Abstract

This article considers the 2004 PBS documentary Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance in relation to its suggestions that the Medici family of Florence shared similar traits to modern Mafiosi. It analyses the cinematic influence of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy on the documentary’s filming, as well as that of Hollywood gangster films in general, the distinct references that the director used to illustrate the link between the Corleones and the Medici, and the implications of these with regard to the depiction of Italian culture and history in both fictional and non-fiction films.

……..

In 2004, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) of America aired a documentary on the Medici family, who rose to prominence in Florence during the fifteenth century. In order to appeal to an audience not familiar with medieval and/or Renaissance Italian history, they decided to employ popular cultural references and entitled the documentary Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (USA 2004). The “godfathers” of the title referred simultaneously to the Medici’s perceived role in ushering in the Italian Renaissance through their artistic patronage, and to that of the dreaded Mafia figurehead of more recent times, as portrayed by Marlon Brando or Al Pacino. The documentary was divided into four parts of one hour each, chronicling the life of certain prominent members of the Medici family. Cosimo de’ Medici, also known as Cosimo il Vecchio (or The Elder) was the subject of the first hour, followed by his grandson Lorenzo ‘il Magnifico’, Giovanni and Giulio de’ Medici (also known as popes Leo X and Clement VII), and ending with the exploits of Grand Duke Cosimo I and his later successor, Ferdinando II. With the participation of several widely respected Italian and art historians, and the use of a highly dramatic voiceover, Medici unashamedly borrowed from the myth of the Mafia so dramatically portrayed in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy (USA 1972, 1974, 1990) in order to make its subject material more accessible to a modern audience. This Mafioso myth was deployed apparently without considering the implications to historical interpretation or the risk of causing offence to Italians or Italian-Americans. Perhaps as a result of this, the documentary was widely panned by both academics and members of the Italian-American community when it aired. Though its historical arguments were none too original, Mediciitself should be contextualised historically and generically, as its form and style takes as much from fictional Hollywood depictions of Italians (and Italian-Americans), as it does from the techniques of traditional televisual documentary. By undertaking this kind of analysis, one is able to see how it uses the rhetoric of Hollywood gangster films in order to frame its study of a historical reality.

This article will examine the ways in which the documentary makers appropriated the language and motifs of The Godfather films, in order to present the history of the Medici, as well as how it fits in with the wider tradition of gangster films in Hollywood, the implications of this, and also what this appropriation says about contemporary views of the Italian Renaissance, the ‘Mafia’ and Italian culture and society. However, it will also discuss how, in doing this, the documentary’s producers glossed over the intricacies of Renaissance patronage networks and their formation, and ascribed a distinct air of illegality to the Medici’s rise. Furthermore, it will discuss the ways in which the documentary also carried the implication that such skulduggery is a common feature in Italian history and thus, a common cultural trait among Italians. Though PBS and the makers of the documentary have since apologised for this linkage, their reasons for resorting to such cultural associations, examined below, highlight both the general lack of understanding of the actual nature of the Mafia as well as an all too persistent tradition of ascribing the illegal activities of a minority of Italian and Italian-Americans to the wider community.

In choosing to copy the motifs and language used in the Godfather films, the director and producer of Medici, Justin Hardy, tapped into the myth of the Mafioso so memorably portrayed in the films by Coppola. It is not surprising that Hardy should have employed Mafia motifs in order to make his documentary appeal to a public not familiar with the Medici’s machinations. The Mafia is a topic not in any danger of losing popularity with audiences. Books on the nature of the Mafia, especially if they are by ex-Mafiosi, sell well, and most recently the best-selling book Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, on the Neapolitan Camorra, was adapted into a film by Italian director Matteo Garone that has won a considerable number of awards at Cannes and other prestigious film festivals.[1]  To popularise the story of the Medici – who might seem lacking in appropriate relevance to today’s audiences – by comparing them to Mafia dons, might have seemed at the time to guarantee the documentary’s success, which was especially important given the state of PBS’s often insecure future.[2] It would have been a natural choice to make. As Jill Godmilow has observed, “to survive, to take public space and attention, [documentary] has had to borrow all kinds of structural and strategic devices from fiction.”[3]  To use The Godfather trilogy, which also tracked the rise and fall of a single Italian (although in this case Italian-American) family and which is one of the most enduring film trilogies in the cultural memory of the last fifty years, would ensure the audience had a pre-existing framework of cultural reference from which to understand the themes and events discussed.

Without wishing to overestimate Hardy’s artistic vision, one can see the direct influence of Coppola in both his use of dramatic re-enactments as part of the documentary, and his use of interviews with various academics who have written extensively on Italian history. All this combines to produce the convincing picture of the Medici as a Renaissance gangster family, which in turn implies that the achievements of the family were gained through devious and illegal means. This notion is highly problematic, not to mention potentially able to cause offence. I will first present several major examples of how this is done in the first three episodes of the documentary, and discuss the parallels to the Godfather series of films.

