Men of the Cloth.

68 • Italian American Review 4.1 • Winter 2014
Men of the Cloth.
By Vicki Vasilopoulos.
Orestes Films LLC, 2013.
96 minutes. DVD and Blu-ray formats, color.
Men of the Cloth, a documentary film by fashion journalist Vicki Vasilopoulos, is an
elegy to a dying breed of Italian custom tailors, highly skilled and passionate about
their craft. The film follows three men in particular—two in the United States (Nino
Corvato in New York and Joseph Centofanti in Ardmore, Pennsylvania) and one in
Italy (Checchino Fonticoli in Penne, Pescara province, Abruzzo)—as they lovingly
describe the trade they entered more than a half century ago as boys in Italy and still
pursue in the twenty-first century. Tailoring has been good to all three men, who have
clearly prospered materially, but it is just as clear that they remain at the job well
past normal retirement age for the love of the artistry involved in the work. A soulful
original score by Chris Hajian reinforces the film’s “elegiac quality” (as proclaimed on
the film’s website, http://menoftheclothfilm.com/).
Men of the Cloth is part biography, part lesson in the process of constructing a
men’s suit, and part ethnographic exploration of artisanal life. It touches on issues
of migration and global commerce through the stories of its three sympathetic and
engaging main characters. Corvato was born in Ficarazzi, Palermo province, Sicily,
and migrated to the United States in 1960. After twenty years at Brooks Brothers
and some additional experience in the mainstream high-end fashion business (not
explored in the film), he started his own shop for custom-made clothing on Madison
Avenue in New York City. Centofanti was born in the United States and brought to
Italy at a young age by his parents. He grew up partly in Ethiopia, where his father
was a tailor during the Italian occupation of that country, and spent time in a British
internment camp during World War II. After returning to the United States he maintained a shop in the suburbs of Philadelphia for decades. Finally, Fonticoli remained
in Italy but, convinced that modern “American” production methods were necessary
to save the Italian garment industry, joined the Brioni firm (a semi-industrialized
producer of high-end, made-to-order suits), founded in Penne by a cousin of his. All
three of these men, plus other tailors who make up the supporting cast, are impeccably dressed always; apparently the old saying that all shoemakers go barefoot does
not apply to tailors.
The men of the cloth express much anxiety about the future of their trade. They are
all old and nearly the last of their kind. Italian towns that used to turn out tailors by the
dozen (so many that quite a few had to emigrate), now have just one or two independent tailors still at work. Corvato has been searching without success for a replacement
for a skilled employee who passed away a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, there
is hope: Brioni has opened a school to train young men in the trade, providing jobs
to the program’s best graduates. Corvato’s right-hand man was older than his boss
and passed away in the course of the film’s production, but Corvato seems to have
hopes for a young Latina, Yasmin Huerta. The most well-explored relationship is
that between Centofanti and a young Italian-American college graduate named Joe
Genuardi who, after deciding on tailoring as a career, walked into Centofanti’s shop
one day and became his apprentice.
Film Reviews • 69
Vasilopoulos writes on the film’s website that Men of the Cloth “advocates for
humanist values in an era of worldwide industrialization of the clothing industry.”
But there is little social analysis. The closest Men of the Cloth gets to the global garment
industry is Brioni, where bespoke suits are produced by hand for a select international
clientele. There is no reference to the mass production or contracting system that characterizes most of the global industry long marred by poor conditions and low pay: That
is not the subject of the film. But there is little reference even to the economics of the
custom trade itself. The viewer wonders as he or she watches the tailors’ well-heeled
clients trying on their suits how much the garments cost. How much are the workers
paid? Why, since there are clearly women in the Brioni factory, are there none in the
training school? These and other questions go unanswered. Nevertheless, Men of the
Cloth is a moving portrait of an artisanal culture that has survived into the supposedly
postindustrial era in the West.
—DANIEL SOYER
Fordham University
La Mia Strada: My Road.
By Michael Angelo DiLauro.
Michaelangelo Productions, 2012.
71 minutes. DVD format, color.
Immigrant Son: The Story of John D. Mezzogiorno.
By Frank Capiello.
Lux Vista Films, 2012.
57 minutes. DVD format, color.
Midway through Immigrant Son, there is an interview with Nancy M. Shader, director
of Archival Operations at the National Archives and Records Administration in New
York City. She speculates as to reasons for the increased interest in the archives in
recent years, suggesting that perspectives shift between first- and second-generation
immigrants and their third- and fourth-generation children and grandchildren. She
explains that initially “the feeling was you’ve come to the United States, you should
speak English; this is where you’re from. But the next generation often asks, ‘Well,
where did we come from?’” It is this question that motivates both Michael Angelo
DiLauro and Frank Capiello, and while there are significant differences between their
two documentaries, much in each of them will likely resonate with Italian Americans
who seek to understand the roots of their Italian heritage.
La Mia Strada opens in Cleveland, Ohio, where we see DiLauro family members
maintaining many of the traditions that were brought to the United States by their
parents and grandparents. Following this opening sequence, the film moves back
to Italy, with an extended discussion of sheep herding, focusing specifically on the
transumanza, the seasonal movement of sheep through various parts of Italy to the