This 2003 indie film is kind of like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but with Italians and gay men. Which means some will find its ethnic humour hilarious and its message uplifting, and others will be deeply offended. I lean more towards the former.

Based on a play of the same name by Steve Gallucio, this quirky comedy was written and directed by Quebecois playwright Émile Gaudreault (who co-wrote Edtv). It concerns Angelo Barberini, a young gay man whose parents Gino (Paul Sorvino) and Maria (Ginette Reno) emigrated to Montreal by mistake. (They didn't realize that there were two Americas: the real one, the United States, and the fake one, Canada; or that there were two Canadas: the real one, Ontario; and the fake one, Quebec.) They live in Montreal's Little Italy with their two grown children, Angelo and Anna. Angelo shocks his parents by refusing to get married and then moving out on his own. But all that is nothing when he reveals that his roommate and childhood friend, policeman Nino, is actually his lover. All hell breaks lose, for Angelo's family don't know how to deal with the shocking news and Nino is fundamentally unprepared to step out of his closet.

This is in many ways a predictable little movie, full of Italian stereotypes which could be massively cringe-inducing, but it's rendered interesting by witty dialogue, decent acting, and surrealistically lurid sets. The Barberini's home is all clashing gilt wallpaper and ornate draperies; Angelo seems to have an endless supply of headache-inducing patterned polyester shirts; and the travel agency where he works looks like nothing so much as a cheap computer school furnished with lime green homemade desks. Sorvino and Reno are particularly good in their roles as immigrant parents, arguing and egging each other on, and Mary Walsh does a funny turn as Nino's mother, though her Italian accent is unconvincing, in sharp contrast to theirs. Anna, Angelo's neurotic sister, is believable as she struggles to get out of her parents' house in the absence of a prospective groom, and the relatively unknown actors who play Angelo and Nino are quite convincing in their roles.

This is a light little movie that makes for a pleasant evening's viewing.

Where it was at

The sizzling summer of 1951 had a theme-song. Rosemary Clooney's "Come-On-A-My-House," a Mitch Miller-produced novelty song was making its way to the top of the popular music "charts". Released in June (just in time for bathing suit season — remember, this was when bikinis hadn't yet made the mainstream of acceptable fashion); the song was shocking to some because it contained much double entendre; almost too much for 1951 but just enough to make it a smash hit for Clooney (and a feather in producer Mitch Miller's cap).

Where it went

A pre-rock and roll popular music tune written in 1954 by Robert "Bob" Merrill, "Mambo Italiano" (as performed by Clooney) became a smash in the fall/winter of '54 and spring of 1955.

Exactly like "Come On-A-My-House," (based loosely on an Armenian traditional dance tune), "Mambo Italiano" was just a written-down and modernized version of a popular Italian traditional song. The ever-cheesy Miller decided that his "formula" for a novelty song could be reprised by virtually "stealing" yet another folk song, commanding Clooney to affect yet another accent, and adding the harpsichord (this time in a nearly creepy, frenetic solo) played by keyboard artist Stan Freeman. "Mambo Italiano" may not have surpassed the sales of "Come On-A-My-House" but arguably has out-lived the latter because of the song's extensive use in Mob Movies and also as a title for an independent film, produced after the new millennium.

One must take into context the incredible popularity of Latin and Afro-Cuban rhythms in popular music during the last half of the 1950s and early 1960s to understand why "Mambo Italiano" was a runaway hit. This song appealed to the masses who were caught up in the Mambo dance craze (and by extension to the Cha-Cha, Rhumba, Beguine and other Latin forms). The 'icing on the cake,' however, was that Clooney's believable and endearing faux-Italian accent, Italian diction and mention of so many things Italian assured the record a place in the record-bins of all but the most conservative Italian-American families of the time.

Now, Mitch Miller might have been capitalizing on a fad; but it worked for the A&R executive once again. The infectious sound of the Harpsichord played beautifully on the less-than-high-fidelity equipment of the time. The beat was frenetic; Clooney beckoned the listener to dance with the words "Shake-a baby shake-a 'cause I love-a how ya take-a-me." ("Take-a-me" being a somewhat more explicit reiteration of the double entendre of "Come-On-A-My-House" - offering delicious fruits to the singer's guest).

Years later, crooner Dean Martin came out with his own version, with a much less frenetic beat. The ASCAP list of performances on record, as well as the Dean Martin discography online, are silent as to exactly when this song was performed/released by Martin. It exists, nonetheless, on "The Essential Dean Martin," a compilation on Capitol records, released in 2004.

Clooney's much smoother, far-less-frenetic nod to her fans was a live recording done near the end of her life at the Rainbow Room, contained on Concord Records' "Rosemary Clooney: The Concord Years" (arguably the singer's finest body of work).

Imagery

A table of wiseguys is sitting in an exclusive club in New York; the young ladies present are wearing the latest fashions. After the stage show, one of the goons hands a $20 bill to the waiter and insists that "Mambo Italiano" be played by the dee-jay. She is dressed in a red bouffant party dress. Really red. The straps are spaghetti-thin. Her lipstick is the color of a fire-engine. Her hair is jet black and long and wavy. The guy's wearing a relatively expensive suit, is manicured from head to toe, but has the speech and carriage of a truck-driver. The couple spin and dance wildly (no normally "off-limits" area of the young woman's anatomy is any longer "off-limits" to the mobster's grasp.) They get into their black 1955 Chrysler Imperial and dash off into the darkness, presumably to some hot-pillow motel.


Fancy a large picnic; the children are running around, it's about 1960. Grandpa and the other elders are busy drinking homemade wine in the basement or grappa in the library of the house. The kids play the new 45-rpm records on their phonographs. Some of the young husbands and wives have had just one too many cocktails, and someone says, "hey; let's dance!"

Certainly, at this gathering of Italian-American family and friends, the song that eventually gets the most people up dancing around the patio is "Mambo Italiano."

SOURCES:

  • The writer's experience with this genre of music and this particular song.
  • Official Website of Rosemary Clooney: http://www.rosemaryclooney.com/discography.html
  • American society of Composers, Artists and Publishers (ASCAP): (Title Search): http://www.ascap.com/ace/search.cfm?
        Performer Search for Dean Martin: (came up empty on www.ascap.com)
  • IMDB.com (the movie database): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330602/

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