3 Gangster Films That Explore The American Immigrant Experience

By Alex Aagaard / April 6, 2013

As beautifully printed by Clarens, when pictures started to talk and sing and make noises, they altered forever the way we perceive reality (1997, p. 40). The immigrant experience in the gangster films above offer a dimension unfound in ones prior to New Hollywood. With the influences of Italian Neo-Realism, these films can also be considered as documentaries due to their truthful environments and societies. Films like The Public Enemy, Four Walls, and Little Caesar (1931) may be classics in the gangster genre because of the heritage that they initiated through the talkies; Scorsese, Leone, and Coppola only perfected it. Scorsese focuses on the tensions between the natives and the Irish Catholics; Leone focuses on the astonishing age in which crime swayed the Jewish underworld during the Prohibition; Coppola focuses on Vitos arrival to America as a child, and the care for his fellow immigrants as an adult. As printed in Newburns book, the Irish came first, [] (then) were succeeded by Jews, and the Italians came last [] on the rungs of time (2007, p. 413). No other quote could be more appropriate.

Bibliography

Brode, D., 1995. Money, Women, and Guns: Crime Movies from Bonnie and Clyde to Present. New York: Carol Publishing Group. Browne, N. ed., 2000. Francis Ford Coppolas The Godfather Trilogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brodkin, K., 1998. How Jews Became White Folks & What That Says About Race in America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Clarens, C., 1997. Crime Movies: An Illustrated History of the Gangster Genre from D.W. Griffith to Pulp Fiction. New York: Da Capo Press. Choate, M. I., 2008. Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ferraro, T. J., 2005. Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America. New York: New York University Press. Fried, A., 1980. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Gardaphé, F. L., 2006. From Wiseguys to Wise Men. New York: Routledge. Gay, R., 1996. Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Kenny, K., 2000. The American Irish: A History. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd. Lupo, S., 2009. History of the Mafia. Translated from Italian to English by Antony Shuggar. New York: Columbia University Press. Mason, F., 2002. American Gangster Cinema: From Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mauk, D. and Oakland, J., 1995. American Civilization. New York: Routledge. McCaffrey, L. J., 1976. The Irish Diaspora in America. London: Indiana University Press. McCarty, J., 2004. Bullets Over Hollywood: The American Gangster Picture from the Silents to The Sopranos. Cambridge: Da Capo Press. Newburn, T., 2007. Criminology. Portland: Willan Publishing. Nochimson, M. P., 2007. Dying to Belong: Gangster Movies in Hollywood and Hong Kong. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Rollins, P. C. ed., 2003. The Columbia Companion to American History on Film. New York: Columbia University Press. Shadoian, J., 2003. Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Silver, A. and Ursini, J. eds., 2007. Gangster Film Reader. Pompton Plains: Limelight Editions. Yaquinto, M., 1998. Pump Em Full of Lead: A Look at Gangsters on Film. New York: Twayne Publishers.