holes at the hands of their enemies. Both Vito and Sonny Corleone are shot many times during their respective attacks. Interestingly, the circumstances of Don Vito’s assassination attempt follow precisely the same scenario as Saint Sebastian’s attempted martyrdom. Saint Sebastian was famously riddled with arrows and left for dead. The lesser-known part of the story is that he survived this attempt. The saint was discovered by an old widow and nursed back to health24. But the attempted murder by arrows is the image for which Saint Sebastian is famous. And in The Godfather, guns and bullets serve as contemporary arrows. The Saint Sebastian murders (and attempted murders) are intricately choreographed compositions with structured improvisations at the point of death. Vito’s attempted murder was preluded by a walk to a fruit stand to buy oranges. His realization of danger comes with a lift of his head when he surreptitiously spots his assailants, then he looks at his desired destination -- his car, where guns and escape are possible. At the moment of realization, Vito lunges toward the car and is shot five times at point blank range. He falls over the hood of the car and slumps to the ground into a lifeless heap as oranges topple and roll over the pavement. His motionless form is surrounded by a buzz of movement from Fredo and the corps of on-lookers who respond with frenetic shock at the event. Sonny (James Caan) was less fortunate in his Saint Sebastian scene. On a mission to defend his beaten sister from her abusive husband, Sonny sets off in a fiery rage to find Carlo. He jumps into his car and drives across town toward Connie. He comes to a tollbooth, and as soon as he pays, the attendant drops the change and ducks out of the way. At this point Sonny realizes his impending fate. But replicating the image of Saint Sebastian requires Sonny to step out of the car. By this point he has already been shot several times and he is left vulnerable, standing between
24 He was clubbed to death by the same persecutors later. The eventual clubbing made him a martyr rather than the famous attempt with arrows.
75 the car and four Goombas holding automatic weapons. His dance of death is a rhythmic thrashing as the bloody shots appear all over his body. The entire scenario is permeated with drama. Sonny is perhaps not a saint, but he has been shown as an admirable character who repeatedly avenged his sister. Moreover, he was the Don's heir, a protective family man to his wife, children and siblings, and an exciting lover (albeit to his mistress as well as his wife). Even his name, “Santino,” means “little saint” in Italian. Like Saint Sebastian, his death was the most notable part of his life. Murder is attempted unsuccessfully against Michael in each of the three films of the trilogy. In The Godfather part II, the second attempt on his life occurs similarly to that of Sonny’s. Assailants, unseen until the last moment, start shooting automatic weapons at Michael through his bedroom window. As the space is showered with bullets, Michael dives to the floor and hurriedly crawls on his elbows to the side of the bed to pull Kay safely out of the line of fire. In all three of the Saint Sebastian incidents with the three Corleone men, the realization of the presence of hit men begins the deathly dance. In Michael’s case, he escapes both death and injury. This serves many functions within the plot. In terms of his character, it symbolizes that he, unlike his father and brother, does not merit the saintly death of a martyr. The Godfather part II shows Michael’s transition into an icy, calculating man, capable of killing his own brother. From his persona in The Godfather part I, as a virtuous man reluctant to involve himself in crime, he has progressed to this morally bankrupt stage through a series of carefully-intentioned acts and murders. Both his father and his brother were virtuous men in a virtueless business. Michael’s tragedy in part II is his virtueless character. He is not in a position to be sainted. References to Christ are also made throughout the trilogy. There are no characters who could be considered untainted enough to fully embody the Christ image. Nevertheless, Christ references are made in asides and suggestions. These instances can imply a moment of virtue or a foreboding
76 of consequence. Stigmata are usually precursors to conflict; such was the case for the stigmata in the hand of Luca Brasi. This is also the case in The Godfather part III. Here the stigmata are given to an anonymous hit man who fails to assassinate Vincent. His death, a shot through the palm of the hand and into his chest, begins the series of violent events that occur throughout the film. In part I, when Michael saves his hospitalized father from a murderous plot, two policemen restrain him as the Chief of police punches him in the face. The image is constructed to display a Christ-like Michael with outstretched arms and hanging body.25 The most blatant of the Christ references is in the opera in part III. Cavelleria Rusticana shows the literal depiction of the crucifixion and resurrection by an operatic actor portraying Jesus Christ. Coppola’s montages at the end of the first and third films of the trilogy represent the intertwining associations of Catholic ritual and death. During the violence, characters move in and out of Catholic iconic images with ritual specificity and intensity. Whether the ritual alludes to a general sense of religiosity or is a reference to a specific saint, the movement choices and the editing rhythmically form the composition. In part I, the baptismal scene is intercut back and forth to the “whackings” that lead to the Corleone family victory in the war of the five families. The ritualized movements in the Catholic ceremony are echoed in the choreography of the murders. Michael and Kay stand godfather and godmother to Connie and Carlo’s baby at the baptism. The scene begins with a long shot of the church and then moves in to the priest standing over the infant ritualistically conducting the Latin ceremony and breathing the breath of God three times over the infant’s head. A close shot shows Kay’s hands preparing the baby for the baptism by slipping the bonnet off his head. The shot immediately shifts to the hand of the assassins preparing their guns
25 This is the stage of Michael’s character at its most virtuous. His moral decline begins after he is Don of the family.
