COMMENT
Is this film about Italian American men? If so, how well do they fare, according to these interpretations?
Express a general assessment of the representation then choose in particular ONE character and discuss how he is handled in the film.
REPLY to the most or least convincing argument. Wait until at least 10 comments have been posted.
This film does depict Italian men in sort of a careless way. With Cosmo cheating on his wife in public and buying his mistress gift, to Ronnie falling in love with his brother's fiancé. It show them in a light of them not thinking before they act.
ReplyDeleteJohnny, for instance, was dating Loretta and proposed to her. He proposed to her without even really loving her. He was just doing it since his mother was dying. Even when he proposes to Loretta, he doesn't get down on one knee, traditionally, and he doesn't even have a ring. She has to force him to give her his pinky ring, which he hesitates. She also makes him get down on his knees to propose, which he also hesitates, since he didn't want to mess up his suit. All to cancel the engagement since his mother wasn't going to die after all. Without his mother, he needed to fill that female void, even with a women he didn't really love. He was self-centered and careless (for not taking into account Loretta's feelings nor his mother recovering) and only did things that benefitted him in the long run.
I wouldn't say this film's entirely about Italian American men because woman play a very significant role too, one of the main characters is Loretta. It definitely shows different men and their behavior living as an Italian American. I would say a general representation of Italian American would be being romantic and emotional. I can choose many characters that goes under this description but one character that I think would be the best fit is Ronnie. At first he is a very angry man with a broken heart and no arm that is mad at his brother for ruining his life but then he meets Loretta and he spend the night with her he changes completely into this romantic and sweet guy. He asks her on a date to see opera, again a very romantic date, and when he sees her with new hair and all dresses he was mesmerized by her and you can see that it was love at first sight. Again a very stereotypical of Italian Americans to be very romantic. Ronnie was a perfect way to represent an Italian American.
ReplyDeleteIn general would say this film is about Italian American men, according to the movie not all Italian men are the same for instance how Cosmo cheated on his wife this shows how he doesn't care if cheating is wrong but then there is is Ronnie this character shows a deeper meaning for love with Loretta. There is also the character Johnny who wanted to marry Loretta not for the sake of love but for the sake that his mother was dying. The character I would choose is Johnny because I think it was very inconsiderate of him to cancel his engagement with Loretta since his mother was getting marry. I think he was very egocentric since Loretta had agreed to marry him because of this mother and then him turning her down because she got better.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to determine what this film is trying to say about Italian American men. It paints all of them with a big stereotypical brush but it also treats their cultural rituals with sympathy (Johnny with his mom, even though he's a "momma's boy", The Grandfather with marriage rituals and his decision with how Cosmo should pay for the wedding). The problems that arise from the film is that it plays the stereotypes too hard. Most of the men seem impulsive and have no real thought as to how their actions affect their relationships. If you look too close, even Ronny who we're supposed to empathize with, seems to only want to make love to Loretta out some type of vendetta against his brother for distracting him long enough so that he could mangle his hand in a bread slicer.
ReplyDeleteThen there's Perry. One of the only non-Italian Americans in the film, I found his character to be problematic. Are we supposed to side with him? He offers the "sage advice" to Rose but what is the film trying to say with this character? The film treats him as a "practical alternative" for Rose even though he's a scumbag who dates his students. This wouldn't be so troubling if his appearance didn't change the second half of the movie. Because of him, Rose confronts Cosmo and certifies that Ronny is better than Johnny because she remembers that men only cheat because they're scared of death. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. I think its because after seeing this film so many times (too many to count) I'm finally seeing the cracks in its storytelling.
This film makes Italian American men seem like overdramatic idiots who can't control themselves. Johnny sobs uncontrollably while his mother, dying, waves him off. Ronny threatens to kill himself and basically locks himself in the basement of the bakery because he lost a hand, and is in "love" with Loretta after about 12 hours of being together, and Cosmo just can't keep it in his pants and when his wife calls him out on it, he gets up and hits the table before agreeing. And those are just the main 3 men. I feel like the movie was suppose to be about Loretta and her decisions but whatever role she played was overshadowed by the amount of stupidity of the men in her life and their over emotional reactions to everything. I also thought it was incredibly unfair that the mother, Rose, had one good night with a man (who was also a pig who only dated young girls) but didn't cheat. So it leaves me to believe that the movie is saying women only cheat when they're not in love (like Loretta who doesn't love Johnny) but men cheat because they can and they're afraid of death so they're excused.
ReplyDeleteCosmo, the entire film, acts like his wife is an idiot. He doesn't sleep upstairs, he comes home late and then doesn't tell her where he's been, and pretends she doesn't know he's cheating. The mom tells Loretta her suspicions, but OBVIOUSLY she thinks her mother is crazy until she finally catches the father with the other woman. Then her and Ronny pretend it didn't happen, the mother tells the father to stop seeing the woman and everyone says they love each other. Why did she forgive him so easily? They just pretend everything is alright even though he betrayed his wife. I think it's unfair and ridiculous that they just let the entire thing go.
