In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1. "I felt nothing' ix thousand people, virtually all the inhabitants of the Sicilian village of Bisacquino, met the old man on the highway half a mile from town. He had not seen his birthplace in almost seventy-four years, and he was stunned by the sincerity and fervor of this homecoming welcome. He remembered almost nothing of Bisacquino—running barefoot through the dusty town square; a ride on his father's mule through a mountain stream, waiting while the animal bowed its head to drink; a starkly contrasted image of black peasant hats against glaring white walls on a hot August afternoon; little more. Sicily had become a foreign country to him during these long years abroad, a lifetime that had turned him, in his own mind, into an unhyphenated American. As Frank Capra looked out the window of his black Lincoln limousine on April 29, 1977,not one of the faces which greeted him was familiar: not the weathered faces of the old men wearing peasant caps with their best Sunday black suits; nor the hawk-eyed faces of the old women in their perpetual mourningcloth; nor the worshipful faces of his younger relatives, who knew him only from newspapers and television. But a few of the old ones still remembered "Cicco" Capra, the boy who disappeared fromBisacquino with no good-byes to his playmates one day in May 1903, and passed his sixth birthday in steerage with his family on the stormy ocean voyage to America. These old-timers, with their antiquated Sicilian dialect , still pronounced the family name as "Crahpa." And now, because of the fame he had won in the New World as the filmmaker who "brought the meaning of the American Dream alive for generations of moviegoers past and present," these people whowere strangers to Frank Capra were pulling him from the car with voracious hands and pushing him into the line of march along the narrow and winding cobblestone streets of their village. Capra's peasant origins were plain to read£ 1 0 F R A N K C A P R A from his short, hardy frame, his olive skin, and his earthy features, once described by Graham Greene as "bushy eyebrows, big nose and the kind of battered face which looks barnacled with life, encrusted with ready sympathies." But he also looked jarringly out of place that afternoon in his gaudy Palm Springs attire of lemon yellow slacks and turtleneck, loud brown-and-white checked sport coat with a blue handkerchief protruding from his pocket, and a bejeweled gold medallion of Sicily (a gift from his relatives) dangling from a chain around his neck. Escorting him on his royal progress through Bisacquino were twowhitehelmeted motorcycle policemen; a squad of carabinieri; the mayor, wearing a sash with the green, white, and red of the Italian flag; the ubiquitous village priest; the American consul general to Sicily and officials of the United States Information Service (USIS); a flying wedge of journalists and paparazzi; and a documentary film crew from RAI, the Italian national television network, making a special called Mister Capra torna a casa (Mr. Capra Goes Home). The municipal band, in its quaint red-and-black uniforms , followed behind the dignitaries, tubas oompahing and trumpets bleating the plaintively festive folk tunes the old man could remember his father playing on his guitar long ago in America. It was like a scene from one of his own movies: it was Longfellow Deeds being serenaded with "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" while leaving home at the Mandrake Falls train station, John Doe being brought back from retreat and suicide by his idealistic followers, George Bailey emerging from the snowy night of despair into a bright, warm houseful of friends at the end of It's a Wonderful Life. In America now they even had an adjective for this kind of scene: "Capraesque" (though there were still those who preferred to call it "Capracorn"). For Frank Capra himself, this homecoming, which should have been his moment of sweetest triumph, instead was an ordeal of the purest agony. He trudged along as if in a trance, grim-faced, ashen, unsteady on his feet. The band music was deafening. The din from the laughing, shouting, applauding crowd on the streets and balconies and rooftops was even louder, and he could barely force a smile as he waved back at them. Because of a confusion over the parade route, the crowds became unruly and swarmed through...

Share