Sharkskin

Sharkskin is the post-World War II Manhattan story of Mike Esposito, a tailor of custom clothing and a man of dignity and honor who gets wrapped up in a moral dilemma of clashing values. His shop is next door to the mobsters who run the neighborhood.

When his dreams of making a suit for Mafia Don, Angelo Piano, become a reality he comes face to face with his highly held principles. Mike and his son Sammy get into hot water when Mike tries to extricate his family without losing his life.

Review by F.X. Feeney:

High comedy and nostalgia fuse to delightful effect in SHARKSKIN. The place is New York’s Italian Harlem, the time the late 1940s. John Aprea is Mike, a skilled tailor who has never quite succeeded on the scale his talent would merit. Christopher Amitrano is his son Sammy – a genial social climber who thinks his Dad should cultivate the local mob bosses. Mike hates those guys.

As an Italian-American, he loathes the way mafia guys just take over everything and poison whatever they touch. By a sharp comedic twist, his wife (Donna Ponterotto), forced to conceal a blast of front-end damage she’s done to a mobster’s car fast-talks him into ordering a fancy sharkskin suit from Mike. Pretty soon another crime boss – that first big lug’s rival – wants an identical suit built.

Mike must work overtime to extricate himself from this pickle. The film looks like The Godfather while its hard comedic bounce recalls the rubber-bat extremes of Miller’s Crossing. As with that film, the over the top funny moments are anchored by the soft-spoken truthfulness of Aprea’s lead performance, as well from such support players as David Proval, as the wily Uncle Charlie, and Cara Pifko, outstanding as Franki, a young woman for whom contact with these big lugs has made her wise-before-her-time.

The exceptionally beautiful camera work by Elie Smolkin and Paul McIlvane has both a golden color palette and a rich element of contrast (the hard shadows one enjoys in old black & white films) which forcefully support the feeling of a film not just about the 40s from them. Dan Perri, who both wrote and directed this charming farce, brings a wealth of interesting experience in the door with him.

For over 40 years he’s been a top title designer: he created the dynamic opening graphics for such diverse classics as The Exorcist; Taxi Driver; Nashville: Star Wars; Raging Bull; Insomnia, Gangs of New York and The Aviator. Coupled with such chops is a subtler but no less important abundance of first-hand life experience.

As extreme and even slapstick-buffoonish as his people and events may sometimes become – their extremities feel grounded, lived-in, as will any event you look back on across decades and ask yourself: “Did that actually happen?” Yet you know it did. Through thick and thin, Perri keeps this lifelike feeling alive.