I think the overall film was not all about italian American men, but apart of it shows that some of the men are cheaters, romantic, and also kindhearted and take care of their family members. For example Johnny who went back to Sicily to look for his dieing mother, it shows that inspite he just got engaged he had to take care of his motherfirst.Therefore, in the movie we see that all the men had some sort of romantic feeling going on, and some of them were cheating on their partners including Cosmo and Loretta.Within an hour after meeting, following a steak dinner Loretta prepares for him, she and Ronny make love in a room over the bakery. “Hollow me out,” she cries, “so there’s nothing left but the skin over my bones. Suck me dry!” He concurs: “All right. All right.The character I would choose is Ronnie because at the beginning when Loretta came to tell him she was engaged to his brother, he got really upset and wanted to kill himself. But as time goes by him and Loretta started to have feelings for each other and before you know it they were making out. During this time Ronny started to show his romantic side more with Loretta and even ask her to marry him.This shows that Ronny was serious about having a relationship with Loretta, and not like Johnny who propose to her and after he got back from Scily and his mother got better he call off the wedding.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion I could not tell what this movie was trying to influence me about Italians American. In the movie, I felt that not all Italians American man are the same. Each man in the movie represents how Italians American can be. It shows how some men can be cheaters, romantic, and kindhearted. Other Italians American man take care of their family members.
ReplyDeleteWhen Loretta dad cheated on Loretta mom, that prove to me that he doesn’t care or love her. To me Ronnie shows a deeper meaning of love with Loretta beside his brother Johnny who doesn’t know or ready for love yet. Ronnie wants to marry Loretta because he really love her and care for her. His brother Johnny who just wanted to married Loretta because of his mother wishes before getting sick and dying. As I watch the movie it shows at the end Johnny call the wedding off right after his mother died.
The character I decide to choose is “Johnny” because he shows me what it means to care and love someone like he loves Loretta. Johnny teach me that marriage is a powerful step to take. If you want to take that step make sure you are holding your soulmate hand and your heart is content that you are home and that’s where you want to be.
I don't think that this film is about Italian American men, it just so happens to have characters in it that are. The audience is made to understand that Loretta's family is Italian, from the family structure, to the names, to the Italian spoken by the family members throughout the movie. And yes, Ronnie and Johnny are also both Italian American men, but they just happen to be men who's roots go back to Italy. Names aside, there is nothing that speaks to the audience which says Ronnie and Johnny are Italian. Case in point is the character Perry, who is not of Italian descent, and yet is as integral and philandering of a character as Ronnie or Cosmo.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, Perry is perhaps the most interesting character in the movie, even though he hold such a small role within it. Perry, first introduced at the restaurant in which Johnny proposes, is a man romantically linked to a woman much younger than he. The young woman ends up throwing water on Perry, storming out after [Perry] has a few disparaging words for her. Again later in the movie, Perry is seen with another young woman, with the interaction ending in a similar manner as the first. When Perry begins to interact with Rose, it is clear that though his usual "love" interests are nothing more than arm candy, Rose pushes and challengers Perry. By the time that Perry drops Rose off at home, he has undergone a sort of transformation. In the brief time that Perry is in the film, he changes as much as anyone else in it, inspired by a classy and elegant woman.
I would not say that the movie is about Italian men, it just happens to be that the family of focus is Italian. The movie to me is about relationships, and this has nothing specifically to do with Italian Americans. To me the portrayal of this family and all of their problems, could be substituted with any culture or "tribe" that you subscribe to. Some of the features in the movie, the workers being blue-collar, the opera and living in Brooklyn, just to name a few are indeed stereotypes, but to me this doesn't define the whole movie it is only one aspect.
ReplyDeleteTo me the most interesting character in the movie was Perry the University Professor who in the beginning of the movie we see in the Italian Restaurant, while Loretta and Johnny were there, he was getting a drink thrown on him by an obviously younger woman. We see him again later in the movie in the same restaurant, when the same thing happens to him once again. An obviously younger girl (turns out to be one of his students) throws her drink on him and storms out, Rose then invites the man to eat with her. When he begins to talk with Rose it is clear that his usual game wont work on her, she calls him out. She is older then his usual "dates" and isn't afraid to challenge him. Perry walks Rose home and as they are saying their goodbyes it seems that he now has a greater understanding of who he is as a person and why his relationships are so misguided. To me he is the outsider in this movie to a certain extent, but the interesting part was that he shared the same problems as everyone else in the film, RELATIONSHIPS.
You are right. Perry, indeed was a very interesting character. He did not get that much emphasis in the film as the others did but I thought there was a bit of complexity in him. He likes to date younger women but after his conversation with Rose, he was somewhat allured to her. In the end, Rose dismissed his advances.
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ReplyDeleteTo me, the film did not entirely placed its focus on Italian men. Women were given a spotlight in the film as well, whether it is negative or positive. Even though I saw the film as depictions of an Italian household/society in general, there were definitely a lot of prejudices about Italian men that can be noted in the movie.
ReplyDeleteItalian men in the film were portrayed either as mama's boy, a cheater, slick in their jobs, hot-headed, loves the opera, and passionate. Ronnie was one of the biggest stereotype of Italian men in the film. He was portrayed as a hairy and hot-headed guy who gives into his passion instead of discerning what's right or wrong.
I personally do not reckon that the movie is not focused on Italian men. It is more related to the relationship between women and men. I realized that the Johnny is an Italian man when he had to go back to the Italy for his mother. Other than that, there is no single point that shows about the Italian man so far. To me, Italian men are passionate and energetic, but in this movie, two men were not portrayed like that. So I really don't think that it is not about the Italian men.
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