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How long does it take to convincingly depict two people falling in love on screen? In director Jonathan Demme‘s 1988 comedy “Married to the Mob,” it happens in less than two minutes, as Demme utilizes all his considerable filmmaking skills to show FBI agent Mike Downey (Matthew Modine) and mob widow Angela DeMarco (Michelle Pfeiffer) on one joyous date that changes both of their lives.
As is often the case with Demme, music plays a large part, as Angela and Mike’s date takes place at a nightclub where they talk, drink, and dance to a performance by samba group Pé De Boi. Demme shows Pé De Boi the same kind of cinematic respect and affection he gave The Talking Heads in his classic concert film “Stop Making Sense,” caressing them — and Angela and Mike — with gliding camera movements that express sheer sensual exuberance.
Demme’s talent for creating an environment that facilitates the actors’ best work is on full display here, as Pfeiffer and Modine interact with a liveliness that makes it feel like their behavior is being caught on the fly; every gesture seems both spontaneous in its origins and precise in its intentions, as each glance, touch, and shift in position represents an unspoken step forward in their relationship. There’s virtually no dialogue on the date, and there doesn’t have to be — the connection between Mike and Angela is conveyed not through words or plot but in how a perfectly executed camera move plays off a sensual look or a raucous laugh, and the way both intersect with the rhythms of the music and the vibrant colors of the decor.
What’s remarkable about the scene is that it’s a relatively brief, minor moment in what seems, on the surface, to be one of Demme’s most minor films. At least it’s one of his most, for lack of a better word, formulaic; aside from his 1979 Hitchcock homage “Last Embrace,” it’s probably the closest he ever came to a for-hire “assignment” captive to the demands of genre. Demme was constitutionally incapable of making an impersonal film, though, and like “Last Embrace,” “Married to the Mob” is a much richer film for his involvement — in fact, a rich film, period, that contains some of the director’s finest work.
A superb new 4K UHD and Blu-ray release from Cinématographe offers the perfect opportunity to revisit “Married to the Mob,” presented on the disc in a new restoration that showcases Tak Fujimoto’s dazzling cinematography in all its glory. A sub-label from Vinegar Syndrome overseen by film curator Justin LaLiberty, Cinématographe has spent the last two years building a significant library of beautifully packaged titles loaded up with extra features, in many cases giving serious attention to criminally underrated or forgotten films.
The company’s first title, the smart, poignant, and exquisitely directed teen comedy “Little Darlings,” is a perfect example of what Cinématographe does — it’s a release that gives serious attention to a film that deserves far more careful consideration than it has received in film history. Since it released “Little Darlings” in January 2024, Cinématographe has put out over two dozen discs, often focusing on lesser-known works by great directors like Martha Coolidge (“The Joy of Sex”), Abel Ferrara (“Dangerous Game,” “New Rose Hotel”), and Paul Schrader (“Touch”).
Each of these titles inspires the viewer not only to reassess or discover the individual movies but also to see their directors’ careers in an entirely new context. Jonathan Demme is the label’s returning champion in this regard, as Cinématographe has put out three of the director’s films: “Last Embrace,” the Spalding Gray performance documentary “Swimming to Cambodia,” and now “Married to the Mob.”
“Married to the Mob”©Orion Pictures Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection“Married to the Mob” tells the story of a woman trying to escape her past after her gangster husband (Alec Baldwin) is murdered; as she puts her life back together, she falls in love with a plumber in her building, unaware that he’s actually an FBI agent investigating her for her assumed mob ties. It’s a crime comedy along the lines of Brian De Palma’s Danny DeVito-Joe Piscopo vehicle “Wise Guys” (which had come out a couple of years earlier) or Susan Seidelman’s “Cookie” (which came out the year after). Thus, it’s a bit broad for Demme. In 1988, he was best known for the subtler, more delicate character comedy of “Melvin and Howard” or the highly original and unpredictable tone-jumping of “Something Wild.”
