The Italian (1915)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/9/2016

The Italian was our fourth and final film from 1915. It was about a young Italian couple (George Beban and Clara Williams) who emigrate to the United States, and struggle to adjust to life in New York. As I mentioned last week, I was a little worried about how stereotypical the portrayals would be, and I am happy to say that it wasn’t as bad as I expected. The male lead is not portrayed as the brightest person on the planet, and some of the title cards present his dialog in an exaggerated Italian accent, but I don’t recall anything else that was obviously objectionable. At one point an Irish politician uses a derogatory word for Italians, but it is made pretty clear that this is the character’s bigotry and not the film’s (though I would have preferred the kids’ vocabulary hadn’t been expanded in this particular fashion.) I enjoyed most of the movie, which was mainly about the day-to-day lives of the main characters, until about the last fifteen minutes when it became much more plot driven and less believable. Additionally the film began with a strangely extended and totally unnecessary scene of the lead actor opening a book called “The Italian”, and then ended with him closing it and looking contemplative. It also spends a rather long time setting up a situation in Italy that ends up being the spur for the move to the United States. On the positive side, it made repeated use of flashbacks to events that had happened earlier in the film. I don’t recall if we’ve seen this device previously or not, but we’ve certainly never seen it used this extensively. There is also an interesting shot from an arriving boat of the Statue of Liberty, which had been constructed just thirty years earlier. Interestingly there were a few untimely deaths associated with this film -- both of the leads were dead by the end of the twenties, and the writer and producer Thomas Ince famously died after a trip with Charlie Chaplin and Marion Davies on board William Hearst’s yacht. This was the subject of various conspiracy theories, and was the basis for the plot of the 2001 movie The Cat’s Meow.

Next week we begin 1916. I’ve chosen five films rather than the normal four, starting with the recently rediscovered version of Sherlock Holmes, starring William Gillette. I’ve also added films for 1917 to the list, which should take us out through mid-August. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT