Saw The Golden Door, a very narrowly focused film about an Italian family immigrating to America in the 1920s. The film opens following a small family and, as they proceed through immigration, it widens into a broader look at specifically what went down in Ellis Island back then. The film employs elements of magical realism which are at first jarring but become lyrical at the end.
Combined with this trip across the Atlantic, there is a budding romance developing between the patriarch of the family and another immigrant woman. The film uses this relationship as a mirror for the excitement and anxieties of immigration. On the one hand, they strongly desire to immigrate, but are they fit enough? Are they worthy? These questions are reasonable for a relationship but less so for immigration. At one point, one of the immigrants berates the officers, demanding who they think they are, to judge ones worth? This contrast is brought to a peak in a scene where "brides" must be identified by their American "grooms" in a highly ritualized, government sanctioned ceremony overseen by a disinterested bureaucrat.
Early in the film, we spend a lot of time in the nearly medieval squalor of rural Italy, but the latter half of the film involves a lot of scenes of bureaucratic cruelty. The film has a spare, floating quality to it, featuring long silences and sudden tonal shifts. I found the film engrossing, although it was a bit of a downer. It feels like a glimpse into another time, another world, one which still exists to some extent.
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