3 Gangster Films That Explore The American Immigrant Experience

2. Once Upon A Time In America

Once Upon a Time in America

Jewish American immigrants started €œarriving in New Amsterdam as early as 1654, but the crew of Christopher Columbus [€] included €˜marranos€™ (Jews who hid their religion to escape the Spanish Inquisition) and €˜conversos€™ (Jews who converted during the Inquisition)€ (Rollins, 2003, p. 263). However, the highest levels of Jewish immigration occurred from 1880 to 1920, where €œnearly 2.5 million Jews left Eastern Europe (and) nine out of ten chose the United States as their destination€ (Gay, 1996, p. 3). Reasons for their interest in America differed from country to country, but these generally involved poverty, war, and social seclusion at home. For instance, the Romanian regime €œrefused to grant its Jewish inhabitants the right of citizenship€ (Gay, 1996, p. 19) after the Russo-Turkish War, which established Romania as an independent kingdom in 1878. As a result, the Jewish American gangster rose after this period of immigration; the €œJewish success in organized crime in the 1920s and 1930s [€] transformed crime from a haphazard, small-scale activity into a [€] well-financed business operation€ (Brodkin, 1998, p. 33). It all started with the talents of Arnold Rothstein and Big Jack Zelig, but these two €œcame out of good solid middle class homes; others completely circumvented youth gangs in arriving at their criminal vocations€ (Fried, 1980, p. 40). The gangster genre portrayed Jewish gangsters like in Fried€™s description as early as 1928 with William Nigh€™s Four Walls. Sergio Leone€™s Once Upon a Time in America, though, would staple the rise of the Jewish American through €œan epic tale of how a group of people went after their share of the American dream, in the only way that bright but uneducated, streetwise males knew how to proceed€ (Brode, 1995, p. 101). Shadoian describes Leone€™s characters as €œa group of thugs who take their ghetto life of hard survival as a springboard of how to get ahead: exercising power, racking up profits, [€] (and) never thinking twice of the justifiability of violence€ (2003, p. 285). The film starts chronologically-wise €œby portraying the origins of the youth gang they form in order to protect themselves from the brutality of their environment€ (Mason, 2002, p. 143), and these ghettos deliver the immigrant experience as soon as they appear on screen, since the €œLower East Side (as the neighborhood is called) underworld was a culture of young people€ (Fried, 1980, p. 36). Noodles€™ (Robert DeNiro) and Max€™s (James Woods) youth gang and lifestyle are exhibited through the former€™s flashbacks. A similar environment to the one in Gangs, Leone€™s Lower East Side is firstly seen when a young Noodles chases after a young Deborah. However, the labor in America is dissimilar to Gangs in various levels. Jewish workforce is immediately identifiable between the crowds, and it correlates with Gay€™s description: €œmany Jewish couples opened little stores in the neighborhoods where they lived €“ groceries, dry goods, butchers, fish stores€ (1996, p. 159). In other words, immigrant jobs appeared to improve in the social scale since the mid-19th century, but they were not any easier. It must be noted that this was during the American industrial revolution and immigrants €œbecame its factory workers [€] (and) the majority of mining [€] workers€ (Brodkin, 1998, p. 55). These jobs were the main reason why immigration to America in the early 20th century sounded promising, but the dissatisfaction of €œsix or seven dollars a week€ (Fried, 1980, p. 7) founded the ascension of organized crime. Prohibition is the film€™s epicenter, and this was an era of the illegalization of manufacturing and selling alcohol, which €œfostered the growth of large-scale enterprises that could monopolize production and distribution, just as a few [€] corporations dominated the steel, oil, and automobile industries€ (Newburn, 2007, p. 409). Prohibition is referenced a few of scenes later, where Noodles, Max, and the rest of the gang develop a floating device that would guarantee their success in the art of bootlegging. After witnessing that their device works, a scene follows in which their clothing switches from old rags to distinguished suits. Their rise €“ and their background €“ is comparable to Waxey Gordon€™s, a Jewish gangster who €œworked for one or another of the gangs that still roamed the neighborhood streets, variously as a labor goon, strikebreaker, dope peddler, burglar, extortionist, etc; prohibition allowed him to add booze to his repertoire€ (Fried, 1980, pp. 94-95). In fact, Fried uncovers the irony behind the Prohibition, since banning the €˜devil€™s drink€™ served as the catalyst for the rise of Jewish American gangsters as shown in America. He writes: €œprohibition had come along [€] (and) we observed the effects of change: how the Waxey Gordons of America had been raised from obscurity to wealth and power, how [€] Jewish gangsters had been granted a [€] new lease on life€ (1980, p. 132). Without the Prohibition, gangster criminality may have been contained to €˜only€™ gambling and prostitution, with the latter taking place in America €œafter a beat cop steals (the gang€™s) booty, (and) they catch him having sex with the underage prostitute Peggy (Julie Cohen) and blackmail him into cooperation€ (Yaquinto, 1998, p. 145).
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I'm currently enrolled in the Film Studies program at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. If you haven't guessed by now, movies and media are as a big of a passion for me as they are for you and would love to hear what you've gotta say as well!