Mafia in the Movies

Catalog description

This course examines representations of the mafia in Italian and American cinema from the early 20th-century until contemporary times, exploring the historical, economic and political causes that led to the mafia’s rise in Italy and the USA. Beginning with an analysis of the social problems that led to its emergence in 19th-century Sicily, the course will trace the transformation of the mafia into an international criminal organization throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, focusing on historical events such as Italian migration to the Americas, the Second World War, the rise and consolidation of an Italian-American mafia in 1950s and 1960s New York, the Sicilian mafia’s attack on the Italian justice system in the 1980s and 1990s, and its more recent transformation into a global financial player. Some of the films we will watch and discuss include Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor (2019), and popular American and Italian TV shows such as David Chase’s The Sopranos (1999-2007) and Stefano Sollima’s Romanzo criminale (2008-10). In our discussions, we will pay particular attention to the ways that gender, class and race figure in cultural perceptions of the mafia and of Italy more broadly. Taught in English.