An analysis of Godfather references in the documentary

Before moving on to the documentary proper, attention must first be drawn to the accompanying website for the documentary that PBS set up. As it exists now, the site offers ‘snapshots’ of each prominent member of the Medici family mentioned in the documentary in the manner of a police rap sheet. In fact, the site had originally titled these profiles rap sheets, but changed them after protests from members of the Italian-American community. PBS claimed that the aim of the website was to “imagine how contemporary authorities would have viewed the Medici and their activities today”[4] , a statement which might have been even more offensive to Italian-Americans and indeed, reveals much in regards to the persistence of xenophobic attitudes towards the American-Italian community. These profiles leave little room for ambiguity; in them the Medici are presented as Mafia figures, with their own aliases, reputation and headshots. This linking of the Medici and the Mafia is even more overt in the lesson plans for children that are provided for teachers (it should also be mentioned here that the website does link to the American National Standards that the lesson plans provided aim to address). Indeed the lesson plan for the episode concerned with Lorenzo de’ Medici includes the question, “In what ways was Lorenzo like a Mafia don?”[5]  and points out that students should be alerted to the similarities between the documentary and The Godfather films. My analysis, then, is based not on supposition, but on the overt wording of the documentary’s producers.

In his analysis of the Mafioso mythology presented in The Godfather, Alessandro Camon notes that the “mythical Mafioso … shuns the most apparent accoutrements of richness in favor of a simple, self-content family life and non-perishable properties”.[6] This myth of the simple, elegant gangster seems to influence the portrayal of Cosimo il Vecchio in the first episode of the documentary. Cosimo is often shown alone or consulting with his father, Giovanni di Bicci. Indeed he is often seen in dark, shadowy scenes recalling Michael Corleone’s agonised pondering in the second film of the Godfather trilogy. A quotation by a contemporary observer noting that Cosimo was “king in everything but name” is recited while Cosimo drops into an armchair in a manner reminiscent of Don Michael Corleone (36:07). The link between Coppola’s films and the Medici is made explicit in the last few minutes of the episode, in which the narrator (and the esteemed historian of Cosimo, Dale Kent) proclaims that Cosimo, at the height of his powers, was the Godfather of Florence, whilst a tune not too dissimilar from Nino Rota’s signature score plays in the background and Cosimo appears on a balcony to salute his adoring public, something which the historical Cosimo might have found abhorrent, given his well-known desire for public modesty (53:52). Furthermore, the narrator of the documentary names Cosimo as ‘the Godfather’ of Florence in the closing moments of the episode. (53:30)

The Mafia connection is taken further with the next episode, which details the life of Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo. Here Hardy employs Kent to promote the idea once again, utilising snippets of her describing the patronage networks built by the Medici between themselves and their clients as very much like the system found in Southern Italy, and her assertion that the Medici’s power in Florence depended on them being godfathers, both religiously and in terms of maintaining patronage networks. The art historian Jerry Brotton also chimes in, noting that “there is a very Mafia feel” to the Medici’s activities (21:00). To illustrate this culture of favour-seeking between patron and client, Hardy films a line of old men, who are each carrying some sort of gift for the Medici, waiting in the Palazzo Medici (11:25). It is interesting to note that this scene is set in the loggia of the Palazzo where the sun is shining brightly whilst negotiations are handled in the darkened interior of the Palazzo, a technique used in the first Godfather movie where the dichotomy of light exteriors and dark interiors is employed to great effect to highlight the difference between a public persona and the (literally) darker underworld dealings that take place in private. This technique is also used in the second Godfather movie when Michael agonises over the disintegration of his family; indeed the line of old men waiting for favours from their Medici patrons is eerily akin to the opening scene of the first Godfather movie, in which Vito Corleone grants a favour (he offers vengeance to the undertaker Bonasera for his daughter’s ruined honour – a ‘justice’ that legitimate American law does not provide) in his private, darkened office on his daughter’s wedding day whilst other men waiting to see him sit outside in the bright sunshine. Again, as with the previous episode of the documentary, Lorenzo is pictured sitting in an armchair, alone, in a sparsely lit room whilst the narrator describes the family’s financial troubles, in this case the failing of several Medici bank branches over Europe, which plagued Lorenzo’s tenure as first citizen of Florence (45:02). As mentioned earlier, this scene has a clear point of reference in the second Godfather film, where a solitary Michael contemplates the murder of his brother Fredo from his boathouse.

