Representation of ethnic immigrants in American film

DEFINITION: Motion pictures depicting immigrant experiences in America

SIGNIFICANCE:The images of ethnic immigrants in Hollywood feature films change with changing attitudes and also help in producing changes in their audience’s attitudes. For the most part, ethnic images early on were used for comic effect, but over the years the immigrants’ images and their plights have been more realistically and sympathetically portrayed on the screen.

Of the films made during the early silent era only a few dealt explicitly with immigration. One of the first was The Italian (1915), which offered a realistic portrayal of Italian immigrants pursuing the American Dream. In the film, Beppo Donnetti travels to America to make enough money to satisfy his fiancé’s father and have her join him in New York. They have a son who becomes ill, and Beppo does not have enough money for medicine. After he fails to get money and support from Corrigana local politicohe gets into trouble and spends five days in jail. When he is released, he finds out that his son has diedcrushing his belief in the American Dream.

Charles Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917) took a slightly different tack. Although his character’s ethnicity is not identified, Chaplin’s Little Tramp has been identified by some critics as Jewish. Chaplin himself was not Jewish, but he always refused to deny being Jewish. In what is a comedy with a happy ending there are, nevertheless, realistic touchesespecially dealing with Ellis Island officialscritical of the United States.

Another silent film of note is John Ford’s Four Sons (1928), a film dealing with the problems a Bavarian mother faces in her hometown when one of her sonswho emigrated to the United Statesfights for the Americans in World War I. The film is interesting not only because it has little in common with Ford’s later films but also because it presents a cultural clash from a non-American point of view.

At the end of the silent era, The Jazz Singer (1927)starring Al Jolson in blackfaceappeared. The plot involves a young Jew who does not want to follow in his cantor father’s footsteps, but desires instead to appear in a secular world of show business. The filmlike several others featuring Jewsinvolves cultural conflicts and the gradual movement away from past traditions.

Early Sound Era

Where Is My Child? (1937) continued the theme of Jewish travails and suffering in the immigration experience. In this film a widowed Jewish motherdestitute and newly arrived in New York Cityplaces her son in an orphanage. After he is adopted, she regrets her decision and then spends the next twenty years of her life searching for her son. Although there is a happy ending, the film demonstrates there is a price to be paid for the advantages of living in the United Stateshealth, family ties, and religion.

In a lighter vein, the Marx Brothers’ film Monkey Business (1931) presents brothers as stowaways on an American-bound ship. Although the brothers are not identified as Jews, the humor in the filmwhich is decidedly Jewishpokes fun at the immigration procedures at Ellis Island and the conventions and values of white Anglo-Saxon American society.

My Girl Tisa (1948) starred Lilli Palmer as a young immigrant who works hard to save money to bring her father to the United States, only to be duped by her travel agent, exploited, and intimidated by the owner of the sweatshop in which she works. She is threatened with deportation before she is rescued by none other than President Theodore Roosevelt at Ellis Island. There she also miraculously meets her father. The film is essentially a comedy, but it offers at least a superficial exploration of problems related to Ellis Island and immigration procedures, such as the fear of being deported, language problems, tough working conditions, and political bosses who exploit their constituents.

The many Latin Americans who have immigrated to the United States have inspired a number of films about border crossings. One of the first of these is Border Incident (1949). A noir film about smuggling and exploiting illegal immigrants, it focuses on how undocumented aliens are knifed, robbed, and abandoned by their smugglerswho are ultimately brought to justice. Wetbacks (1956) also deals with smuggling aliens into the United States but has them arriving on fishing vessels. Once again, the smugglers are apprehended.

The most upbeat of the immigration-themed films during this period was I Remember Mama (1948)about a family of Norwegian immigrants living in San Francisco, California. Most of the action in the film occurs after 1910 and involves matriarch Marta Hanson’s struggles with a child’s illness, a son’s struggle to finance his education, and various problems with her extended familywhich includes a cantankerous Uncle Chris. Narrated by Marta’s novelist daughter, the film tends toward sentimentalism but was nevertheless an enormous hit with both audiences and critics and inspired a popular television series of the same name.

The 1970s and Later

There were few significant films about immigration during the 1960s, but beginning with the 1970s there were dozens of films involving not only Jews, Mexicans, and Italians but also Indians, Hondurans, Iranians, and Swedes.

Perhaps the best 1970s film about Jewish immigrants is Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street (1975) about life in the Jewish ghetto of the lower East Side of New York City. In the film, Jake comes to New York and is “Americanized”abandoning his Jewish traditions. When his wife Gitljoins him a year later, she brings with her the Old World clothes, hairstyle, traditions, and valuesall of which Jake has renounced. Jake has fallen for Mamiea Jewish woman who is also Americanizedand Gitl has to fend for herself. She and Jake take in a boarder named Bernstein, who studies the Torah and retains his Jewish culture. Gradually, he and Gitlwho divorces Jakeget together, but both couples are affected by their residence in the United States. Jake and Mamie are more obviously Americanized, but even Gitl and Bernstein are changing. The film deals realistically with sweatshops, the ghetto, poverty, and cultural conflicts, but it suggests that assimilationthough it entails the loss of some customs and traditionsis possible and even healthy.

