Saturday, June 16, 2007

Movie " Golden Door": Sicilian Farmer/Widower and Family Leave Hardscrabble Life for America's Milk and Honey

The ANNOTICO  Report

 

."Golden Door." An Italian widower named  Salvatore Mancuso (Vincenzo Amato) is a poor farmer. His land is rough and rocky and his livestock consists of a donkey, a goat and a couple of chickens. He is raising two teenage boys, one of whom is mute, and has his elderly mother also under his roof.   

 

Salvatore decides to leave the hard scrabble life behind and head to the new world,  thinking he is leaving his poor farmer's life for a land where garden vegetables are as big as people, and currency grows in the shrubbery, after seeing some doctored-up postcards

 

 

Thanks to Water Santi

 

Immigrants' Tale Takes Hard Road to 'Golden Door'

Chicago Sun Times

By Teresa Budasi ,Staff Reporter

June 15, 2007

In America, garden vegetables are as big as people and currency grows in the shrubbery. At least that's what one Sicilian peasant family thinks upon seeing some doctored-up postcards.

An Italian widower, Salvatore Mancuso (Vincenzo Amato) is a poor farmer. His land is rough and rocky and his livestock consists of a donkey, a goat and a couple of chickens. He's a widower raising two teenage boys, one of whom is mute. His elderly mother is also under his roof. One day, after running barefoot up a craggy mountainside with a sharp rock in his mouth, which he drops at a makeshift shrine, Salvatore decides to leave the hardscrabble life behind and head to the new world.

It's the turn of the 20th century in Emanuele Crialese's "Golden Door," when hordes of huddled masses dreaming of untold opportunity crammed onto European steamships bound for America.

Crialese has a knack for characterizing a specific place and time, like in a painting. In 2003's "Respiro," he brought us into a small fishing village, where a mentally unbalanced woman brightens or darkens the landscape, depending on her mood. "Golden Door" is a three-paneled piece, where the strength lies in the detail work rather than the larger brushstrokes of a family's immigration story -- details such as when Salvatore and his sons exchange their animals for dead men's clothes and shoes -- probably the first pair of shoes they've ever owned. The merchant tells each of them who the clothes once belonged to, and to not put the shoes on until they reach their departure city.

A mysterious, redheaded Englishwoman named Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who most certainly stands out in the crowd of folks getting on the boat, attaches herself to Salvatore's party (he's brought not only his sons and his mother, but also two young girls from the village who have been promised to wealthy men in America who need wives). Lucy and Salvatore come to a silent understanding here.

The second part gives us the emigrant's-eye view of the long and treacherous trans-Atlantic journey. The men are separated from the women in cramped steerage quarters. Everyone has his or her own bunk, but it's probably less than 2 feet from the next person's; there is no privacy. Just as they all get used to it a storm rattles them out of their bunks, literally. It's a terrifying scene, played mostly in the dark, just as the passengers experience it.

On deck, Lucy and Salvatore are keenly aware of each other, and others are keenly aware of Lucy, particularly Don Luigi (the late Vincent Schiavelli), who's on board brokering marriages. Lucy already has chosen Salvatore, something that remains unexplained, and though it is also frustrating to not know anything about her (though there's much shipboard speculation and rumor), it is a charming flirtation and romance, even if only at arm's length.

The final chapter begins and ends at Ellis Island, where all entering must undergo a series of humiliating tests, both mental and physical before being deemed "fit" to live in America. And single women have to sit in a court-like setting and wait for a stranger to ask her to marry him; if she has no prospects, she is sent back to her homeland.

Crialese's detailed portrait is a humbling reminder of where many of our ancestors came from and what they endured for us, their future generations. We never see what becomes of the Mancuso family, but we know that Salvatore remains optimistic. ...

GOLDEN DOOR (PG-13)

Critic's rating: 3 stars

Miramax Films presents a film written and directed by Emanuele Crialese. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for brief graphic nudity). In Italian with English subtitles. Opening today at Landmark Century.

Salvatore Mancuso: Vincenzo Amato
Angelo Mancuso: Francesco Casisa
Pietro Mancuso: Filippo Pucillo
Fortunata Mancuso: Aurora Quattrocchi
Lucy: Charlotte Gainsbourg

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/

movies/427255,WKP-News-golden15.article

 

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