The Godfather motif is fully realised in the third episode of the documentary, devoted to the two popes produced by the Medici: Leo X and Clement VII. Hardy decides to omit entirely the fate of Lorenzo’s eldest son, Piero the Unfortunate (which is a shame, given the highly dramatic nature of Piero’s continuous failed coups d’etat against the republican government installed two years after Lorenzo’s death in 1492, or the defiance of the friar Girolamo Savonarola against the Borgia pope, Alexander VI). He instead chooses to highlight the relationship between Michelangelo Buonarroti and the Medici family, ironically juxtaposing the religious Michelangelo alongside his more worldly Medici counterparts. The historian Brotton is again used to inform the audience that the Medicis’ assumption of the papacy and their manoeuvring of Medici partisans into influential positions in the Vatican represents “a classic Mafia move” (35:03). It is in this episode that Hardy draws his strongest comparison of the Medici with the fictional Corleone family, noting that in commissioning Michelangelo to oversee the construction of the Medici family tombs in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence, the Medici “made him an offer he dared not refuse” (29:44). This point is significant, not just because of the suggestion of dire consequences for Michelangelo if he did not comply; as many viewers would have recognised, an offer that someone cannot refuse is the trademark phrase of both Vito and Michael Corleone in the Godfather films. Indeed the argument could be made that it is the most iconic phrase of the whole trilogy, as the audience is shocked by seeing in rather graphic, gory detail what happens to those who do not comply with the Mafia don’s wishes – horse’s heads in beds being only the beginning of what a mobster will do to get his way. That Hardy would choose to employ it in the documentary at all is significant, and leaves the viewer in no doubt as to the Mafiosi nature of Hardy’s Medici popes.

In utilising this most obvious parallel to the films of Coppola, Hardy seems to have exhausted his store of Godfather references and in the final episode of the documentary, dealing with Cosimo I and Galileo Galilei, does away with them completely. He decides to portray Galileo as an almost martyr-like figure to the cause of science, whilst the Grand Duke Cosimo I (the first Medici to acquire a royal title and official recognition of his role as ruler of Florence and Tuscany) is portrayed as something of a self-made man who overcomes political and martial challenges to his authority to establish his rule. With the ‘legitimation’ of a title, the family’s Mafia-like pedigree is discarded.

Having considered the mechanics of this documentary, it is abundantly clear that Medici draws its stylistic cues from the gangster genre of Hollywood as much as (if not more than) it does from traditional documentary. This appropriation is, moreover, not simply present in the single parallel images and phrases discussed above, but also exists in the kinds of audience identification it invites. If we take Martha Nochimson’s definition of the gangster genre, in which she argues “the protagonists with whom we empathize reverse our usual patterns of identification by engaging us and our feelings with career criminals, often to the exclusion of empathy with law-abiding citizens”[7] , then it is possible to label at least the first two hours of the documentary as containing some sort of gangster film narrative. The audience follows the trials and tribulations of Cosimo il Vecchio’s imprisonment and banishment from Florence by governmental authorities working with his family’s enemies in a way that is reminiscent of Michael Corleone’s murder of the Corleones’ rival Sollozzo and police chief McCluskey and his subsequent flight to Sicily. Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo de’ Medici’s project of an enlightened Florence, too, is shown as being under threat by the crusading morality of Savonarola and his disciples, who preached a simpler and more penitent way of life (shown in the documentary as religious extremism, with prurient shots of Savonarola flagellating himself in his cell). Thus the audience is led to sympathise with both Cosimo and Lorenzo at the encroaching arm of the law on their way of life.

The gangster genre of Hollywood, which produced such memorable films as Little Caesar (USA 1931), Scarface(USA 1928), and of course the Godfather trilogy, has a tradition of emphasising its protagonists’ Italian ethnicity, whilst also romanticising their criminal empires. Yet this is not a solely modern phenomenon. As Peter Bondanella has pointed out, the tradition of associating Italians with shady dealings and political schemes stretches back to the Elizabethan era, when the image of the Machiavellian Italian, ready to perform any number of dark deeds to achieve his goals, originated. He notes that, “behind the classic American gangster film lurks the traditional stereotype of Renaissance Italy as the land of all possible evils that a misreading of both Machiavelli and Guiciardini did so much to create.”[8] In a sense, therefore, one could argue that in appropriating the imagery and even the language of the Godfather films, Hardy was, in a roundabout manner, emphasising the essential and abiding ‘Renaissance’ character of the Medici’s reception across time.

Yet, whilst these gangster films might have had their origins in Renaissance tales, they also suggested that the criminal leanings of the Italians and Italian-Americans they depicted were a trait that was almost genetic. Bondanella argues that Scarface, for example, “suggests that Tony [Carmonte]’s behavior may be explained by the Italian genetic code”[9] ; and indeed one might likewise see Michael Corleone’s eventual acceptance of the leadership role in the Godfather as his inability to outrun his cultural destiny, so that his assertion to his girlfriend Kay that he is a separate individual from his family becomes one of the heaviest ironies in the film. In drawing these cross-historical parallels between the Medici and the Corleone family, therefore, Hardy reinforces the stereotype inherited and perpetuated by the gangster genre, equating Italian-ness with criminal leanings.

