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Italian Americans in FilmSetting the Italian American Gangster in Stone: Little Caesar and Scarface

Italian Americans in Film: Setting the Italian American Gangster in Stone: Little Caesar and... [When did cinema and popular culture start identifying Italian Americans as gangsters? The chapter takes into consideration the movies that started this trend, Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar (1931) and Howard Hawk’s Scarface (1932). The article claims that part of the success of the movies can be explained by the ample freedom of pre-code Hollywood in representing and—up to a certain extent—glorifying crime and violence. Sound cinema was also relatively new at that time and therefore gunshots, car chases and police sirens had a bigger impact on audiences still used to silent movies. The protagonists of both these films were inspired by the figure of Al Capone; the chapter analyzes the difference between the two, underlining how Rico Bandello in Little Caesar is a rather flat character, while Tony Camonte in Scaraface represents a much more complex and nuanced gangster. However, both helped establishing the image of the Italian American gangster as a tragic hero, paving the way to movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Italian Americans in FilmSetting the Italian American Gangster in Stone: Little Caesar and Scarface

Part of the Italian and Italian American Studies Book Series
Editors: Fioretti, Daniele; Orsitto, Fulvio
Balma, Philip
Italian Americans in Film — Dec 1, 2022
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14 pages

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
ISBN
978-3-031-06464-7
Pages
65 –79
DOI
10.1007/978-3-031-06465-4_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[When did cinema and popular culture start identifying Italian Americans as gangsters? The chapter takes into consideration the movies that started this trend, Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar (1931) and Howard Hawk’s Scarface (1932). The article claims that part of the success of the movies can be explained by the ample freedom of pre-code Hollywood in representing and—up to a certain extent—glorifying crime and violence. Sound cinema was also relatively new at that time and therefore gunshots, car chases and police sirens had a bigger impact on audiences still used to silent movies. The protagonists of both these films were inspired by the figure of Al Capone; the chapter analyzes the difference between the two, underlining how Rico Bandello in Little Caesar is a rather flat character, while Tony Camonte in Scaraface represents a much more complex and nuanced gangster. However, both helped establishing the image of the Italian American gangster as a tragic hero, paving the way to movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas.]

Published: Dec 1, 2022

Keywords: Italian American Cinema; Gangster Genre; Prohibition; Production Code; Sound era; Ethnic stereotypes

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