Say what you will about the mafia genre of film and, to a lesser extent, television. It certainly has helped redefine the stereotype of Italian Americans. Once thought of as wine-guzzling, pizza-making oafs who couldn’t win a world war to save their basil, hits like The Godfather, Goodfellas and The Untouchables helped redefine Italian Americans as wine-guzzling, pizza-making oafs who’ll break ya fuckin’ thumbs! Va fungul!
As an Italian-American, I can appreciate this.
The mafia movie is a sub-genre of gangster film, which seems to have fun with all ethnicities, like The Departed (Irish) and American Gangster (African Americans). Everyone’s a gangster. If you’re Amish, you’re a gangster.
A good soundtrack can help make or break a gangster film. I daresay Scarface (Cubans) would be far more watchable if it weren’t awash in ’80s synth and Donnie Brasco (more Italians) would have been enjoyable if it weren’t for its melodramatic music cues. Many gangster films pepper their soundtracks with Tony Bennett and that dreaded “That’s Amore” song. Some take a different approach. Scoresse particularly seems to enjoy twisting our minds so we associate “Layla” with Frank Sivero’s frozen corpse. Still, there are a lot of other easily overlooked musical gems in gangster films, and I’m only too happy to unearth them, get them to testify, and send them off to an undisclosed location as theFiver presents the:
Top 5 overlooked gangster film songs
1. “Comfortably Numb,” Roger Waters feat. Van Morrison & The Band > The Departed (Irish)
The Dropkick Murphys’ “Shipping Out To Boston” may be synonymous with Red Sox relief pitchers and Scorsese’s The Departed, but this live collaboration of Waters ‘n’ friends hits a certain bittersweet spot.
Comfortably Numb (Album Version) – Roger Waters feat. Van Morrison & The Band
2. “Remember (Walking In The Sand),” Shangrilas > Goodfellas (Italians)
3. “House of the Rising Sun,” The Animals > Casino (Italians, Jews, Dick Smothers)
Alright, lot of Scorsese, here. What can we say, he’s got a good ear, and he knows which melodramatic songs punctuates the fall of empires.
House Of The Rising Sun – THE ANIMALS
4. “If Love Is A Red Dress,” Maria McKee > Pulp Fiction (African Americans, Italians, Spanish, British, Red Necks, Scandanavians, Portguesse, Breakfast Cereals, Orangutans, Klingons …)
Maria McKee western-inspired ballad is heard only briefly in Pulp Fiction as its played on a radio right before some very bad things are about to happen to Butch and Marcel. Was Quinten Tarintino trying to juxtapose the song’s gentleness with the immenent violence, or was he just trying to use it to emphasize the fact that, hey, here’s some rednecks? On its own, “If Love Is A Red Dress” is sparse, lonely and strangely beautiful.
If Love Is A Red Dress (Hang Me In Rags) – Maria McKee
5. “Cavalleria Rusticana,” Carmine Coppola, Nino Rota > The Godfather Part III (Italians)
OK, OK, we know how everyone feels about The Godfather Part III. Settle down. Let’s take a look at the film’s climax, where assassination and conspiracy are juxtaposed against a bit of 19th century opera. It’s a device carried over from the two previous Godfather films, but ratcheted up a notch.
