"Soprano" Women: Hear Them Roar
Article in the Star Ledger: by M.Z.S
The original "Godfather," one of the most male movies of all time, ends with Kay Corelone(Diane Keaton), the wife of family boss Michael Corelone (Al Pacino), looking on in mute helplessness as one of Michael's underlings closes a door in her face. If that same scene happened on "The Sopranos," Kay would stick her foot in the door to keep it open and berate the poor dope who dared close it. "Hey, wha the hell d'ya thing you're doing, you dumb (expletive) ox? I want to talk to my husband! Michael, get over here!" This is one of the key differences between most mob stories and "The Sopranos." Though the males drive most of the plots and do all the killing, the females aren't helpless bystanders.
As befits a story that tkes place at the end of the century - rather than in the middle third of it, like the "Godfather" trilogy - the women take active roles int he lives of their men. And God help anybody who tries to shut them out. This explains why the show has such a rabid - and perhaps unexpected - female following. Explains actress-comedian Janeane Garafolo, who has a cameo this season playing herself, "What you see on this show are some of the strongest women on TV, in movies, anywhere."
The key women of "The Sopranos" are:
*Carmela Soprano (Edie Falco), the stylish, strong-willed wife of ox-like antihero Tony Soprano.
*Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand), Tony's widowed mother, who seems to be suffering from early stage Alzheimer's but might be using it as a ruse to hide the mind like Machiavelli's.
*Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), Tony's empathetic, poised, nearly unflappable therapist.
*Adriana (Drea de Matteo), the sriving, career-minded girlfirend of junior hoodlum Chris Moltisanti
*Charmaine Bucco (Katherine Narducci), wife and business partner of restaurateur Artie Bucco, who's as defensive and skeptical as her husband is warm and naive.
*New character Janice "Pavarti" Soprano (Aida Turturro), an ex-hippie who seems like a New Age flake but is much more ruthless and crafty than she appears.
In terms of pop culture history, the most important actress in the cast is Lorraine Bracco, who palyed the wife of mobster-turned-informant Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," and got an Oscar nomination in the process. Bracco's character in that film, Karen, was an outisder in just about every way - a woman in a world of men (and a man-heavy movie cast); a Jew in a world of Italian-Americans. But that didn't stop her from nearly stealing the movie - and redefining the stock character of the Mafia wife in the process. In gumption, humor and backbone, she was the anit-Kay. She adored her husband (and even hid a bloody gun for him in one scene), but she was no meek housewife. When she found out that Henry had a mistress, she went over to the woman's apartment building, kids in tow, warned the floozy via intercom to leave her husband alone, then rang up the building superintendent and said, "Hello? Is this the superintendent? Well, I want you to know that you have a whore living in 214!"
Except for Livia, who's a mythological monstrosity out of Greek tragedy and Freudian analysis, the women of "The Sopranos" all owe a debt to Karen Hill of "Goodfellas." And aside from Melfi, who's a consummate professional standing outside the mob world, they've all made certain moral compromises - looking the other way sometimes when the men fool around, enjoying a good life paid for with blood money. But they're not doormats. Charmaine makes Artie reutrn a couple of cruise tickets given to her by Tony because she knows he probably obtained them illegally. Why Tony prepares to tell Carmela that he is in therapy, she mistakes his buildup for the prelude to an adultery confession and raises her glass as if about to throw the wine in his face. When Tony launches into a tirade in therapy, Melfi calmly tells him, "I don't appreciate being made to feel afraid." And Livia is the invisible puppeteer pulling everybody's strings. "She's a real piece of work," says Marchand. "She just likes to run her world, you know?"
The same protective, paternalistic sexism that shut women out of mob politics in earlier gangster stories has backfired on the men in this post-feminist era. Notes de Matteo," The guys on the show can kill any guy that bothers them, but what are they gonna do with the women? They can't do anything. The women are just there, dominating - Charmaine with Artie Bucco, Livia with Tony. We tell them what to do, they do it. They can't kill us. They can tell us to shut up, but we're not going to listen. We're the ones who really make the men crazy. We got the mouths. My father makes this joke," de Matteo continues. "He says, 'im' not afraid of anybody in the world except my daughter.' " With the exception of de Matteo, a fiery newcomer who's moonlighting as a playwright - she hopes to produce her domestic drama "The Heart Transplant" in Los Angeles this year - the "Sopranos" actresses are all veterans.
Bracco is an accomplished screen actress who was a supermodel in the '70s. Falco is one of the hardest-working women in show business; she has a new movie coming out, the Long Island indie film "Judy Berlin." At one point last season, she was starring simultaneously in "The Sopranos" and HBO's "Oz" while acting in the Broadway drama "Side Man." Narducci has appeared in numerous films, including "A Bronx Tale," in which she played the hero's mother. And Marchand, of course, is a living legend, with a half-century's worth of stage, screen, and TV work to her credit - including four Emmys from laying newspaper publisher Margaret Pynchon on CBS' "Lou Grant." Significantly, her first TV role was as the girlfirned of meek Bronx butcher "Marty" in the live 1953 telecast of "Marty" - a piece of kitchen-sink ethnic realism that made shows like "The Sopranos" possible.
The one thing all the actresses have in common is a nearly childlike enthusiasm for the stories "The Sopranos" tells. "You would think we'd be a little dispassionate about it by now, but we're not," says Bracco. "We still have a big burning desire to get our hand on that next script."
Email: carmsoprano@aol.com