Charli Eiseler Blog #1
Blog #1
Charli Eiseler
Nuovomondo is an Italian/French film directed by Emanuele Crialese, and released in 2006. In this essay, I will review and analyze this film, understanding its filmography, use of imagery, relationship between real and surreal, and how it explains migration in a new light.
The attention to detail and the amount of thought in every scene in this film is quite mesmerizing. In all, there were many scenes that alluded to an underlying theme, but there were a few that made a lasting impact. One of the earlier scenes occurred when the Mancuso family was boarding the ship that would take them to the “New World”. The camera is shot from a bird’s eye view and you can see what seems to be a huge mass of people standing, awaiting their departure. Slowly the mass begins to separate, as the, “distance between ship and harbor is like a wound that opens up,” and at first you can’t tell which side is land and which is ship (Heyer-Caput, 278). This scene makes you wonder who’s leaving, who’s staying, and you get to see how a part of them that is getting left behind. Like a wound, they must lose a part of themselves in order to start a new life, and a new beginning in America.
Another captivating scene is captured when there is a brutal storm in the middle of the night when the emigrants are sailing in the Atlantic. From the beginning, the area where the Mancuso’s, and other lower class migrants, are resting, is almost completely dark. As they speak you only get to catch a glimpse of the structure of their face from the candlelight. The darkness creates a somber and depressing tone that gives you somewhat of a passage into what it would have really been like to be on the boat. The director of photography, Agnes Godard, claimed that he, “wanted real darkness, a darkness made for rats, not human beings” (Heyer-Caput, 275). Once the storm comes, all, “distinctions of gender, provenance, work, and even class are erased in the course of this dramatic moment” (Teresa Fiore, 46). Everyone was being thrown around the boat, no one had any advantage, making them all equals. This view demonstrated how everyone was going through the same realities and the same fears of coming to the New World.
The use of imagery and realism played a huge role in the style of this film. Some critics criticized the “hyperrealism” that Crialese depicts with his use of enlarged vegetables and animals, the coins raining on Salvatore, and the milk seas. After the initial impact of the surreal imagery, I could understand how Salvatore’s imagination had an influence on him. The coins showering him could be explained as a sign from God, telling him that emigration from Italy would bring him good fortune. On the other hand, the milk scenes were, and still are, very hard for me to completely understand. The only understanding I can make is in the closing scene when Salvatore and Lucy, and then multiple other immigrants, swim in the milk. To me I can conclude this as them being able to swim to America and begin their new lives. Compared to the beginning when Salvatore could not swim well, this shows how he has transitioned into this “new” Italian self, who is an immigrant in the United States. As the camera pans out, you can also conceive the swimmers to look as if they are birds flying through a white sky, giving the same perception. This imagery is very obscure, therefore, I believe most viewers do have a hard time appreciating the artistic moments.
Nuovomondo did tell one story of the Mancuso family, but it also shed light on a part of Italian migration that most people do not recognize. The Italians initially decided to migrate to the United States after the initial junction of Italy in 1890. Italians wanted to leave their “Old World” and settle into a new life that was possible in America, but the stereotypes and discourses that separated them in Italy ended up following them. Previous immigrants to the United States consisted almost exclusively of Northern and Western Europeans, whom, “were more or less closely allied to [Americans] racially, historically, socially, industrially and politically” (Nelson Moe, 1). Therefore, these new Italians coming majorly from the South were seen as inferior, even to Northern Italians. Italians remained the only ethnic group to be divided into two different “races or peoples” during immigration. The process of coming to America ended up creating a new kind of Italian outside of Italy. The migration process, alone, exposed people in ways they never expected; though, in a way, “something had to be lost so that something else could be created” (Teresa Fiore, 48).
The title, Nuovomondo, itself explains the junction of two different worlds creating something new and different, but maybe not perfect. Emanuele Crialese takes you on an artistic adventure in his film by utilizing his talent for hyperrealism. This technique gives him an edge against any other Italian immigration film. He is able to demonstrate the real-life feelings of life during the late 19th century and also visualize the fears, hopes, and dreams, that envelop an immigrants thoughts. This film breaks boundaries that not many directors are willing to take, but this bravery allows a new view of , “the complex map of departures, arrivals, and returns that have made Italy into a circularly diasporic place”(Teresa Fiore, 40).