Apart from its gangster film heritage, Medici is also an expository documentary in the classification of Bill Nichols’ typology of non-fiction films.[10]  It features a Voice-of-God voiceover and presents a straightforward narrative viewpoint. The documentary is obviously intended as an introduction to Renaissance Italian history for those not already familiar with the Medici and their followers, or those who have only a passing knowledge. Famous individuals whom the audience are expected to recognise, such as Michelangelo Buonarroti, Galileo Galilei and Leonardo da Vinci, are introduced and their links to the Medici family described in fairly dramatic terms. In the third hour of the documentary, for instance, Michelangelo is described as a prodigal son of the Medici (15:01). Indeed, at the risk of using a tired term, given the links to Hollywood Hardy employs, as well as his use of melodramatic narration, one could say that the documentary is constructed in the mould of a 1970s docudrama, in which historical fact is dramatised with well-defined heroes and villains abounding in every episode. More often than not, the Medici (portrayed by fairly unknown actors, which furthers the documentary-like feel) are presented as the heroes of the piece, and even if they sometimes are shown to engage in political intrigue, the justification for their actions is usually given as furthering the family’s fortunes, a well-worn tract in most gangster films and one that will be familiar with an audience versed in the rhetoric of cinematic mobster family ideals.

Indeed, this narrative is used to drive the documentary on, using key individuals as characters in the drama of the Medici’s history in place of historical events. Hardy constructs the whole four hours as a sweeping saga, beginning with the baptism of Cosimo il Vecchio at the start of the first episode and finishing with the failure of Duke Ferdinando II to protect Galileo at the end of the fourth hour – thus providing a distinct rise and fall instead of the historical fade into decadent obscurity. This clear demarcation of historical events allows dramatic episodes to be framed more easily and allows characters to be pointed out and developed as part of the gangster narrative whilst excluding other historical events (such as the execution of Savonarola, for instance) that do not conform to the gangster narrative. As Charles Montgomery Hammond points out about docudrama in general, “you can identify characters, recognize situations, anticipate the rise and fall of distinct heroes or villains but … [y]ou’ve merely been on the inside for a short spell, spying on the rich, the well-born, the powerful or the infamous.”[11]  Or, in the case of the Medici, all four of these categories.

Given also that the documentary has an accompanying website which has links to suggested lesson plans for teachers keen to “take Medici into the classroom”[12] (not to mention the fact that the documentary was commissioned by PBS – a channel founded on the basis of providing educational material), it can also be argued that the documentary is aimed at adolescents who are still in school, from grades six to twelve (roughly about ages twelve to eighteen). Perhaps in view of this younger age group, there are no controversial historical questions posed by the documentary. Indeed, there are no questions, either answered or not, posed at all. Rather, the documentary delights in its references to popular culture instead, celebrating the contribution of its proto-Mafiosi protagonists to the historical flourishing known as the Renaissance.

Implications

As mentioned before, the connection of the Medici with the Mafia, for all its understandable traffic in iconic pop-culture, is problematic. Not only is it a vast oversimplification of the building and maintaining of patronage networks that the Medici utilised in their rise to power, but also neglects the fact that the notion of Mafia behaviour is a regionally specific historical phenomenon that emerged during the nineteenth century in Southern Italy as part of the process of modernisation, and it is therefore anachronistic to apply the label to a fifteenth century Florentine family.

Firstly, in fifteenth and early sixteenth century Florence, there was no sharp distinction, as there is now, between the state and a private man, such as Cosimo il Vecchio. That is, the manoeuvring of family affiliated partisans into influential positions in government was typical behaviour of not just Cosimo, but of all powerful men in Renaissance Florence. Though the existence of private factions was illegal, as Kent herself points out, “personal patronage essentially shaped the structures of Florentine society and politics” and notes also that “in face-to-face society the state itself was conceived in highly personal terms”.[13] Cosimo often had to defend himself against charges of nepotism by stating that his family’s interests and the state’s were one and the same. The comparison with Mafia behaviour to describe this behaviour is tenuous at best, given the term “Mafia”’s contested origins (Diego Gambetta notes 18 possibilities[14] ) and meaning. The use of it in conjunction with the title “Godfathers” in the documentary’s title suggests that the Medici assumed positions of power through entirely illegal means, which is a questionably reductive account of the extremely intricate nature of patronage networks that existed in Florence during the Renaissance.[15]

Considering also the Italian-American community’s struggle to distance itself from any association with organised criminal networks, the documentary’s assumption that the infiltration and corruption of state institutions by Mafiosi has been a perennial problem in Italian history, ever since unification, is offensive as well. Indeed, this association of Italians with criminal activities formed the bulk of the protests generated by the documentary and its associated website, as mentioned earlier.

