A Bronx Tale
Blue Collar Tragedy & A Kingpin's Folly Pt.1
A Bronx Tale is a film that I love & hate equally, on one hand it's an examination on society and a meditation on the age old question of whether it's more noble or even worth while to live life as a common working man or to bend or break the rules society has set in place in order to live a life of total freedom by any means necessary…even if the methods of acquisition are Taboo & unethical?
Before the aforementioned question however,wouldn't be answered for awhile as the story begins with a bizarre tangent of a narration by the flicks primary protagonist Calogero Anello later nicknamed “C”.
Now I'm not opposed to a tad bit of narration at the start of a movie but I'm of firm belief that it should be relevant to the themes or the story as a whole. Calogeros bit of narration from the jump makes absolutely no sense and doesn't connect to anything that's important to the story that goes on to unfold.
For one Calogero speaks about the essence of the times which in this case are the 1950’s probably not long severed from the WW2 era. He speaks about what he believes made that period of time memorable and magical and this all would've been well,good, & dandy IF he didn't abruptly start talking about the fine minutiae of doo-wop music and how there was a doo-wop group on every corner / how it was the sound that defined the decade.
FYI the Bronx tale is a diet Italian gangster flick with a more intimate spin or at least it was originally written to be. Given the type of movie I just described to you,the origin story of doo-wop is out of place,utterly irrelevant,and confusing to listen to when you start to realize what the story is actually going to be about.
As this movie progresses we're introduced to Lorenzo Anello C’s father played by Robert deniro & popular local kingpin & mobster Sonny Lospecchio.Unlike Sonny,Lorenzo Anello is known within the neighborhood as an earnest & hardworking blue collar family man and he's adored by all the passengers he transports from point A to B as a city bus driver.
Regrettably,this sort of notoriety and admiration isn't lucrative for the Anello family & despite how well he's liked by those in the community Lorenzo struggles to make a solid living and from what I observed seemed to always be running on E as far as money was concerned.
Of course,this lifestyle of grinding the asphalt does bring some discomfort to Calogero and his mother but for Lorenzo he finds nobility in poverty and is content to work his 9-5 with no ambitions of pushing himself further along towards something better simply because he is of the belief that he's achieved everything his own parents were never able to.
As a teenage Calogero ends up explaining years later during an argument with his old man, Lorenzo's parents came to America with nothing and worked like pack mules day after day in the hopes that their children would get to experience a more prosperous life than they were experiencing at the time.
In a way Lorenzo ends up achieving the dream of his parents but only slightly, Lorenzo's parents for all of their hard work suffering, and sacrifices ended up exiting the world the same way they had came into it…with absolutely nothing.
It's unfortunate but Lorenzo thanks to his stubbornness and seemingly overly romanticized perspective of the American working class and the American system overall is on a speed run to end his own Story in very similar circumstances with perhaps only a little bit more than his parents had in the twilight years of their own lives.