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Contribution to Book
Leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli: Food and Family in the Modern American Mafia Film
Reel Food: Essays on Food and Film
  • Marlisa Santos, Nova Southeastern University
Document Type
Book Chapter
ISBN
9780415971102
Publication Date
1-1-2004
Editors
Anne L. Bower
Keywords
  • American mafia,
  • family,
  • food,
  • film
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.

DOI
10.4324/9780203337233
Publisher
Routledge
Citation Information
Marlisa Santos. "Leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli: Food and Family in the Modern American Mafia Film" New York, NYReel Food: Essays on Food and Film (2004) p. 209 - 218
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/marlisa-santos/19/