Although it might seem critically redundant to say so, it is important to point out that The Godfather itself is a creative rather than historically accurate portrayal of a criminal family’s behaviour and dealings. As numerous studies have pointed out, and as The Sopranos – itself a dramatised retelling of the life of an Italian-American crime family – parodies, the trilogy is a highly romanticised vision, written by an Italian-American author whose ancestors came not from Sicily where part of the book was set, but from the north of the country. In fact, Mario Puzo was helped in the drafting of his novel by Paramount executives, who also influenced its final form.[16] In choosing to base his adaptation of factual history on The Godfather, Hardy was not only trying to fit an already dangerously loaded historical label of ‘Mafia’ on the Medici, but was also apparently unaware of the shaky factual basis on which his reference material stood or of his own perpetuation of the self-cannibalising circuit of Italian ficto-factuality. However, this oversight might be attributed to the weight of authenticity that the Godfather films carry. Vera Dika has noted that one of the most defining features of gangster films made in America was their claim to be authentic portrayals of the inner workings of organised crime. The Godfather movies, in particular, employ this air of authenticity to tell the story of the Corleones. Dika writes that, “this very notion of ‘authenticity’ is part of the film’s construction, part of its symbolic surface, its weave of illusion.”[17]  Even though the movies are fictional, therefore, their perceived authenticity, along with associated popular culture references that they carry, were obviously powerful enough to influence Hardy’s portrayal of the Medici, hence recreating the Medici in the mould of The Godfather and using fictional references for historical persons.

It is interesting, also, to note Dika’s observation that:

in all three Godfather films … the Italian American should not be seen as a realistic category and be judged in terms of his compliance to the ‘authentic’ Italian-American experience, but a construct manipulated to engender artistic and cultural effect.[18]

What Hardy has done, I argue, is taken the portrayal of Italian-American life and culture as found in the Godfather trilogy and applied it retrospectively so that the world of Renaissance Florence might seem like the America that the Corleone family seeks to control. One can see why he might do this; certainly the world inhabited by Coppola’s gangsters is one that most modern audiences would be familiar with, rather than the foreign territory of Renaissance societies, with their often frustratingly complicated backroom double-dealings.

Also, presenting prominent Renaissance figures like the Medici as proto-Mafiosi is questionable for those who do not view the actions of characters in The Godfather or The Sopranos as behaviour that should be idealised. Given the current problems that Italy faces with regards to organised crime, it is telling that Hardy, who in a behind-the-scenes interview reveals that he is fascinated with the Medici, would present them as mob bosses.[19]  This reflects a disconcerting notion for historians of the Renaissance; that is, that this vibrant period of history has fallen so far out of cultural memory that it must be presented through the fictional lens of the Godfather saga in order to appeal to a society more familiar with horse beheading Mafiosi than wily political statesmen. It also suggests – and this is alarming to a wider sector of the community – that contemporary society still views all Italians as prone to Mafia tendencies and behaviours. Indeed, the website mentioned at the beginning of this article effectively endorses this view and in fact, teaches it to a new generation of students who might not be able to make the distinction themselves.

Why, then, does the myth of ‘the Mafia’ continue to excite the imagination of both documentary makers and historians of the Renaissance? Put simply, The Godfather and other gangster films have given the sheen of romance to such notions of Italian (and Italian-American) organised crime. The American studio representations of the trials and tribulations of the Corleones, as mentioned earlier, are themselves directly descended from earlier Elizabethan dramatic perceptions of typically ‘Italian’ themes of betrayal, loyalty, death and despair. In fact, such is the romanticising power of these representations that some have noted that Mafia families have themselves been influenced by The Godfather (as, again, The Sopranos makes reference to). Some of the terminology from the movies has entered into the language used by real life Mafiosi, to the extent that it has influenced their behaviour and mannerisms, turning them into their reel counterparts. Fred Gardaphé writes that “after a generation, one could hardly tell the difference between the real and artificial gangster”.[20] If the silver screen has effectively turned ‘real’ Mafiosi into the smooth talking gangsters portrayed in Coppola’s film, can we really be so surprised at the Medici becoming Mafiosi?

