Mafia Movies: A Reader

Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part One. Setting the Scene
1 The Corleones at Home and Abroad
2 Gender and Violence: Four Themes in the Everyday World of Mafia Wives
Part Two. American Mafia Movies and Television: The Corleones at Home and Abroad
3 Wallace McCutcheon’s The Black Hand: A Different Version of a Biograph Kidnapping
4 ‘Most Thrilling Subjects’: D.W. Griffith and the Biograph Revenge Films
5 Ethnicity and the Classical Gangster Film: Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar and Howard Hawks’s Scarface
6 Playing Good Italian/Bad Italian on ABC’s The Untouchables
7 Prelude to The Godfather: Martin Ritt’s The Brotherhood
8 Michael Corleone’s Tie: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather
9 Nihilism and Mafiositá in Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets
10 Thematic Patterns in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II
11 The Sexual Politics of Loyalty in John Huston’s Prizzi’s Honor
12 Between Postmodern Parody and Generic Hybridization: The Gangsters of Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables
13 The Bandit, the Gangster, and the American Army Shorts: Michael Cimino’s The Sicilian
14 Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas: Hybrid Storytelling between Realism and Formalism
15 Redemption in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part III
16 Narrating the Mafia, Las Vegas, and Ethnicity in Martin Scorsese’s Casino
17 ‘Nothing Romantic about It’: Gender and the Legacy of Crime in Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral
18 Inside the Mafia: Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco
19 Family Therapy: Harold Ramis’s Analyze This and the Evolution of the Gangster Genre
20 Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, or the Quest for a Departed (Ethnic) Identity
Photos follow pages 144 and 368
21 When Words Can Kill: David Chase’s The Sopranos
22 ‘Don’t Stop Believin’, Don’t Stop …’: (De)Structuring Expectations in the Final Season of The Sopranos
23 ‘History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Does Rhyme’: Fictionalizing History in Boardwalk Empire
24 Mob Wives: Exploitation or Empowerment?
Part Three. Italian Mafia Movies and Television: Resistance and Myth
25 Which Law Is the Father’s? Gender and Generic Oscillation in Pietro Germi’s In the Name of the Law
26 The Visible, Unexposed: Francesco Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano
27 Modernity, Mafia Style: Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso
28 Francesco Rosi’s Hands over the City: A Contemporary Perspective on the Camorra
29 Prototypes of the Mafia: Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard
30 The Failure of the Intellectual: Elio Petri’s Filming of Leonardo Sciascia’s To Each His Own
31 Damiano Damiani’s The Day of the Owl: A Western Flirtation
32 Smaller and Larger Families: Lina Wertmüller’s The Seduction of Mimi
33 Deconstructing the Enigma: Logical Investigations in Francesco Rosi’s Lucky Luciano
34 Power as Such: The Idea of the Mafia in Francesco Rosi’s Illustrious Corpses
35 Marco Risi’s Forever Mary: Desperate Lives Converge in Sicilia ‘Non Bedda’
36 Threads of Political Violence in Italy’s Spiderweb: Giorgio Ambrosoli’s Murder in Michele Placido’s A Bourgeois Hero
37 Sacrifice, Sacrament, and the Body in Ricky Tognazzi’s La scorta
38 Pasquale Scimeca’s Placido Rizzotto: A Different View of Corleone
39 Marco Tullio Giordana’s The Hundred Steps: The Biopic as Political Cinema
40 Roberta Torre’s Angela: The Mafia and the ‘Woman’s Film’
41 Organized Crime and Unfulfilled Promises in Gabriele Salvatores’ I’m Not Scared
42 Growing Up Camorrista: Antonio and Andrea Frazzi’s Certi bambini
43 Lipstick and Chocolate: Paolo Sorrentino’s The Consequences of Love
44 The In(di)visibility of the Mafia, Politics, and Ethics in Bianchi and Nerazzini’s The Mafia Is White
45 Marco Turco’s Excellent Cadavers: An Italian Tragedy
46 Dispatches from Hell: Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah
47 From Comedy to Commemoration: Pierfrancesco Diliberto’s La mafia uccide solo d’estate
48 Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s Salvo: The Sound of Redemption in an Infernal Landscape
49 Of Renegades and Game Players: Shifting Sympathies in Gomorra: la serie
Part Four. Italy’s Other Mafias in Film and on Television: A Roundtable
50 Introduction – The Banda della Magliana, the Camorra, the ’Ndrangheta, and the Sacra Corona Unita: The Mafia On Screen beyond the Cosa Nostra
51 Historicizing Italy’s Other Mafias: Some Considerations
52 Romanzo criminale: Roma Caput Violandi
53 Romanzo criminale: la serie
54 Toxic Tables: The Representation of Food in Camorra Films
55 The New Mafia in Una vita tranquilla
56 Soap Operas
57 Response #1
58 Response #2
59 Response #3
60 Conclusion
Part Five. Double Takes
The Godfather
61 The Godfather: Performance and Stardom
62 The Godfather: Adaptation
63 The Godfather: Gender
64 The Godfather: Scene Analysis – Don Vito’s Office
65 The Godfather: Scene Analysis – The Baptism/Murder
66 The Godfather: Scene Analysis – The Finale
The Sopranos
67 The Sopranos: Antiheroic Masculinity
68 The Sopranos: Gender
69 The Sopranos: (Sub)Urban Space
70 The Sopranos: Episode 1.01, ‘The Sopranos’
71 The Sopranos: Episode 1.05, ‘College’
72 The Sopranos: Episode 2.04, ‘Commendatori’
Romanzo criminale
73 Romanzo criminale: Performance and Stardom
74 Romanzo criminale: Adaptation/Transmedia
75 Romanzo criminale: Gender
76 Romanzo criminale: Politics and Terrorism
77 Romanzo criminale: Scene Analysis – The Aldo Moro Kidnapping
78 Romanzo criminale: Scene Analysis – The Bologna Bombing
Gomorrah
79 Gomorrah: Gender
80 Gomorrah: Metacinematic References
81 Gomorrah: Urban Space
82 Gomorrah: Scene Analysis – Opening Sequence
83 Gomorrah: Scene Analysis – The Initiation of Totò
84 Gomorrah: Scene Analysis – The Finale
Filmography
Selected Bibliography
Contributors