Plot
The film tells the story of Pietro "Beppo" Donnetti. Donnetti is a poor, but happy, gondolier in Venice, Italy. Beppo falls in love with Annette Ancello, but her father, Trudo, wants her to marry another suitor, one who is a successful businessman. If Beppo can prove himself within a year, Trudo agrees to allow him to marry Annette.
Beppo sails for America to make his fortune, making a living working as a shoeshiner on a street corner in New York City. He borrows money from an Irish ward boss, Bill Corrigan, and sends for Annette to join him. In exchange, Beppo agrees to help Corrigan's candidate win the Italian vote in the ward.
When Annette arrives in New York, she and Beppo are married, and the following year they have a son, Tony. Beppo, Annette and Tony live a happy life in their Lower East Side tenement. The happiness is interrupted when the baby contracts a fever during a heatwave. The doctor instructs them to feed pasteurized milk to the baby. Beppo works hard to earn the money to purchase the expensive milk. While walking to the store to buy the milk, Beppo is robbed. He attacks the men who robbed him and is arrested. Beppo asks Corrigan to help his baby while he is in jail: "I must get-a-de-milk or my babee is die." Corrigan rebuffs Beppo, and Beppo's baby dies during Beppo's five days in jail.
When Beppo is released from jail, he learns that Corrigan's young daughter is ill and vows to avenge his son's death by killing Corrigan's daughter. Beppo sneaks into Corrigan's house, but when he sees Corrigan's daughter lying in her crib, he cannot act on his plan, and he leaves the child unharmed.
In the final scene of the narrative, Beppo is shown placing flowers and sobbing over his son's grave.
Read more about this topic: The Italian (1915 film)
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And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
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“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)