Description
Book SynopsisWidely acclaimed as America''s greatest living film director, Martin Scorsese is also, some argue, the pre-eminent Italian American artist. Although he has treated various subjects in over three decades, his most sustained filmmaking and the core of his achievement consists of five films on Italian American subjects - Who''s That Knocking at My Door?, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and Casino - as well as the documentary Italianamerican. In Gangster Priest Robert Casillo examines these films in the context of the society, religion, culture, and history of Southern Italy, from which the majority of Italian Americans, including Scorsese, derive.
Casillo argues that these films cannot be fully appreciated either thematically or formally without understanding the various facets of Italian American ethnicity, as well as the nature of Italian American cinema and the difficulties facing assimilating third-generation artists. Forming a unifi
Trade Review
'Gangster Priest is a timely and essential contribution to Scorsese scholarship. In particular, Casillo accomplishes in-depth readings of some of the director's most well-known feature films, such as Casino, Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, and Who's Knocking at My Door? Overall, the volume is composed of fine analyses that stand on their own yet also complement one another and work as cohesive whole.' -- Dana Renga, Italian American Review: Winter 2011
