Caméra d’Or Year 15 (1992): John Turturro’s “Mac” (Feature Debut)

John Cassavetes’ films reflected as much sympathy for their characters as they did for the actors who played them, specificially his wife-actor Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara.

Influenced by Cassavetes’ work, Mac, John Turturro’s 1992 directorial debut, expresses as much affection for the craft of the actor as for the craft of the blue-collar laborer-hero at the center of his tale.

Grade: B

Mac

Mac won the Caméra d’Or award at the 1992 Cannes Film Fest and was later nominated for an Independent Spirit Award

Niccolo (Mac) Vitelli, the oldest of three brothers, becomes the head of their family after their father dies. Their father was in construction and the brothers follow in his footsteps.

At first, they work for Polowski, who cuts corners and does not do adequate job.  It does not help that he is verbally abusive to his employees, and has no pride in his work.

As a result, they start their own company – Vitelli Brothers Construction, which os meant to be the opposite of Polowski. Mac starts becoming a

With obsessive concern about the quality of their work, with worrying attention to detail, Mac turns into a  tyrannical workaholic. His intensity and driven ambition pushes his brothers away and breaks the family apart.

The film pays homage to Torturro’s late father, a carpenter who took tremendous pride in his work. Set in Queens in the 1950s, it’s a eulogy to a kind of immigrant experience that’s forever gone from the American scene.

In several respevts, Mac recalls Ken Loach’s Riffraff, a British working class dramedy about construction workers, but Torturro’s film is more romantic and less political than Loach’s, perhaps a reflection of the differences that previao between the nature of American and British labor.

The movie perceives carpenters as modern Van Goghs, working in brick and mortar, spackle and beam–“people who are artists and don’t even know it.” Celebrating craftsmanship, Mac concerns the costs of technological progress, the slipping standards of excellence in manual work. It’s about the end of the craftsman–a man who dreams of being independent and all the battles he has to go through to do that. Turturro is aware that “not everyone works with their hands, but the ones who do, there’s a sense of worth and they know who they are.” “People who just make money are always hysterical and they’re never at ease with themselves.”

Turturro conceived of the idea in 1980, first writing it as a play with Brandon Cole, then rewriting the script by himself, which took a whole decade.  In the process, scenes from the play were continuously revised with the actors’ collaboration.

In honing his craft, Turturro picked up a few tips from the indie directors he’d worked with, most notably Spike Lee and the Coen brothers. He also credits Italian neo-realist director, Vittorio De Sica, and Cassavetes as inspirational figures. Indeed, above all, Turturro’s work derives from Cassavetes: Mac is unmistakably an actor’s film, and like most actor-turned-directors, at times, Torturro relies too heavily on lengthy monologues and close-ups.

Even so, it’s rare for an American film to knowingly extol working-class life. The film charts the labors of Mac Vitelli (Turturro), a Queens carpenter who quits his job with an abusive contractor to go into business for himself. Set in the post-WWII suburban housing boom, while financial opportunities were abundant, Mac follows three brothers who start a partnership that eventually shakes up their personal relationships. Mac, the leader, is a task master whose perfectionism alienates his siblings. His hardspokeness can’t keep his brothers (Michael Badalucco and Carl Capotortol) in line, and eventually he executes his dream bitterly alone.

Turturro’s directing stumbles in the neophyte’s danger zone of clear structure and adequate pacing. His sensitive understanding is marred by a crude portrait of ethnicity and a tangled narrative. Nonetheless, there are some small, delightful scenes, as those in which Ellen Barkin, playing a beatnik, lures one of the brothers into bohemia.

The product of a working-class Italian-American family in Rosedale, Torturro started working summers with his father when he was ten. Since Turturro pere was too busy to teach his son the finer work, he was only allowed to do minor jobs, framing, wielding a hammer, mixing cement. Turturro recalled: “As a kid, I thought, ‘I’m not gonna be doing this,’ but then I got to appreciate it.”

Predictably, Turturro’s acting ambitions were resisted, with his father urging him to have something to fall back on, like teaching. It was a typical concern of an immigrant who, having come from Italy as a boy, always worried about putting food on the table and managing financial security.

Cast
John Turturro as Niccolo “Mac” Vitelli
James Madio as Young Niccolo “Mac” Vitelli
Michael Badalucco as Vico Vitelli
Katherine Borowitz as Alice Stunder
Carl Capotorto as Bruno Vitelli
Nicholas Turturro as Tony Gloves
Matthew Sussman as Clarence
Ellen Barkin as Oona Goldfarb
Dennis Farina as Mr. Stunder
Olek Krupa as Polowski
Steven Randazzo as Gus
Mike Starr as Firefighter
Joe Paparone as Papa
Aida Turturro as Wife
Mario Todisco as Joe “The Mule”
Harry Bugin as Patient
Michael Imperioli

Credits

Directed by John Turturro
Written by Turturro, Brandon Cole
Produced by Brenda Goodman, Nancy Tenenbaum
Cinematography Ron Fortunato
Edited by Michael Berenbaum
Music by Richard Termini, Vin Tese
Distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Company

Release date: Feb 19, 1993 (USA)

Running time: 117 minutes
Box office $471,120

Caméra d’Or Winning Films (1978-Present)