Though the title of the film Nuovo Mondo means New World, this tale of Sicilian immigrants was released in America as Golden Door, a term often attributed to Ellis Island for its role in immigration.
Immigration at the turn of the 20th century was a different animal. While conflict, poverty, and natural disaster were still the thrust that drove people to find better life elsewhere, the reception was part of a broader construct. Admission into the United States was more than trying to ensure the newcomers did not carry infectious disease. It was part of a mindset that admitting inferior beings to the states risked bringing a certain disease of character. Crialese’s film details the tests for “feeble-mindedness” or the discrimination against those with non-contagious conditions such as being “mute” which made nativists–liberally interpreting ideas of Freud and other emerging thinkers–feel threatened. It was a fear of rejection that my grandmother’s family left my great aunt behind, because she had epilepsy. It was because of the stringent rules of admission that my grandfather had to have a surgery back in Italy with less than adequate care in order to be allowed into America. His surgery was butchery and he had many medical troubles in the years to follow, but America let him in and its healthcare, however flawed it may be in current debate, has brought him to his ninetieth year with only one kidney and despite three bouts of cancer.
As much promise as America might have presented for those parting from the medieval lifestyle of Italy’s southernmost shores, it was also not filled with the seas of milk and money trees that were scattered amongst other rumors of the country’s promise. But it wasn’t without offerings of hope, either. Once immigrants got past the puzzles and other IQ tests completely removed from the tests of intelligence of old world lifestyles, there was a second side of the coin. Both sides of the immigrant experience are illustrated in Nuovo Mondo.
