Confused Religious and Ethnic History

Rating: Null/10 (11 May 2004)

In this movie, Protestant Italians face off against Roman Catholic Irish, and are sometimes visited by "Anglo-Dutch" rich Christians. My favorite line in Martin Scorsese's commentary is his statment, "It probably is unfair to say Anglo-Dutch because I think-- whatever that American stock was that came from the 17th Century..." Yes, quite the historian, eh? He crammed a bunch of Chinese into the movie with the defense that we don't know that they weren't there, but he completely ignored a very large population of Germans, who we do know were there. In fact, my Mom's family was part of a group of 30 thousand people who landed in New York in 1710 from Germany. But this movie never rises to the level of accuracy that needs concern itself with such details. As Mr. Scorsese says, this is a mix of fiction (or opera) and fact, the facts being used when useful to the story. It is science fiction in reverse. My impression, which I had many times, even when I first watch the movie, was that it was a live-action comic book. Several scenes really look like pages from a modern comic book (a good example is the scene in which Priest Valleron poses in front of his assembled gang before the battle).