77 and bullets for the day’s work. The priest then makes the sign of the cross horizontally over the baptismal font and in front of the baby, Michael and Kay. The next shot shows the same deliberation and contemplation in the assassins’ careful handling of their ammunition. The droning of the accompanying organ creates a sense of reverence in the baptism, but because of the assassination preparations, it is also foreboding. A correlation of water over the foreheads occurs when the priest wipes holy water over the infant’s forehead and the shot immediately shifts to an armed Clemenza climbing stairs and wiping sweat from his forehead with a matching stroke. Up to this point the suspense has been steadily building without release. The sounds of ceremony, the organ music and solemn vows, imbue the scene with deep gravity whether the visual images show the baptism or the violence. When the shooting starts the sounds harmonize with the sounds of the church. As Michael responds to the questions, “Michael do you believe in God the Father? His Son, Jesus Christ, only Son our Lord? The Holy Ghost? The Holy Catholic Church?” his utter stillness brings the tension to a near breaking point. As he says, “I do,” the sound of a shot snaps the tension and the slaughter commences. The organ begins to play escalating arpeggios in ominous minor keys heard between Michael’s questions and answers. As Michael regally stands in church, somberly renouncing Satan and all his works, an icy stillness cloaks his entire physical presence. In counterpoint, his assassins and victims are moving constantly in various stages of ascent and descent. For the assassins and the victims, the movement varies in every possible way as they shift from relaxed to tense to thrashing with gunfire. Their forms vary from high to low levels, intensified and exaggerated by the camera angles that shift without pause or repose. Michael’s calm, by contrast, is chilling. His duplicity is intensified eerily by the contrasting slaughter, his renunciation of evil -- and the knowledge that he orchestrated it all.
78 The Godfather part III contains a similarly melodramatic montage of Catholicism intercut with death, with torrents of gore and religious opulence. The scene is set in Italy in many different locales, including an Opera house in Sicily and the palaces and cathedral in the Vatican. The music of the Opera aurally sets the tone of drama. Visually, the combination of old-world grandeur and rusticity create an atmosphere of nostalgic, surreal extremes. In this scene there are many men of the cloth, both corrupt and moral; there are politicians and criminals, all shown in a similar light. Hit men and men of the cloth are equated in many ways. The assassin hired to kill Michael is dressed as a priest. A crooked archbishop in full regalia falls from an extreme height with the camera positioned below to show a heavenly fresco lit above his shadowy form. The pope is poisoned, and so is the Judas character, Don Altobello -- who is also Connie’s godfather. One character is suffocated with his pillow after his rosary is dropped on his face. All the while the performers on the operatic stage are enacting images of family and Christ. A high political official is stabbed in the side of his neck with his glasses. On stage, the character played by Tony Corleone, bites the ear of another character to incite a duel (a scene echoing Vincent and Joey Zasa’s encounter early in the film). The opera ends amidst a sea of victorious smiles, contrasting with the horror of the body count and the impending assassination attempt against Michael. The Godfather part III is essentially the story of Michael’s attempts to earn redemption from his own sins, especially his murder of Fredo. He makes very obvious moves to redeem himself with charitable activities. He raises one-hundred million dollars to feed hungry children in every country, to provide grants to artists, and to resurrect Sicily. The money is distributed through the Catholic Church. But throughout this last film in the trilogy, Michael’s attempts at a saintly life are thwarted by the unrelenting murderous shadow of his past. He is tested and tempted beyond his capacity to resist.