However, considering that Cosa Nostra, the Comorra and the ‘Ndrangheta are behind the widespread corruption and violence that continue to choke social and economic development in the south of Italy, it would be irresponsible to be anything but critical of organised crime. Thus, the distinctions between real and reel life should be anatomised, lest we unquestioningly accept the simulacrum in place of the real, as Hardy seems to imply we should. Indeed, the wider problem here lies less with the question of historical anachronism and more with the films and television shows that glorify the life of gangsters; even the lauded Sopranos is guilty of this to a degree, encouraging the audience at moments to sympathise with the vicious Tony Soprano. Documentaries about Renaissance figures might seem a fair way off from the present problems plaguing southern Italy, or the trans-Atlantic drug trade in which some southern Italian criminal families are involved, but engendering sympathetic attitudes to such behaviours through the representation of historical figures as proto-Mafiosi is of limited value in the long term. Considering the many struggles between the Medici and the state of Florence, or their long (though now disputed) history of patronising some of the most famous artists of the Italian Renaissance, it would not have been difficult to produce a documentary that did not utilise Hollywood gangster films as a cultural point of reference. The question of whether this would have had the same impact on audiences, for better or for worse, is another matter entirely.

Conclusion

In conclusion, though Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance is an example of how the zeal to produce a documentary to appeal to a wide audience can go astray, it also represents a noteworthy moment in modern conceptions of the Italian Renaissance. Deprived of the memory of the Renaissance, the only way that producers of the documentary thought that society might be drawn to the Medici was if they were cloaked in the guises of Don Corleone or Tony Soprano’s crew. Pointing this out does not amount to a condemnation of popular culture, with its necessity to communicate en masse; as mentioned before, The Godfather is itself a Renaissance tale at heart, with its double-dealings and symbolic violence. But producers of a historical documentary must be aware of the implications of the links that they draw between historical personas and fictional entities in order to appeal to their audiences. The decision by director Hardy and his team to cast the real Medici ‘godfathers’ as forerunners to the reel Corleone family was an ill-judged one, and, ultimately, shows that present day perceptions of Italian culture and history have not changed much since the first few Hollywood gangster films like Scarface or Little Caesar were produced in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Works Cited

