Nuovomondo wins critical acclaim, illuminates family histories

By Shira Strassman

ROME, Dec. 5—Italians are getting a unique kind of history lesson at their local movie theaters this autumn thanks to film director Emanuele Crialese, who tells the story of early 20^th-century immigration from Italy to the U.S. in his film "Nuovomondo".

At the world premiere at the Venice Film Festival   it won the coveted Silver Lion award. And despite less-than-impressive ticket sales, it was chosen to represent Italy as its best foreign-language film for the 2006 Academy Awards.  

"Nuovomondo", or “New World,” has been named for its English-speaking audiences throughout Europe and the U.S. as "The Golden Door".  Both titles  capture the initial optimistic spirit that sweeps over the film’s characters—namely, a Sicilian family that abandons their strenuous work as farm laborers for the prospect of a better life in America.

In his 112 minute-long piece, Crialese combines documentary-like accounts of fictional characters and the harsh conditions once faced by real immigrants on a filthy, overcrowded passenger ship, with dreamlike images of America.  Visions of oversized onions and rivers of milk are used symbolically to illustrate the immigrants’ surreal expectations.  The trials they encounter on board and later at Ellis Island reveal the miserable circumstances surrounding the attempt to re-settle.

For some Italian-Americans who have viewed the film in Rome, the images in "Nuovomondo" provide a glimpse into their own ancestral history.  The grandchild of Italian immigrants, student Maria Giangiulio, a history major at JCU, is one of many Americans in Rome that saw the film; it was a class assignment that turned out to be a surprisingly enlightening experience for the Pennsylvania native.

Giangiulio’s conception of her own Italian heritage, previously based on scraps of stories she heard from her nostalgic aunt, and her use of imagination, is now much more concrete. 

“It was so sad that families had to be divided,” Giangiulio said, referring to a scene in which some family members were denied admission to the States and deported back to Sicily.  “They went through hell.”

Crialese may not have broken any box office records, but he did succeed in generating new insights into Italian-American immigration history.  In its season-appropriate release, what resembles an Italian version of the Thanksgiving story examines a new facet of Italy’s past, and perhaps even more. It sheds light on the fabric of immigrants that created America’s present.