79 His inner conflict and tension, portrayed bodily throughout the last film, is expressed in a scene where he and some of the key players in the family are discussing the crime business in the kitchen after a helicopter attack. Meant for Michael, the assassination massacred many of the leaders of the other mafia families instead. During their discussion of the event, Michael leans against the kitchen counter, slouching, yet with direct focus of his face. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he thrusts his arms forward and pulls them back into his body with claw-like fists, exclaiming, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” This stress, combined with his diabetes, strikes him down. The seizure stiffens his spine and legs, his mouth opens, and his eyes roll upward in a noiseless and pleading scream. The image of the helpless and perpetually suffering Michael is composed to look like one of the tortured souls of in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. This tortured religious image recurs in the film’s climactic scene that resolves the question of whether his sins are too great for redemption. On the steps of the opera house, in an atmosphere of old-world grandeur, the final assassination attempt is made. But instead of hitting Michael, his daughter Mary is killed. The family is immediately caught in a frenzy of tears. Michael and Kay drop down beside Mary in hysteric fits of weeping, and the camera pulls back showing Michael on his knees, eyes rolled heavenward, his mouth open, wailing, exactly as was foreshadowed earlier. Then the atmospheric sound disappears leaving only the melancholic score to accompany Michael’s mute anguish. As the other characters look, horrified, at Michael -- the man who feels blame for Mary’s death and who is apparently unredeemable -- Michael’s screams abruptly interrupt the momentary loss of atmospheric sound. The final scene shows Michael old, blind, and alone, finally dying, falling from his chair, without ceremony. Because scenes depicting death and family have no particular designation of ethnicity in and of themselves, it becomes the responsibility
80 of the referring visual details of Italianness and religion to create a mise en scene that recalls the ethnicity. More easily read are the characters surrounding the head of the household. Like a pasta-serving corps de ballet, the actions and images of the family hierarchy contribute to the construction of Italian-American stereotypes. Always, the images of Catholicism (so prevalent in Coppola’s work) are constant contextual and visual reminders of Italian ethnicity. These images also serve to escalate the intensity of the drama because of the fervent reverence and opulent décor associated with old-world Catholicism. In the tableaux, the physicalization of ethnicity is manifested in both the ensemble movement and in the strong iconic references that function as an important foundation for all the compositional elements.
81 CHAPTER SEVEN
Conclusion
“In time you will see that this is the best thing.” “Yeah, well, in time you’ll drop dead and I’ll come to your funeral in a red dress!!” (Moonstruck)
American culture is an array of hyphenated identities. Italian- American is just one example of many ethnicities that combine two distinct cultures into one identity. Jennifer DeVere Brody assesses the unusual function of this punctuation.
Hyphens locate intermediate, often invisible and always shifting spaces between supposedly oppositional binary structures. Thus, although hyphens are central, they are not individual (indivisible or unified) entities. At the level of grammar, the hyphen marks the ever- emergent space between two distinct terms and negotiates a space of (distantly) connected difference (Brody 149).
The hyphenated-American has to maintain a balance between the inherited culture and American culture, between distinction and assimilation. In terms of cultural narratives that focus on these specific identities, filmmakers and actors speak to an audience that contains members and non-members of that group. The Godfather, for example, was seen all over the world; its impressions of Italian-American identity were viewed by Italian-Americans, non-Italian-Americans, and non-Americans, and its stereotypical representations translated effectively to audiences within and outside of the narrative focus. The storytelling traditions of Italian culture, combined with the filmmaking technologies of Hollywood’s assemblages
82 of words, images, sound and movement combined to reinterpret and create a modern mythology of Italian-Americans. Now, the mafia Don has taken his place alongside the Blonde Bombshell, the Teenage Rebel, and the Cowboy in the cast of American mythological icons. Well before academic discourse addressed the intricate variety of American ethnicities, film -- as well as other popular genres like television, radio, advertisements, and cartoons -- presented a view of the ethnic dynamics and stereotypes. If the mainstream notions of a particular ethnicity were derogatory or limited, a scan of popular representations would reveal exactly how. Whether or not accurately, or in a politically correct fashion, movies have always portrayed a variety of ethnic stereotypes within and outside American culture. Understandably, film is one of the most revealing sources of information about American ethnic dynamics and how they shape character types. Until relatively recently, however, discourses about America’s identification with race have been primarily focused on a dichotomy of white and non-white. The tapestry of American culture is filled with many varied threads and combinations of ethnicity and race. In truth, as immigrants from a wider range of home countries began to immigrate to America, diversity became the prevailing characteristic of American identity. In the United States, the dominant structuring trope of racialized difference remains white/nonwhite. Within this horizon, black/white and Latin/white dyads of difference reinforce essentialized notions of cultural production. In reality a much more complicated matrix of racial/cultural identities is played shifting in response to changing events, demographics, economics and so on. But while these dyads may be misleading and historically inaccurate, such distinctions function powerfully in popular discourse both within communities (serving as a positive marker of cultural identity) and across communities” (Desmond 37).
