“Spaghe( with marinara sauce or egg noodles and ketchup?”
Food and guns in Hollywood mafia movies
Ilaria Parini University of Milan
Food
• “Food is one of the hubs around which all cultures, and all social life in general, revolve” (Torresi 2004: 229)
• importance of food for Italians parGcularly evident food is and has always been an emblem of Italian culture.
Italian Americans and Food • For Italian immigrants in the United States food conGnued to be an essenGal factor of idenGty (Barolini 1985; Branciforte 1998; Casillo 2006; CauG1998; CinoRo 2013; Giuntaand PaU 1998; Schiavelli 1998; Tamburri 2003; Torresi 2004)
• one of the elements that have been selected in order to convey the origins of Italian American characters in Hollywood cinema
Italian Americans and Food (2)
• “food and foodways are one of the most powerful means of ethnic characterizaGon”
(BolleUeri Bosinelli et al. 2005: 419)
• ‘[it] remains arguably the most powerful metonymy for encoding Italian American idenGty’
(ibid. 420, emphasis added).
Food in Mafia movies
• Most Italian American mobsters are usually presented as competent cooks
• in contrast with the image of the mafia man, and with the image of the Italian man in general, usually portrayed as a strong and bold man that tradiGonally delegates all family chores (including cooking) to his wife
• food and cooking definitely represent a constant element in mafia movies
• “Every mafia movie fan knows that food, its preparaGon and consumpGon in massive quanGGes, is a convenGon of the genre”
(De Stefano 2006: 218)
DATA
The Godfather Part III (1990), by Francis Ford Coppola;
Goodfellas (1990), by MarGn Scorsese
A Bronx Tale (1993), by Robert De Niro
Casino (1995), by MarGn Scorsese
Donnie Brasco (1997), by Mike Newell
In A Bronx Tale, aeer kissing Jane for the first Gme, Calogero asks her if she can cook:
“Do you know how to make sauce? You know, sauce for
macaroni?”
In Donnie Brasco, Leey discusses about food and cooking with Donnie while preparing Christmas dinner
LEFTY: “All around the world, best cooks are men. […] You think I cook like them goombahs in Brooklyn? All they know is manicoU. A hundred years, they’ll be eaGn’ manicoU. You never ate coq au vin?” DONNIE: “No.” LEFTY: “There we are. Can of collagen, can of tomatoes. Punch of salt. […] Wherever you go, the best cooks are men. That’s a fact. Wait Gll you taste this coq au vin. It’s gonna melt in your mouth, like Holy Communion.”
In Goodfellas Scorsese describes in detail the preparaGon of elaborate meals by Henry Hill and his friends in jail
“In prison, dinner was always a big thing. We had a pasta course and then meat or fish. Paulie did the prep work. He was doing a year for contempt and he had this wonderful system for doing the garlic. He used a razor and he sliced it so thin it used to liquefy in the pan with a liRle oil. It’s a very good system. Vinnie was in charge of the tomato sauce. I thought he used too many onions, but it was sGll a very good sauce. Johnny Dio did the meat. We didn't have a broiler, so Johnny did everything in pans. He smelled up the joint something awful and the hacks used to die, but he sGll cooked a great steak.” hRp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQhBfRDd6GM
“He had this wonderful system for doing the garlic. He used a razor and he sliced it so thin it used to liquefy in the pan with a liRle oil”
“Vinniewas in charge of the tomato sauce. I thought he used too many onions, but it was sGll a very good sauce. Johnny Dio did the meat”
"Last Day as a WiseGuy”
• 10-‐minute sequence ending with Henry's capture by suspecGng narcs which leads to his incarceraGon
• The Gtle on a black screen opens the sequence: Sunday, May 11th, 1980, 6:55 a.m.
• a close-‐up of Henry snorGng cocaine on a table, a gun slightly out of focus in the foreground
• Henry goes out and noGces a helicopter • He drives as he narrates in voice-‐over his plans for the day: drop off guns at Jimmy's, pick up his disabled brother, pick up his drug-‐runner, pick up his drugs, and prepare dinner.
• The camera follows him during the day and the Gme is wriRen in white on the screen from Gme to Gme.
• A hecGc day, during which Henry keeps worrying about the helicopter that seems to be following him, but thinks about his plans for dinner anyway
• “I was cooking dinner that night. I had to start braising the beef, pork buR and veal shanks for the tomato sauce. It's Michael's favorite. I was making ziG with the meat gravy, and I'm planning to roast some peppers over the flames, and I was puUng on some string beans with the olive oil and garlic, and I had some beauGful cutlets, cut just right, that I was going to fry up before dinner just as an appeGzer”.
