Counter-Currents
4,073 words
Bread and Chocolate, a 1974 Italian film written and directed by Franco Brusati and starring Nino Manfredi, came when immigration was heating up in America. It reminded me of my own experience of the 1970s, when I was stationed in Germany and seeing foreign “guest workers” doing scut work everywhere, from restaurant help to loading trucks. In front of my barracks every morning, a doleful squad of Turks hopped off a truck to collect good, clean, municipal German trash while a burly German in a truck waited for them to do the drag and hassle before driving on.
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I saw “Bread and Chocolate” back when it came out, and enjoyed it, but it is truly a sad and demoralizing movie. The setting was, of course, chosen to heighten the racial and cultural disparities between the Italians and the Swiss. Not all Italians are Sicilians or short or dark; there is an Italian part of Switzerland that is presumably neither as dysfunctional as Sicily nor as unapproachable as the Germanic Swiss. Ultimately, both Italians and Swiss are Europeans of White and Christian heritage. Both nations have histories and a heritage to be proud of. The Swiss now harbor about a 25% foreign born population, and Italy has Nigerians roaming its streets. Surely the two people could have better worked together and avoided both their fates. The movie is from another era and appears both quaint and dated in today’s era of a Muslim and African Europe.
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