One could also add to Desmond’s observation that the violent split between white and non-white did not represent the less contentious and
83 frequent assimilating ethnic mixes that occurred with intra-racial marriages. Practiced since the founding of America, it became especially prevalent in urban ghettos in the 1800s (for example, the light-skinned Ukranian and the olive complexioned southern Italian). Another example in the west and southwest were/are the frequent unions between a Mexican (Mestizo) and an equally Mestizo-Caucasion American. Creating a relationship between dance scholarship and the cultural study of various American identities is essential because these inter-ethnic dynamics and the perceptions about them are first expressed through the use of body. This is not to discount the use of verbal language as another fundamental part of cultural identity. However language is far from being the primary expression of self and ethnicity. The body’s language is the first identifier.
Throughout human history verbal language has served as a marker of the boundaries of social groups and as a depository of any social group’s tradition and history. It is, however, just as foolish to presume that verbal language is the only significant socio-cultural marker and depository…What does seem appropriate is to underline and celebrate the significance of non-verbal communicative systems – especially what might be termed physical culture (Polhemus 171). In film performances the body’s cultural and ethnic “choreography” exposes intricacies of differences that scholarly analysis has overlooked. Because it is so popular and because it can be re-seen repeatedly, film provides optimal observation opportunities. Movies generate and perpetuate America’s definitive perceptions of ethnicity. Since the strongest impressions of ethnicity are non-verbal, and therefore the most concrete and unwavering, the assessment of bodily difference is central in understanding how ethnic notions get codified. And, whether positive or negative, these popularized notions become the most lasting and indelible interpretations of ethnicity for our culture.
84 And because so many of our most explosive and most tenacious categories of identity are mapped onto bodily difference, including race and gender, but expanding through a continual slippage of categories to include ethnicity and nationality and even sexuality as well, we should not ignore the ways in which dance signals and enacts social identities in all their continually changing configurations (Desmond 49).
The actors in the five films discussed have created characters that are paradigmatic representations of Italian-American types. As soon as the words “Italian-American” are uttered, conversation and pantomime refers to Don Vito Corleone gesturing and touching his swollen jaw; an impression of Luca Brasi wishing his beloved Don a masculine grandchild; the Tony Manero strut; or Loretta Castorini slapping Ronny and shouting “Snap out of it!” These were not the first, nor the last of the Italian-American images to be created. But they are some of the strongest. The analysis and descriptions done in this study, which look at ethnicity as it is represented in popular culture performances, can provide fresh insights into the accepted perspectives our larger culture has on a specific Italian-American ethnicity. Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull writes about the importance of understanding our own identities, and the identities of others, through movement. What is of interest in the study of structured movement systems is the description and interpretation of the cultures which they stimulate. By looking at different dance forms, sport, theatre, or everyday movement patterns as cultural realities whose kinesthetic and structural properties have meaning possibilities emerge for articulating and clarifying our experiences of who we, and others are (Cohen Bull 412).
The structured movement patterns of the various American communities are disseminated quickly and expansively through film. Based on popularity and longevity, the public decides what should become “the classics” in the films, music, and television of any era. These entertainments, because they are readily consumed and celebrated by
85 America, both reveal and create what is believed -- and valued -- within this culture. Films like The Godfather trilogy, Saturday Night Fever, and Moonstruck are epic events of popular culture. They are part of the cannon of Americana in the twentieth century. There have been characters and even entire movies and television shows created from the success and influence of these films.26 They form a body of common knowledge for Americans. It is my hope that this avenue of study will lead to further discourse about the bodily performance of ethnicity.
“Who’s your father?” “I’ll give you a hint. He’s Italian.” (The Godfather).
26 The films and characters of this discussion are the popular culture ancestors to television creations like Joey Tribiani from Friends, the Sopranos, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Italian-American film themes on The Simpsons, and also in films like, The Freshman (1990), My Blue Heaven (1990), Bullets over Broadway (1994), My Cousin Vinny (1992) and Married to the Mob (1988).
86 REFERENCES
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87 Clark, Jack. Movement Analysis Expert. Interview by Author. 13 and 27 February 2004. Tallahassee Florida
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90 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Daniella N. Bozzone is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee where she studied ballet, jazz, tap and modern dance, voice, acting and painting. She received her BA in English Literature with a minor in painting at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. While pursuing her undergraduate degree she was employed by the Chattanooga Ballet performing and teaching in their school. She also performed in musical theater, opera, dance concerts, and choral productions. For one year Ms. Bozzone worked and studied in Italy teaching English and studying realist drawing techniques at the Florence Academy of Art. After returning the United States and completing her undergraduate degree she taught developmental writing at the Chattanooga State Technical and Community College, jazz dance at The Baylor School, and choreographed for the musical theater department of The Girls Preparatory School in Chattanooga. During her time at Florida State University she danced in performances, worked in fundraising events while researching and completing her coursework.
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