Anderson, Robert T. “From Mafia to Cosa Nostra.” The American Journal of Sociology 71, no. 3 (1965): 302-10.
Baker, Michael Brenden. “Dresden Story and the Emergence of the Talking Head in the Nfb Documentary.”Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Etudes Cinématographiques 17, no. 2 (2008): 2-17.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Bondanella, Peter E. Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Brown, Alison, ed. The Medici in Florence: The Exercise and Language of Power. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1992.
Browne, Nick, ed. Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Camon, Alessandro. “The Godfather and the Mythology of Mafia.” In Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy, edited by Nick Browne, 57-75. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Cavallero, Jonathan J. “Gangsters, Fessos, Tricksters, and Sopranos: The Historical Roots of Italian American Stereotype Anxiety. (Cover Story).” Journal of Popular Film and Television 32, no. 2 (2004): 50 (14).
Cawelti, John G. “The New Mythology of Crime.” boundary 2 3, no. 2 (1975): 325-57.
Chase, David. “The Sopranos (Pilot).” 60 minutes. United States of America, 1999.
Coffman, Elizabeth. “Documentary and Collaboration: Placing the Camera in the Community.” Journal of Film and Video 61, no. 1 (2009): 62-78.
Cole, Janie. “Cultural Clientelism and Brokerage Networks in Early Modern Florence and Rome: New Correspondence between the Barberini and Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger.” Renaissance Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2007): 729-88.
Connell, William. “Pbs, the Mafia, and the Medici.” USItalia.info 2004.
Coppola, Francis Ford. “The Godfather.” 175 minutes. United States of America, 1972.
———. “The Godfather: Part 2.” 200 minutes. United States of America, 1974.
Corner, John. “Form and Content in Documentary Study.” In The Television Genre Book, edited by Glen Creeber, 125-26. London: British Film Institute, 2001.
———. “Form and Content in Documentary Study.” In The Television Genre Book, edited by Glen Creeber, 125-26. London: British Film Institute, 2001.
Cortés, Carlos E. “Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons.” MELUS 14, no. 3/4 (1987): 107-26.
Creeber, Glen, Toby Miller, and John Tulloch, eds. The Television Genre Book London: British Film Institute, 2001.
Curtin, Michael. Packaging Reality: The Influence of Fictional Forms on the Early Development of Television Documentary. Columbia: Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, University of South Carolina, 1993.
De Stefano, George. “Italian-Americans: Family Lies: Italians as Mobsters in American Films.” Film Comment 23, no. July/Aug. (1987): 22-24.
———. An Offer We Can’t Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America. New York: Faber and Faber, 2006.
Devillier Donegan Enterprises. 2004. Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. Medici. Index | Pbs. In, Public Broadcasting Service, http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/medici/. (accessed 1/11, 2008).
———. 2004. Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. For Teachers. Lesson 2 | Pbs. In, Public Broadcasting Service, http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/resources/lesson2.html. (accessed 2/11, 2008).
———. 2004. Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. Show. Behind the Scenes | Pbs. In, Public Broadcasting Service, http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/show/scenes.html. (accessed 1/6, 2009).
Dika, Vera. “The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather.” In Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy, edited by Nick Browne, 76-108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Donnelly, Kevin. “Educational Programming.” In The Television Genre Book, edited by Glen Creeber, 137-39. London: British Film Institute 2001.
Dorst, John D. “Which Came First, the Chicken Device or the Textual Egg? Documentary Film and the Limits of the Hybrid Metaphor.” The Journal of American Folklore 112, no. 445 (1999): 268-81.
Edmonds, Robert. About Documentary: Anthropology on Film: A Philosophy of People and Art. Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum Pub., 1974.
Eitzen, Dirk. “When Is a Documentary?: Documentary as a Mode of Reception.” Cinema Journal 35, no. 1 (1995): 81-102.
Esther, John. “Waltz with Bashir: An Interview with Ari Folman.” Cineaste: America’s Leading Magazine on the Art and Politics of the Cinema 34, no. 2 (2009): 67-67.
Feinstein, Howard. “Beyond the Frame.” Sight and Sound 18, no. 7 (2008): 34-36.
Gambetta, Diego. The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Gardaphé, Fred. “Re-Inventing Sicily in Italian American Writing and Film.” MELUS 28, no. 3 (2003): 55-71.
———. From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Garone, Matteo. “Gamorrah.” 137 minutes. Italy, 2008.
Godmilow, Jill, and Ann-Louise Shapiro. “How Real Is the Reality in Documentary Film?” History and Theory 36, no. 4 (1997): 80-101.
Haller, Mark H. “Organized Crime in Urban Society: Chicago in the Twentieth Century.” Journal of Social History5, no. 2 (1971): 210-34.
Hammond, Charles Montgomery. The Image Decade: Television Documentary, 1965-1975 / by Charles Montgomery Hammond, Jr. New York: Hastings House, 1981.
Hardy, Justin. “Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance.” 220 minutes. United Kingdom, 2004.
Hess, Henner. Mafia & Mafiosi: Origin, Power and Myth. Translated by Ewald Osers. Bathurst: Crawford Publications, 1998.
Holden, Stephen. The New York Times on the Sopranos. London; New York: ibooks, 2000.
Hollingsworth, Mary. Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century. London: John Murray, 1994.
Kent, D. V. The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434. Oxford [Eng.]; New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
———. Cosimo De’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Kent, Dale Vivienne. “Illegitimate and Legitimating Passions in Fifteenth Century Florentine Political Discourses.”Cultural and Social History 2, no. 1 (2005): 49-62.
Kent, D. V. Friendship, Love, and Trust in Renaissance Florence. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Kramer, Martin. “Pbs Presents: Islam for Viewers Like You. (Public Broadcasting Program ‘Islam: Empire of Faith’).” Middle East Quarterly 9, no. 1 (2002): 71-79.
Lavery, David. Reading the Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO, Reading Contemporary Television. London; New York: New York: I.B. Tauris; Distributed in the United States and Canada by Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Leverette, Marc, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley. It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Lewis, Norman. The Honoured Society: The Mafia Conspiracy Observed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1967.
Lowe, K. J. P. “Patronage and Territoriality in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence.” Renaissance Studies 7, no. 3 (1993): 258-71.
Mangiameli, Rosario. La Mafia Tra Stereotipo E Storia. Caltanissetta: S.Sciascia, 2000.
Marchand, Eckart, and Alison Wright, eds. With and without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage, 1434-1530, 1998.
Marino, Giuseppe Carlo. Storia Della Mafia: Dall’“Onorata Società” A “Cosa Nostra”, Sull’itinerario Sicilia-America-Mondo, La Ricostruzione Critica Di Uno Dei Più Inquietanti Fenomeni Del Nostro Tempo E Delle Eroiche Lotte Per Combatterlo. 1. ed. ed. Roma: Newton & Compton, 1998.
McLean, Paul D. “A Frame Analysis of Favor Seeking in the Renaissance: Agency, Networks, and Political Culture.” The American Journal of Sociology 104, no. 1 (1998): 51-91.
———. “Patronage, Citizenship, and the Stalled Emergence of the Modern State in Renaissance Florence.”Comparative Studies in Society & History 47, no. 3 (2005): 638-64.
Miklitsch, Robert. Roll over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006.
Nelli, Humbert S. The Business of Crime: Italians and Syndicate Crime in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
———. “Documentary Film and the Modernist Avant-Garde.” Critical Inquiry 27, no. 4 (2001): 580-610.
Nochimson, Martha P. “Waddaya Lookin’ At? Re-Reading the Gangster Genre Through ‘The Sopranos’.” Film Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2002): 2-13.
Paoli, Letizia. Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Parker, Deborah. “The Poetry of Patronage: Bronzino and the Medici.” Renaissance Studies 17, no. 2 (2003): 230-45.
Plantinga, Carl R. Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film Cambridge, U.K.; New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Pratzner, Wesley F. “What Has Happened to the Documentary Film?” The Public Opinion Quarterly 11, no. 3 (1947): 394-401.
Rabinowitz, Paula. “Wreckage Upon Wreckage: History, Documentary and the Ruins of Memory.” History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993): 119-37.
Renda, Francesco. Storia Della Mafia. 2. ed. Palermo: Sigma, 1998.
Robb, Peter. Midnight in Sicily. London: Harvill, 1998.
Saviano, Roberto. Gomorrah. Translated by Virginia Jewiss. New York: Picador, 2007.
Scarpino, Salvatore. Storia Della Mafia. Milano: Fenice 2000, 1994.
Schneider, Jane, and Peter Schneider. “Mafia, Antimafia, and the Plural Cultures of Sicily.” Current Anthropology 46, no. 4 (2005): 501-20.
Schneider, Jane, and Peter T. Schneider. Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Selvaggi, Giuseppe. The Rise of the Mafia in New York: From 1896 through World War II Translated by William A. Packer. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1978.
Servadio, Gaia. Mafioso: A History of the Mafia from Its Origins to the Present Day. London: Secker & Warburg, 1976.
Smith, Dwight C. The Mafia Mystique. London: Hutchinson, 1975.
Stoehr, Kevin L. Nihilism in Film and Television: A Critical Overview, Citizen Kane to the Sopranos. Jefferson, N.C.; London: McFarland & Company Inc., 2006.
Turco, Marco. “Excellent Cadavers.” 75 minutes. Italy: Artline Films, 2005.
Vaccaro, Mary. “Artists as Godfathers: Parmigianino and Correggio in the Baptismal Registers of Parma.” Renaissance Studies 21, no. 3 (2007): 366-76.
Vasilopoulos, Vicki. “O.K., What About Sharks Is So Italian?” The New York Times, 29/2/04 2004, 1-6.
Wilson, Elmo C. “The Effectiveness of Documentary Broadcasts.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1948): 19-29.
Yacowar, Maurice. “The Sopranos and the American Dream.” Queen’s Quarterly 112, no. 3 (2005): 382(12).
Young, James E., and David William Foster. “Documentary Narrative.” PMLA 99, no. 5 (1984): 998-99.