Director Barry Levinson’s Avalon (1990)an autobiographical film about his Jewish family from Eastern Europereceived more critical and box office support. The Krichinsky family settles in Baltimore, becomes prosperous because of their hard work, and eventually assimilates into American culture. Although the family is never explicitly identified as Jewish, Christmas gifts are called “holiday” gifts, and the grandmother’s funeral is conducted in a cemetery in which the star of David can be seen on gravestones. Although the familywhose members live close to one anothercomes into money through their successful appliance store, some of its members become disillusioned with the American Dream. Two male members of the family change their names, signaling a break from the past. Growing affluence, changing attitudes toward the elderly, and the increasing influence of television are responsible for the drift away from old values and the past. However, what happens to the Krichinskys happened to the entire nation. One critic called the filmwhich received several awardsLevinson’s “bittersweet mosaic.” Levinsonwho also wrote the film’s screenplaywon a Writer’s Guild of America award for best original screenplay.

Negative and Positive Stereotypes

Thanks to films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy (1972, 1974, and 1990), the Italian immigrant experience became popularly associated with the Mafia and Sicilians. After the first Godfather film was released in 1972, there were many protests about the anti-Italian feelings that it was alleged to have created. The second film describes the arrival of the Sicilian Corleone family in New York and concerns the family’s rise to gangland prominence in the United States. The films depict poverty in the Italian ghettos, clashes between Italian and Anglo-American cultures, police corruption, and political patronage. The films garnered many awardsincluding Oscars for best picture, actor, supporting actors, screenplay, and directorand the first film was rated as one of the best one hundred films by the American Film Institute.

After becoming settled in America, Italian immigrants encountered problems not only in assimilation, but also in exploitation. Blood Red (1988) recounted the difficulties Italians faced in Northern California. Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1990) focused on a family’s struggles in 1925 Colorado. Tarantella (1995) depicted a different challengehow assimilated Italian Americans become reconciled to their Italian pasts. Director Martin Scorsesewhose own body of work has presented a kind of kaleidoscopic history of the entire Italian immigrant experiencecalled Italian director Emanuele Crialese’s Nuovomondo (2009; released as The New World in the United States) the film that best balanced the Old World values of Sicily against the New World of the United States. Crialese’s film depicted the superstitions of Sicily and the rigorous Ellis Island tests to determine just who is “fit” to pass through the “Golden Door.”

The Scandinavians, Irish, and Chinese were more fortunate than the Italians in the ways in which their emigration experiences were portrayed on the screen. Perhaps because Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club (1989) was a best seller widely read in book clubs, the film adapted from her book in 1993 was a successful rendering of the fates of four Chinese women who immigrated to the United States. Their emotional and cultural “baggage” was reflected in the relationships they have with their daughters, who assimilated into the American mainstream.

The Manions of America (1981) was the “rags-to-riches” story of an immigrant who left Ireland during the potato famine and established himself and his family in a new country. Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise appeared in a similar story in Far and Away (1992). Not all films about Irish immigrants were as positive. Gangs of New York (2002), Martin Scorsese’s violent film about rival gangs in New York City’s Five Corners, depicted the grinding poverty, the political exploitation of the Irish, and their forced induction into the Union Army during the Civil War.

Jim Sheridan’s In America (also 2002) focused on modern immigrants from Ireland to the United States through Canada and offers viewers a more complex cast of characters. Despite some problems the family encounters, the film is ultimately uplifting. An example of stereotyping Irish immigrants is provided by James Cameron’s ponderous Titanic (1997), in which the Irish passengers traveling across the Atlantic in steerage were depicted as the good peoplein sharp contrast to their wealthy, snobbish, and ruthless Anglo-Saxon counterparts aboard the doomed passenger liner.

The Swedes may have fared best. Jan Troell’s The Emigrants (1972)with a cast headed by Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydowtraced a family’s decision to leave Sweden through their eventual settling in Minnesota. Troell followed this filmwhich won major awards for acting and directingwith The New Land (1973). The latter film continued the family’s story of survival in their new land, where members of the family faced Indian attacks and were involved in the US Civil War.

Border Settings

The US-Mexican border have been the subject of many Hollywood films. The cowboy film hero Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd) appeared in Border Patrol in 1943. However, the emphasis on exploitation switched to problems with American corruption at the border. For example, Tony Richardson’s The Border (1982) presented actor Jack Nicholson’s struggles with the criminal element within his own law-enforcement agency.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) concerned racism within the US Border Patrol. In this film, a racist Border Patrol agent kills a Mexican attempting to cross into the United States illegally. The murdered man’s friend forces the killer to return his victim’s body to his hometown in Mexico. During their ensuing journey, the racist agent begins to comprehend the implications of his act and may even find redemption. The film is more concerned with the killer and the victim’s friend than it is with the actual burial ground, which may not be really found.