There’s nothing especially unpredictable about “Married to the Mob” except for its execution; the pleasures of Demme’s direction and Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns’ screenplay come from how they deliver what we expect from a movie like this while also coloring outside the lines just enough to make it singular. Demme got the gig on “Married to the Mob” because his previous movie for Orion, “Something Wild,” was one of the best movies of 1986 (the year that also included “Blue Velvet,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” and “Platoon”). It wasn’t a massive hit at the box office, but the studio execs knew Demme had delivered — and offered him the chance to apply his sensibility to something more overtly commercial.
It was an inspired choice. One thing that made Strugatz and Burns’ script special was its focus on a female protagonist, an unusual choice for a mob movie of the time. Pfeiffer conveys Angela’s desperate yearning to break free of her past with genuine conviction and force, which speaks not only to the actor’s talent (and range — the same year she would also give great performances in “Tequila Sunrise” and “Dangerous Liaisons” before going on to her best film, “The Fabulous Baker Boys”) but Demme’s identification with his protagonist. Just a few years earlier, he had considered giving up filmmaking entirely after a miserable experience with Goldie Hawn on “Swing Shift,” and in “Married to the Mob,” he, like Angela, seems to be reinventing himself.
One of the most interesting things about the movie is the way Demme alternates between the more obvious, lowbrow gangster humor and the quiet, incredibly powerful moments between Pfeiffer and Modine that sneak up on the viewer. There are almost two movies in one here: the stereotype-driven mafia comedy that Alec Baldwin, Dean Stockwell (as the mob boss fixated on Pfeiffer), and the other actors playing mobsters are starring in, and the sweetly funny, touching love story anchored by Pfeiffer and Modine.
The two sides don’t synthesize quite as smoothly as the even more extreme opposites of screwball comedy and violent thriller in “Something Wild,” but at times Demme puts them together to incredible effect. That first date between Pfeiffer and Modine, for example, is intercut with an action sequence in which Stockwell blasts his way out of an assassination attempt.
Alternating between the date and the shoot-out gives the love story extra impact, as the unadulterated joy between Angela and Mike is even more pronounced when placed against the sociopathic violence of Stockwell’s existence. There’s another benefit too, which is that every time Demme cuts back to the couple he can jump ahead in the evolution of their relationship, the audience having filled in the blanks in the interim. This leads to a scene that ranks with the best Demme ever directed, the one where Modine’s face tells us that not only has he fallen in love with Pfeiffer’s character, but he knows he is in a hopeless situation, having deceived her about his identity.
Although Demme is known for his close-ups in which characters speak directly into the lens (most famously in the Jodie Foster-Anthony Hopkins scenes in “The Silence of the Lambs”), he actually uses them more sparingly than other directors who rely on more conventional coverage. Demme favors medium and long shots that unite people in the frame; it’s part of his philosophical DNA as a humanist who believes in giving all of his characters equal dramatic weight. On the date night in “Married to the Mob,” he saves his close-ups for the moment when everything changes for Mike after he realizes all of his assumptions about Angela have been wrong; the shift in shot size combined with the strength of Modine’s performance propels the rest of the movie, which revolves around Angela learning of Mike’s betrayal and his urgent attempts to make amends.
That final act, in which Demme and the screenwriters merge the demands of the genre (in which the FBI has to bring Stockwell down and Angela has to become liberated from the mob once and for all) with the more organic demands of the central relationship they’ve so carefully orchestrated, is a significant moment in Demme’s evolution as a director. It’s the first time he has found a way to seamlessly weave his personal interests and preoccupations into a standard-issue Hollywood formula movie in a way that is effective for both — his obsessions are given a solid dramatic shape, and the formula finds new life thanks to Demme’s idiosyncratic approach.
This, needless to say, paved the way for the movie Demme would make next, another Orion assignment called “The Silence of the Lambs.” Demme perfected his gift for thoughtful, personal, mainstream entertainment with that movie, collecting an armful of Oscars and launching his career as an A-list director in the process. “Married to the Mob” doesn’t exhibit the smoothly engineered perfection of “Silence of the Lambs,” but it has life and energy to spare — its aims are more modest than those of the Demme films that immediately preceded and followed it, but its charms no less rewarding.
“Married to the Mob” is now available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Cinématographe.
English (US) ·