NR | 1h 41m | Drama | 1949
Aesthetically, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “House of Strangers” may have inspired Francis Ford Coppola’s, “The Godfather,” but Mankiewicz’s film is the superior moral statement. No matter how arresting Coppola’s film is, he merely shows a masculinity that’s misguided. Mankiewicz rebukes it as misguided and adds that it needn’t be.
Italian American Gino Monetti (Edward G. Robinson) first ran a barbershop in New York, then a ruthless bank-and-loan business. Now, he and his wife Theresa (Esther Minciotti) savor the spoils with their adult sons, the ambitious Joe (Luther Adler), birdbrained Pietro (Paul Valentine), playboy Tony (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), and cocky lawyer Max (Richard Conte).
Gino brags about working hard only for their sake but, in fact, cares only about money and influence. Contemptuous of the others, Gino is soft on Max, the only son devoted to him rather than to his the family’s wealth. Aware of how each son cares for him, Gino sets their pecking order in the bank. Brooding, the other brothers bide their time.
Engaged to marry the submissive Maria Domenico (Debra Paget), Max falls for a spirited client of his, Irene Bennett (Susan Hayward). Maria ends up marrying Tony. Joe and his scheming brothers have Max jailed for twisting the law to save Gino, who’s been charged with lending malpractice. That’s all the spurned brothers need to unseat a now-beleaguered Gino, with his collapsing home, now no more than a house of strangers.
Before dying, Gino bequeaths his inheritance to Max, goading him to swear to enact vengeance on his brothers. Once he’s out of jail, Max keeps hearing Irene’s loving, truthful warning against mindlessly mimicking Gino’s guile; but he’s spent a lifetime listening to Gino. As his brothers encircle him, will he return their spite or shake free of their corrosive culture?
Told largely in flashback, this film won Robinson global recognition (Best Actor award at Cannes). He received an inexcusably belated Honorary Oscar. Over a spellbinding five-decade-long career, Robinson never managed even one Oscar nomination, let alone a win.
Transformative Womanhood
If Irene symbolizes how crucial a woman can be in actively shaping a man’s choices, Theresa, Maria, and Diana (Joe’s wife) symbolize how inconsequential they can be by their moral passivity. Joe and Max wonder: Should they be mere shadows of themselves, shallow copies, like Gino’s vain portraits hung on walls? Or should Joe and Max allow their inner selves to come alive?
Only Max suspects that, no matter how impressive, how he appears to others isn’t him, and his economic, social, or marital status isn’t who he is. Thanks to Irene, he is better defined by his moral choices.
Gino, however, doesn’t wonder. To him, what he has is who he is. So, he’s stunned that Theresa’s lamenting their luxury, “We poor Gino. When we only have barbershop, we rich. We love each other. The boys, you, me. Now is no more love. Is only hate.” But she’s too late; her years of passivity have only enabled Gino’s avarice.
Alien to him in 19th-century Italy, the New World’s 20th century is Gino’s ideal. A barber’s son needn’t become, or stay, a barber. But his little speech about this is superficial. Deep down he wants his sons to rubber stamp his arrogance, his ambition, and his animosity.
Irene differs. She shows Max that the man he is may be down to his family, but the man he stays must be down to the man he chooses to be. No, he’s not a victim of circumstance.
Mankiewicz’s saying that some Italians who were crooks, whether in Sicily or Palermo, came to America believing they could be nothing else. Others fought that belief. They redefined themselves as hard-working citizens, helping build great American institutions.
When Max is out of prison and out for revenge, his brothers warily fawn over him. But something in him says that he wants nothing to do with their ill-gotten lifestyle. “I kinda lost my taste for champagne. Cigars, too," he says.
For the flashback, Mankiewicz’s camera climbs the grand Monetti staircase, as Max drifts back into his past. Later, the camera watches him descend that staircase as he steps forward into his future.
That’s Mankiewicz turning street smarts on its head, as if to say: Real worth doesn’t lie, as some believe, in having things or money, but in being truthful and loving.
