A Bronx Tale

365 Films

Entry #22

A Bronx Tale (1993)

Directed by: Robert DeNiro

A Bronx Tale, Robert DeNiro’s directorial debut, concerns the coming of age and subsequent battle for the soul of one Calogero Anello.  The two opposing forces are the boy’s father Lorenzo and the local crime boss Sonny.  As Caloegero navigates the tricky tight rope between a law-abiding life and that of a hoodlum, a larger portrait of the Bronx in 1960s emerges.  A Bronx Tale originated as a one-man show created by Chazz Palmenteri (who also plays Sonny in the film).  In the transition from stage to screen the film wound up in the directorial hands of Robert DeNiro (who plays Lorenzo in the film).  I offer this bit of back-story to you now because none of it made a damn bit of sense to me when I watched the movie from beginning to end on its HBO Saturday night premiere.  In collecting my thoughts about A Bronx Tale, I began to feel a deep nostalgic longing for the HBO Saturday night movie.  Creating a legacy of quality the network has long since abandoned (this years premieres included The Three Stooges, Battleship, Project X, the list goes on and on…), the Saturday night movie offered me the window into a world of film outside of the multiplex.  Don’t get me wrong, they showed a lot of crap, but films like A Bronx Tale made the indelible impression upon me that Cliffhanger wasn’t the only option at the video store anymore.   Again, none of this mattered when I switched on the TV at eight o’clock on whatever long ago Saturday night that happened to be.  It’s possible that pure chance and coincidence drew to me to this film.  The funny thing is, there is one dialogue exchange in the film that I remember in exact detail.  The scene in question is when Sonny teaches Calogero about the door test.  The door test involves determining whether a potential date is right for you by observing if she reaches over to open the driver door in your car after you have opened the passenger door for her.  Why this patriarchal and antiquated ritual stuck with me for all these years I have no idea, but that’s literally all I remember.  Even the bare bones plot description I provided came from the wikipedia summary.  You might ask why in god’s name did you pick this film to write about for your 365 blog?  I have no conclusive answer for this.  I don’t remember the film at all but I remember how it served as an introduction to the acting titan known as Robert DeNiro.  I remember the tragic inevitability of the ending and how that shaped my view of the mob sagas I would consume ravenously in the coming years.  A Bronx Tale was where I started to connect the dots between the content on screen and the personality of the creators behind the scenes.  Even if I don’t remember the specifics, I will be forever grateful to it for that.