CAHSS Faculty Books and Book Chapters
Chapter Title
Leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli: Food and Family in the Modern American Mafia Film
Book Title
Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film
Department
Department of Literature and Modern Languages
Files
Download Full Text
Document Type
Book Chapter
Editors
Anne L. Bower
Description
When the Little Caesars of the 1920s and 1930s in American film became transformed into the Michael Corleones of the 1970s, the filmic treatment of the Mafia began to involve home and family as much as guns and gambling. This shift signified a more complete treatment of the Mafia and its role in Italian American immigrant culture, including depiction of a wider range of forces that informed the world of Italian-American organized crime. It is perhaps these details of home and family that make the Godfather movies and other Mafia films that came later so fascinating to the American movie world; these films began to reveal subtexts about immigration and assimilation issues that transcend the organized crime underworld.
ISBN
9780415971102
Publication Date
2004
Publisher
Routledge
City
New York, NY
Keywords
American mafia, family, food, film
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | Film and Media Studies
First Page
209
Last Page
218
NSUWorks Citation
Santos, M. (2004). Leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli: Food and Family in the Modern American Mafia Film. Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film, 209-218. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203337233
DOI
10.4324/9780203337233