To millions of moviegoers around the world, Robert De Niro is the epitome of the Italian man.
But the tough guy image and parts in blockbusters such as The Godfather II have not endeared him to some Americans of Italian descent.
On Thursday, it emerged that an influential Italian-American organisation had appealed to Silvio Berlusconi, asking the prime minister to cancel Italy’s plan to award De Niro honorary citizenship.
The Order of the Sons of Italy in America (Osia), which is based in Washington and has 600 000 members and donors, and describes itself as the oldest and largest association of its kind, is indignant that the actor has ”made a career of playing gangsters of Italian descent”.
It is particularly annoyed that De Niro is to star in a Steven Spielberg children’s film which is, it says, deeply offensive and will instil in young people the idea that Italians are all mafiosi.
The group has been asking Spielberg’s company, DreamWorks, since last autumn to edit what it considers the most offensive aspects of the film, Shark Tale, before it is shown at next month’s Venice film festival and launched in the US in October.
According to Osia, Spielberg’s company has responded by saying that it does not believe the film, in which De Niro plays the voice of a shark that Osia says is a classic godfather figure, will cause offence.
”This man [Spielberg] is going to make millions of dollars with a film that is going to introduce unflattering and untrue stereotypes of Italian-Americans as gangsters to millions of children,” said Dona de Sanctis, Osia’s deputy executive director.
The organisation faxed Berlusconi on Tuesday to demand that the actor not be given the citizenship accolade.
”He has done nothing to promote Italian culture in the United States. Instead, the Osia and its members hold him and his movies responsible for considerably damaging the collective reputations of both Italians and Italian-Americans,” the group said.
The letter, copied to Italy’s minister for Italians abroad, also pointed out that for Italy to confer such an honour on De Niro would be perceived as an insult by millions of Italian-Americans who have long objected to the actor’s ”distorted and unbalanced portrayal of people of Italian heritage”. Andy Spahn, a DreamWorks spokesperson, rejected Osia’s criticism. ”This organisation has not even seen the film, so we are somewhat perplexed. It’s an animated movie about colourful fish. I can’t see how that can offend anyone.”
Spahn acknowledged that some of the underwater characters in the film have Italian accents and names. But, he said, ”at no point in the film does any fish say ‘I’m Italian’.”
Italy’s culture ministry confirmed that Giuliano Urbani, the minister in charge of the citizenship ceremony in Venice next month, did not intend to comment on Osia’s intervention but said that he ”has not changed his mind” on the award.
In Ferrazzano, the village which De Niro’s great grandparents left in search of the US dream in the late 19th century, most of its 3 280 residents are among his greatest fans and are adamant that he should be formally made an Italian. He does not officially qualify for a passport because neither his parents nor his grandparents were Italian born.
”He is a great actor and unfortunately cinema has to show people’s little defects,” said Giovanni Gianfelice, mayor of Ferrazzano, in the southern Molise region.
”The fact is that the mafia never operated here in Molise, and we know that. They were in Sicily and Calabria.”
De Niro was born in New York in 1943, and has never visited the village.
Locals say that though there are no direct De Niro family descendants in the village — they left en masse to escape poverty at the end of the 19th century — those who still live there are fanatical supporters of De Niro and his films.
Every August for eight years, the village’s now wealthy population of lawyers, doctors and office workers, most of who commute to work in the nearby town of Campobasso, has turned out for a week long festival of De Niro films.
”We’re proud of De Niro because he is the best actor in the world and comes from Ferrazzano,” said Mariassunta Baranello, organiser of the festival.
”Our history has good and bad bits. You cannot just deny the past. And after all, it is only cinema.” – Guardian Unlimited Â