Under the Same Moon (2007) also concerns the US-Mexican border. However, this somewhat sentimental film, which resembles Central Station (1998) in its plot involving the reunion of a boy with a parent, was, despite some danger in crossing the border, a realistic look at the economic plight of undocumented aliens working in the United States and the courage and compassion of Mexicans. The evolving friendship between the boy and a cynical loner who helped him find his mother is one of the highlights of the film. Each proved willing to sacrifice himself for the other near the end of the film.

In the film Sin Nombre (2009), different characters from Latin American countries met and clashed with Mexican gang members on a train as they made their way along Mexico's border in the hopes of crossing into America to make better lives for themselves.

Culture Clashes

In a more somber vein, the cultural clash depicted in House of Sand and Fog (2003) is the tragic tale of an Iranian immigrant, played by Ben Kingsley, who wanted to live out the American Dream by buying a house being sold cheaply because of its unpaid taxes so he can “flip” it for a profit. His purchase, which wasstrictly speakinglegal was at the expense of a young woman who thought she was inheriting the house free and clear. Her determination to regain the house and the Iranian’s desire to keep what is legally his results in the death of his son and the suicides of both him and his wife.

Another tragic film involving a cultural clash was director Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2009)which was overlooked by the Motion Picture Academy. The film featured Eastwood as Waltan eighty-year-old retiree and Korean War veteran whose speech is choked with ethnic slurs and misunderstandings. His neighbors were Hmongthe Southeast Asian hill people who aided the United States during the Vietnam War and were assimilating to American ways. Eventually, Walt was drawn into the Hmong community and befriends the shy son who did not want to join a gang of Hmong hoodlums. After he caught the boy trying to steal his Gran Torino automobile, Walt took him under his wing. He taught the boy how to use tools, got him a job, and taught him how to “speak American.” When members of the Hmong gang continued to harass his neighbors, Walt went to their aid. The grateful Hmong community, with their foodincluding beerand hospitality win Walt over. To free his neighbors from gang harassment, Walt does not adopt the Hmong waywhich would include violent revenge. Instead, he concocts a carefully planned scheme that induced the gang to gun him down when he had no weapon. As he lied in a Christ-like crucifixion pose, the police took the members of the gang away. At his funeral, members of his own estranged family sat on one side of the churchthe Hmong, his extended family, fill the other side. In his will Walt left his Gran Torino to his surrogate son rather than to his spoiled granddaughter. Walt’s redemptive sacrifice saved the people he initially scorned.

While many of the immigration films focus on Ellis Island, the poverty of the ghettos, the exploitation of immigrants, and the problems of assimilation and do tend to stereotype immigrant groups, later films were more sympathetic and realistic in the ways in which individual immigrants are portrayed. The characters had different customs, but they were also real people with many of the same problems native-born Americans face.

Contemporary Films about the General Immigrant Experience

In 2013, James Gray's film The Immigrant premiered in theatersabout a Polish woman who struggled to find her way in 1920s New York after being separated from her sister at Ellis Island and becoming involved with the world of prostitution. Two years later, the film adaptation of Irish writer Colm Tóibín's novel Brooklyn was released to critical praise. Just as the film version of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake (2006) focuses on an Indian immigrant's attempt to establish an American identity even as his parents remained determined to hold on to their Indian traditions, Brooklyn told the story of an Irish immigrant who moved to America in an effort to gain more opportunities and establish a better life in the 1950showever, when she was compelled to return to Ireland, she must choose between two lives in two different nations.

Movies focusing on immigrant issues also explore negative social impacts of American consumerism.  2004’s Maria Full of Gracestarring Catalina Sandino Morenodepicted a Colombian woman who served as a drug courier“mule.” To escape the grinding poverty and harsh working conditions in Colombia, the protagonist Maria agreed to smuggle cocaine into the US to feed its insatiable demand for narcotics. She did this by ingesting packets of cocaine which are later recovered from her digestive system.  Maria also agreed to the desperate plan because she was pregnant with her boyfriend's child. She arrived in New York City with an accomplice she befriended. This other woman was killed when the cocaine packets burst inside of her. Instead of returning to Colombia, Maria remained in the United States where her unborn baby will be born an American citizen.    

Reflective of an under-represented aspect of the American immigrant experience, The Big Sick was a 2017 comedy starring Pakistani American comic Kumail Nanjiani. Born in Karchi, Pakistan Nanjiani co-wrote the movie with his American-born wife Emily Gordon. The movie drew inspiration from their true-life relationship. In the movie, Kumail must balance the demands of his traditionally minded parents with his own desires to lead a mainstream American life. This was most poignantly displayed by his parent's efforts to force Kumail into an arranged marriage with a woman of Pakistani descent. Kumail refuses to cooperate and begins a serious and secret relationship with an American woman. When his parents discover this secret aspect of Kumail’s life, as well as his doubts about his Muslim faith, they disown him and disavow further contact with him. 

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