Buon Natale from all of us at NOIAFT! There is no better day to watch Frank Capra’s classic, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Not only is it one of the most cherished Christmas movies of all time, but if you take a close look, the film is a work about the Italian American experience, both on and off screen.
The most obvious embodiment of the Italian American experience is through the character, Giuseppe Martini. In the movie, George Bailey gives Martini and his family a loan to buy a house. With pure glee, Martini exclaims, “Me, Giuseppe Martini—I own my own house!” This quote is an absolute allusion to the goal many Italian Americans had of having their own home. Not only was it a goal, but more importantly, an ideal.
When George and Mary pack the Martini kids in their car to move them to their new home, they just barely fit, not to mention, they bring their goat along with them. This scene is a not so subtle reference to the big families Italians are known for and the farming background Italians brought over.
It’s important to note what Martini says right before they head over to his family’s new residence. He says, “No more do we live like pigs in this Potter’s field.” This quote shows two things: 1) the imperfect English that many Italian immigrants were prone to using and 2) the despicable living conditions Italian Americans were subject to.
In this scene, staples of Italian American culture are seen. For one, Italian music is heard. The Martini family is presented with gifts of bread, wine and salt. Additionally, Mary says, “May this house never know hunger,” perhaps a veiled reference to the poverty suffered by Italians and Italian Americans.
After some time, Martini opens up his own bar—yet another extension of the American Dream, of which many Italians sought after. The movie examines how Martini might not have attained this ideal without George. We understand that Martini exhibits a strong sense of gratitude for the loan and when George runs off and considers suicide, Martini is one of the people that prays for him. Religion is known as a significant aspect of Italian American identity.
In the end, when the community comes together to help George make back the $8,000 that was lost, Martini comes in with a bowl of money, exclaiming, “I even opened the jukebox!” Martini’s action can be seen as both a sign of paying it forward to George, as well as his participation/contribution in the community, something Italian Americans are known for taking part in.While these Italian Americans themes are pretty much out in the open, you might forget the film’s brief illustration of prejudice against Italian Americans. Capra embodies this notion in Potter, of course, who calls George a “nursemaid to a bunch of garlic-eaters. While this discriminatory dig went over my head in prior viewings, you have to wonder if Capra might have included more overt Italian American references, if not for the anti-Italian sentiment taking place across the United States during World War II.
Like in his other movies, Capra is sympathetic towards the immigrant struggle (Cavallero). He sets up the Martini family as hard-working, gracious and happy. When Potter makes such a cruel remark, we feel more sympathetic with the Martini family, and therefore, Italian Americans. By having this all-bad antagonist make such a negative statement about Italians, this might have been Capra’s indirect and sly way of depicting Italian American discrimination, and thereby, showing why they are not deserving of such widespread hatred in American society.
There are some theories online that George Bailey is based on Amadeo Giannini, the founder of The Bank of America, formerly called, The Bank of Italy (Carter). If this is true, you can imagine that George Bailey wasn’t named Giorgio Bastione, or the like, simply because American audiences at the time weren’t ready to embrace an Italian American protagonist. As Cavallero suggests, “With prominent politicians arguing that the deportation of immigrants could quickly solve the country’s economic ills, it is easy to see why Capra and Columbia would wish to feature WASP characters rather than immigrants” (Cavallero). After all, Capra proclaimed himself as “’10-90 Italian-American,’” saying that he immigrated to the United States at such an early age that he had little memory of the land he left (Cavallero).
Yet, no matter how assimilated Capra was in American society, one must imagine his upbringing and family experiences played a role in how he portrayed his characters. As Michael Novak contends, “‘emotions, instincts, memory, imagination, passions, and ways of perceiving are passed onto us in ways we do not choose, and in ways so thick with life that they lie far beyond the power of consciousness” (qtd. in Cavallero).
As such, we might be able to see It’s A Wonderful Life as a rehashing of “Sicilian stories [which] often show that ‘a man that tries to rise above his culture will drown’” (qtd. in Cavallero). As George Bailey takes on the bank and tries to do the right thing by his community, we might also see this as Capra reflecting on the notion of “the individual operat[ing] within the system, a theme that is vitally important to understanding the ways in which Capra camouflaged his immigrant concerns” (Cavallero). If we circle back to George Bailey as a reincarnation of Amadeo Giannini, George helps the middle-class people of his town as Giannini would help immigrants, many of whom were Italian Americans.
In watching It’s A Wonderful Life, we see Martini as the face of the struggling, hardworking residents of Bedford Falls and thus, the center of Capra’s embodiment of Italian American themes. Though, as noted, there are examples which suggest Capra’s made even more artistic, yet perhaps less noticeable, story-driven choices that reflect on a clear Italian American experience. At the end of the day, whichever ways Capra’s Italian American heritage was incorporated into the story, It’s A Wonderful Life has so much heart, it doesn’t matter your background; you’ll wind up crying come Auld Lang Syne.
I would like to watch this wonderful film, but with an Italian audio. Could you please tell me how I can watch “La Vita e Meravigliosa” online? Thank you very much.