#goncharov script

Oh and...a little script tease.

I haven’t gotten very far into the project, but considering that the script was considered lost for some time, I think my collection is coming along nnicely. But if anybody knows of anything they can contribute with, or would simply just send me links to more of the script, it would help immensely. 

This scene specifically is so powerful for Katya (played by Cybill Shepherd) as a character for a number of reasons. Firstly, she shows agency as a partner to Goncharov for the first time mid-film as his equal, willing to make problems - even former business partners - disappear. She’s not the helpless alcohol-soaked victim she portrays to avoid suspicion, even from her husband himself. Katya is aware of Goncharov’s every mood, and yet he is completely oblivious to hers. This scene with Ambrosini directly mirrors the finale, when Katya holds the gun on her husband, leaving the audience on the edge of our seats, as we know she is perfectly capable of shooting a man.

Secondly, Al Pacino acts beyond even his incredible range in his pastiche of condescension, well-meaning scorn, and misogyny that Katya, despite shooting him, was still just a daughter-figure, a princesa, a charity act he might “talk out of her hysteria.” He wheedles and begs, trying to win her over until he makes one fatal error: an anti-Semitic remark. Knowing the Goncharovs were fleeing Russia due to the Jewish round ups in their country, and despite them jumping from the fat to the fire of Naples the Mussolini Era, the layers of Pacino’s character Mario Ambrosini still manage to shine both smarmy and slick. Pacino’s famous glittering eyes immediately became a hallmark for one of the most subtle but unmistakable cinematic moments in history; the exact moment he understands Katya will kill him. Katya even kills Ambrosini in her husband’s signature style, rather than let him bleed out or perhaps escape, despite his ‘caring’ for her earlier in the film. Cybill Shepherd herself plays the affront and the fury of the anti-Semitism Katya expresses perfectly. Later Shepherd went on the record in Modern Screen to remind audiences that unlike in Christianity, there are “some sins that are unforgivable,” and that the Shoah was one. There was no possible redemption for Ambrosini.

Thirdly, the killing weapon being a direct mirror to Goncharov’s calling card - but taken from the guitar Sofia painted for Katya - illuminates why Katya is making this choice. Obviously, Goncharov never wanted children, but to send Mario Ambrosini to force Katya to get it ‘taken care of’ cemented him in cruelty. This directly contrasts to hardline Sofia, who, in her work as an enforcer and a spy, force her to act as ‘one of the guys’ (in her menswear clothing, casual cursing, and lack of feminine materialism such as makeup), chose to have an abortion because of lack of ability to keep a child alive and still pursue her line of work. This is specifically striking as the movie Goncharov was released in 1973, the same year as the hallmark Roe v. Wade that has changed the way women are able to access healthcare in America.

The subtextual relationship between the two women can be played as homo-eroticism, but also as a way to signal that Katya had found someone to call family. Sofia felt isolated and lonely until Katya arrived, and even though the two women played different tropes of the hyper-feminine wife and the very beginnings of the definition of Butch, they were able to bond over a very scarring, real experience that gave many viewers nightmares. For Katya to accept the painted guitar as a gift, and turn around and  make it part of her killing MO shows her ability to truly bloom in her role as neither prisoner nor victim, but a willing - and ruthless - participant of the Naples Underground. It’s what takes this average mob-made movie to a new height beyond the likes of femme fatales in the Hammett and Chandler era.

Despite the film being set in the thirties at the height of Mafia showmanship with the likes of Al Capone - whose personal knowledge of the underground was integral to its scriptwriting - the Cold War and U.S. relations with Russia led to Katya being cast as either a Russian Agent, or a Russian subversion. Either way, we can agree, her killing line will go down with the greatest movie quotes of the 20th century.

- From “Goncharov: A Feminist Critique” printed in Mad Magazine, (Summer 1975)

Image description of script under the cut.