Endnotes

[1] Matteo Garone, “Gamorrah,” (Italy: 2008), Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah, trans. Virginia Jewiss (New York: Picador, 2007).
[2]  Kevin Donnelly, “Educational programming,” in The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber (London: British Film Institute 2001), 138.
[3] Jill Godmilow and Ann-Louise Shapiro, “How real is the reality in documentary film?,” History and Theory 36, no. 4 (1997), 84.
[4] Devillier Donegan Enterprises, Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. Medici. Index | Pbs (Public Broadcasting Service, 2004 [cited 1/11 2008]); available from http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/medici/.
[5] Devillier Donegan Enterprises, Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. For teachers. Lesson 2 | Pbs (Public Broadcasting Service, 2004 [cited 2/11 2008]); available fromhttp://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/resources/lesson2.html.
[6] Alessandro Camon, “The Godfather and the mythology of Mafia,” in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy, ed. Nick Browne (Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
[7] Martha P. Nochimson, “Waddaya Lookin’ At? Re-Reading the Gangster Genre Through ‘The Sopranos’.” Film Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2002), 3.
[8] Peter E. Bondanella, Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos (New York: Continuum, 2004), 192-193.
[9] Bondanella, Hollywood Italians, 193.
[10] Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
[11] Charles Montgomery Hammond, The Image Decade: Television Documentary, 1965-1975 / by Charles Montgomery Hammond, Jr (New York: Hastings House, 1981), 67.
[12] Devillier Donegan Enterprises, Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. For Teachers. Lesson 2 | Pbs.
[13] Dale Vivienne Kent, “Illegitimate and Legitimating Passions in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Political Discourses,” Cultural and Social History 2, no. 1 (2005).
[14] Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 259
[15] See Kent’s groundbreaking study. D. V. Kent, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434(Oxford [Eng.]; New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
[16] Vera Dika, “The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather,” in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy, ed. Nick Browne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 80.
[17]  Dika, “The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather.”, 79.
[18] Dika, “The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather.”, 105.
[19] Devillier Donegan Enterprises, Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. Show. Behind the Scenes | Pbs(Public Broadcasting Service, 2004 [cited 1/6 2009]); available fromhttp://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/show/scenes.html.
[20] Fred Gardaphé, From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities (New York: Routledge, 2006), 157.

Created on: Sunday, 20 December 2009