• hRp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGFLLEudiRQ
• Henry and his wife Karen head outside to pick up the drugs
• Henry calls home and to give instrucGons to Lois, his drug runner, about her delivery and in the meanGme he gives her instrucGons about the sauce for dinner:
• HENRY: Tell Michael not to let the sauce sGck. LOIS: Henry says don't let the sauce sGck MICHAEL: I'm sGrring it.
• When he gets home, he starts cooking
• hRp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8twMPk3Ps
Sicilian Mafiosi and Food
• It is not a case that food is extremely important also for Sicilian Mafiosi
• this element of ficGonal characterizaGon derives from its context of origin.
• Bolzoni’s book Parole d'onore (2008) is a collecGon of transcripGons of interviews to and tesGmonies given by Sicilian Mafiosi
• Food is a recurrent element
• Several of these interviews refer to their banche?
“Quando bisogna 'ragionare' su qualcosa o qualcuno, i mafiosi organizzano sempre quell'avvenimento – il bancheRo – che in siciliano è lo schi@cchio o la schi@cchiata. La tavola è un luogo sacro per gli uomini d'onore. Il mangiare un rito”
“When they need to ‘reason’ about something, Mafiosi always organize that event– the banquet–which in Sicilian is called schi@cchio or schi@cchiata. The table is a holy place for men of honour. EaIng is a rite”
(2008: 63)
• Such banquets oeen represent an opportunity to kill somebody they need to get rid of, for whatever reason.
• In parGcular, talking about the crew of the Corleonesi, Bolzoni states that being invited for lunch by the Brusca family in their manor farm was every man of honour’s “nightmare”
“The man who receives the message that Totò Riina wants to eat with him because he needs to talk to him shudders in fear. He is in trap. If he doesn’t go, his fate is sealed. It would mean that he is unreliable, or, even worse, he has something to hide. If he goes, he knows that he can end up like many others before him, and never go back home. Totò Riina always sits at the head of the table. At his right there’s Bernardo Brusca, at his leeNenéGeraci. They eat, and laugh and then somebody silently sneaks behind the back of the host and strangles him with a cord.”
(2008: 63-‐64)
Food acquires a meaning that goes beyond the mere need of feeding"
“… murders, food binges, food as a sign of power and maybe also as a sort of compensaGon for an ancient hunger, schi@cchiate that start at midday and finish at dusk”
(2008: 64)
• Bolzoni tells about food binges in prison similar to the one described by Scorsese in GoodFellas(2008: 89-‐90)
• transcripGon of a wiretapped conversaGon between Mafioso Giuseppe GuRadauro and his friends about the Gme when he was imprisoned in the Ucciardone jail:
• “It was Easter day in 1984, we had an unforgeRable lunch […]. A van came from the restaurant La Cuccagna and the guards were speechless: there were cases of DomPerignon and we ere throwing lobsters at each other”
Hollywood Italian American mobsters
• Hollywood cinema has selected the food element, which has always been extremely important for Italian immigrants and is an emblem of Italian culture, in order to convey the ethnicity of the characters in an immediate and easily recognizable way.
• The recurrence of this element in films throughout the years has contributed to reinforcing this sign and to making it more and more powerful, so that now food has become an ever present and inevitable feature in this genre.
• At the end of GoodFellas, Henry tells the audience how miserable his life is aeer entering the FBI protecGon programme:
“The hardest thing was to leave the life. I loved the life. We were treated like movie stars with muscle. We had it all. […] And now, it’s all over. That’s the hardest part. There’s no acGon. I have to wait around like everybody else. Can’t even get decent food. Right aKer I got here I ordered some spaghe( with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody. Get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”
hRp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ0j5yGz7Bs
• The real Henry Hill, the mobster connected to the Lucchese crew to whom the film GoodFellas is inspired, even wrote a cookbook in 2002 and opened a restaurant in ConnecGcut in 2007 called Wiseguys
TranslaGon in Italian dubbing
• In Donnie Brasco: manicoU become maccheroni "
“You think I cook like them goombahs in Brooklyn? All they know is manicoU. A hundred years, they’ll be eaGn’ manicoU.”
“Credi che io cucini come quei compari di Brooklyn? Conoscono solo maccheroni. Tra cento anni mangeranno ancora maccheroni”
ManicoU are very large pasta tubes intended to be stuffed (filled) then baked topped with a tradiGonal Italian white besciamella made with Romano or Parmesan cheese or red sauce or both. TradiGonally, the filling is ricoRa cheese mixed with cooked chopped spinach which may or may not include ground meat such as veal.
hRp://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/manicoRo/