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Crosland's The Jazz Singer has the related quandary, the Italianate eye on the Lower East Side benefits Leone's Once Upon a Time in America. Tale of the Goldfish family, Papa (Jean Hersholt) "makes only jokes and no money" while Mama (Rosa Rosanova) dotes on their boy, such an enterprising lad that he suggests a fire sale right after the tenement goes up in flames. He grows into a slick art dealer (Ricardo Cortez), changes his name and moves to Fifth Avenue, his parents rattle inside the cold mansion. His sister (Lina Basquette) retains the Delancey Street spirit in the rarefied realm ("We're a couple of Goldfishes, Papa—but we're in the wrong bowl") and falls for the struggling songwriter (Rex Lease) who gets unwittingly involved in a jewelry robbery. Immigrants and the American Dream, what is gained and what is lost. "Nobody ever laughs here—I ain't even heard a smile." A transitional vision, Old and New World, silent fluency and talkie tableau, full of themes dear to Frank Capra. Challah bread and prayer shawls have no place in the son's pursuit of affluence and status, the yarmulke gives way to the ritzy shower cap. The sister and her beau embrace among the shadowy grids of the police station, a foreglimpse of Lang's You Only Live Once. The old mensch withers from heartbreak, is briefly revived by news of a grandchild, gets mortally wounded by filial shame. An exasperated sigh cracks the deadpan of the butler (Syd Crossley): "Jerusalem!" Penn in Four Friends remembers the deathbed chuckle between generations, the closing image of the solitary scion entombed in wealth strikingly anticipates The Godfather Part II. With Jack Raymond, Martha Franklin, Julanne Johnston, and Virginia Marshall. black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |