48. A Bronx Tale

In the wake of gangster-film glory (The Godfather Trilogy; Goodfellas) is a hidden masterpiece -- less vocal in its scope, but in ways more eternal in its counter-glorification of the Mafioso. Directed by Robert De Niro, A Bronx Tale is informed by the son of one whom the gangster-crime genre begot. Told, not in the same gritty strides as Mean Streets  or with the Romanticism of The Godfather or the ferocious authenticity of Goodfellas – A Bronx Tale emerges as more of a combination of all three film styles.

What makes the film so special is what it does with the confluence of those three distinct styles -- using realist, impressionistic and expressionistic devices to tell the first-ever coming-of-age gangster story. Calogero is a young neighborhood kid from Brooklyn who is torn between the grandiloquence of the local Skipper (Chaz Palmintieri) and the square decency of his father (De Niro).

The film freshened up a regurgitated genre, becoming the first of its kind in another way – a gangster film wherein the main focus is on the microcosmic elements of those affected by powerful street personalities but who remain outsiders to the world of syndicated racketeering. All other previous accounts -- from Raoul Walsh’s Regeneration  and William Wellman’s Public Enemy to Scarface and King of New York -- focused only on the antihero as he rose from oppression to power.

Critics and genre fans alike received the film enthusiastically. It played in crowded mainstream multiplexes, to which it garnered the cheers and applause of pundits. It wasn’t, and still isn’t, a hard film to like. De Niro, as first time director, infuses the powerful acting on display with an incendiary soundtrack of dichotomous emotional fervor and finds interesting ways throughout to comment on race (blacks), gender (ideas of manhood, the tribe mentality, women’s suffrage) and marginalized street politics (violence as a deterrent to making money, fear over love as the ultimate wielder of control, miscegenation).

Opening on more than 1,000 screens and backed by a formidable marketing push through TV and radio ads, it’s a mystery as to why the film only grossed $17 million. Add to this the inclusion of genre icon De Niro, and the mystery extends.

1993 -- Post-Cold War; beginning of the Clintonian Era -- saw a reflection of good spirits at the box office. The top moneymakers (Jurassic Park, Mrs. Doubtfire and The Fugitive) indicate a collective desire for adventure and escape.

One could easily suggest that the public wanted no part of the time-of-life realism offered in De Niro’s tale. But Carlito’s Way -- starring the other son of the gangster film, Al Pacino, and one of the best films of that decade -- ranked in the top 50 grossing films of the same year, though that film only cleared a little more than $36 million, which is less than the genre’s average.

Disregarding the sociology behind A Bronx Tale’s weak embrace by audiences and focusing strictly on the film’s aesthetic and filmic achievements, you’re left with a film that is as widespread as they come. (Jon Lap)