(:)(:)(:)(;) for The Golden Door directed by Emanuele Crieslese in Italian, now showing at the marvelous Crest Theater in downtown Sacramento (and probably at a theater near you). This film makes captivating cinematic choices as it centers on a fascinating subject: a turn-of-the-last-century Sicilian family’s long travel to the new world (indeed the original Italian movie title is Nuovomondo).
I loved the verisimilitude (which, btw, Stephen Colbert, is the original “truthiness” there was no need for you to coin a new word), the faces, the guttural Italian, the eccentricities of the voyage. I was fascinated by the entry process at Ellis Island.
My single favorite moment in the movie is when the men are settling into their bunks on the ship and our Sicilian protagonist observes that it is weird to be surrounded by “foreigners.” His bunk neighbor explains that they are all Italian. The concept of a national identity as Italian seems completely new to him. My guess is that this is extremely realistic and a fascinating change of identity that occurred as a result of large-scale immigration.
In the end though, there was too much unspoken, too many unconnected threads for me to be completely wrapped up in the story. At times I felt like I was watching a movie at an immigration museum, instead of a feature film. True, the surreal segments depicting an immigrant’s idea of the boundless wealth of America were far from museum-fare, but I also felt pretty distant from them.
I suspect that fans of the more ponderous abstract European films would find more than enough plot and character development to go around. I didn’t … quite. Still, I highly recommend seeing the film if only because of the subject matter.