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Socialist Review, February 1994

Lawrence Wong

Reviews
Films

Growing pains

From Socialist Review, No. 172, February 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

A Bronx Tale
Dir: Robert de Niro

A Bronx Tale, Robert De Niro’s directorial debut in which he also stars, is set in an Italian neighbourhood in 1960s New York and tells the story of a boy learning values in the process of growing up.

Nine year old Calogero Anello’s loyalties and imagination revolve around two figures – his father Lorenzo (De Niro) who is a bus driver and Sonny (Chazz Palminteri) who is a gangster. Calogero is the sole witness to an incident where Sonny shoots a man dead over a parking space.

Should Calogero rat on Sonny when he is interviewed by the police? Instead, Calogero and Sonny become good friends. As Sonny’s ‘special friend’ Calogero discovers and enjoys a newfound attention in the neighbourhood.

Lorenzo, concerned by this development in his son’s life, tries to explain that it is not out of love, but fear, of Sonny that Calogero enjoys the neighbourhood’s attention, and that it is the working man who grafts an eight hour day who is the real hero.

Next it is 1968. Calogero, now 17, hangs around outside his club. Against all respectable social convention and peer group pressure he falls for Jane Williams, who is intelligent and beautiful, but black.

What chance does romance have in a neighbourhood reeking of racism and prejudice? In 1968, change may be blowing in the wind, but not before we learn how easy it is to hurl racial abuse or that the oppressed can sometimes hurt innocent whites. De Niro at no point equates racist bigotry with the fury against racism. Calogero’s white racist friends set out to attack a club in a black neighbourhood with guns because their club had been pelted with eggs.

Calogero is extricated from his friends’ influence by Sonny who saves Calogero from what would otherwise have been a tragedy. Sonny’s advice is that if you feel that you need to judge a girl, test her on the basis of her character and not her skin colour. Calogero has learnt from two very different men about life and love and accepting people for what they are.


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