Romance and CigarettesUSA
2005, 115min.
 Script/Dir.: John Turturro, Dir. of Phot.: Tom Stern, Prod. Design: Donna Zakowska, Sound: Tod A. Maitland, Edit.: Ray Hubley, Prod.: John Penotti, John Turturro.
Cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken.
This is a down-and-dirty musical love story set in the world of the working class. Nick is an ironworker who builds and repairs bridges. He's married to Kitty, a dressmaker, a strong and gentle woman with whom he has three daughters. He is carrying on a torrid affair with a redheaded woman named Tula. Nick is basically a good, hardworking man driven forward by will and blinded by his urges. Like Oedipus at Colonus, he is sent into exile and searches to find his way back through the damage he has done. The film explores the cost and value of a relationship through life and death. When the characters can no longer express themselves with language, they break into song. It is their way to escape the harsh reality of their world - to dream and to connect to another human being. | Turturro, John  Born 1957, Brooklyn, New York, USA:
One of the top character actors of his era, he is a fixture of the contemporary American independent filmmaking landscape. Studied at the Yale School of Drama. He made his film debut in Scorsese's 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull. That same year, he debuted on Broadway in Death of a Salesman. His breakthrough performance did not arrive until Spike Lee cast him as a bigoted pizzeria worker in 1989's Do the Right Thing. In 1991 the Coens cast him as the titular Barton Fink, a performance that garnered Best Actor honors at the Cannes IFF. Subsequent lead roles were infrequent, although he wrote, directed, and starred in Mac, a little-seen feature that won him a Golden Camera award for Best First Feature at the 1992 Cannes IFF. In 1998, the actor again collaborated with both Lee and the Coen brothers, working with the former on He Got Game and the latter on The Big Lebowski. Turturro wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Illuminata, a comedy set against the backdrop of a turn-of-the-century New York Theater Company. The following year, he again took on the New York theater, appearing in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock, an exploration of the relationship between art and politics set in 1930s New York.
Filmography
Mac (1992), Illuminata (1998), Romance & Cigarettes (2005).
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