Italianness and Foundational Masculinity in Edward Dmytryk’s Rendition of Pietro Di Donato’s Christ in Concrete

This chapter analyses Edward Dmytryk’s Christ in Concrete (aka Give Us This Day, 1949), based on Pietro Di Donato’s novel Christ in Concrete. The author discusses the depiction of the Italian-American community as traditionally identified with holding heteronormative family ties above any other, highlighting how the film is a love story marred by poverty in which the bond created among men who work together challenges the allegiance to one’s family and defines men’s identity. It is the betrayal of that bond that largely causes the protagonist’s demise in a country in the middle of an identity crisis, following the Wall Street crash of 1929. The film suggests that unity, rather than divisiveness, is what can help workers (and, by extension, the country) get out of the impasse, at the end of the 1920s as well as in 1949, in the era preceding Senator McCarthy’s witch hunt. Dmytryk’s film also signals a change in attitude toward Italian immigrants, who had been part of the fabric of American society since the turn of the century. By the 1950s nobody disputed their presence in America, and this film portrays their community in a benevolent, albeit stereotype-ridden, light.