“The Many Saints of Newark”This is the prequel to the HBO series. “The Sopranos,”But it takes place in a very different part of New Jersey. This film is set in the apartment buildings and tenements of 1960s and ’70s Newark instead of the sprawling McMansions where Tony and much of his crew decamped on the show.
The city is on the edge of disaster, with rising racial tensions. “The movie is about the time before they all went off to the suburbs,” says Bob Shaw, the film’s production designer. “They were still clustered in the old neighborhood, living in these cramped spaces in sort of an ethnic enclave.”
Shaw’s director Alan Taylor is a key issue “Many Saints”Writer “Sopranos” creator David Chase was that downtown Newark had changed so markedly in the ensuing decades — the houses knocked down and replaced by apartment buildings or outfitted with vinyl siding from a later era — that they needed to shoot much of the film in the Bronx.
There were however a few scenes that could have been used to enhance the story. “Many Saints”The turnpike was not a place that creatives thought could be duplicated. Shaw and his crew attempted to recreate the 1967 riot in Branford Place. They set up retro signs for bars, delis, and theater marquees. Cars were set on fire, smoke machines were used and actors wearing National Guard uniforms rode down the streets in jeeps and tanks to pursue scores of extras. Though filmed in 2019, the sequence has greater emotional resonance in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter protests that unfolded in the summer of 2020.
“It was such sensitive material to our country and to our whole identity,” says Kramer Morgenthau, the film’s cinematographer. “We knew we had to be accurate, and we knew we had to get it right. Sadly, what happened in 1967 still rings true today.”
Fans “The Sopranos” will find lots of Easter eggs in the look at Tony’s early years and the role that Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) plays in mentoring the future mob boss.
Although the setting is urbanized, the signs are familiar. A key scene where Tony is supposed to have a sit-down with Dickie took place in the doorway of Holsten’s, the diner where the Soprano family eats dinner in the series finale right before the show’s infamous fade to black. The only thing that was needed to dress this location was to add an appropriate awning. Shaw was also tasked with re-creating the back room of Satriale’s Pork Store, the slightly rundown hangout of the gangsters who make up the DiMeo crime family.
“The physical building — the walls, the windows — we didn’t change much,”Shaw. “The whole thing was sort of retro in the series, so we just removed a few layers of dust and 30 or 40 years of stuff on the walls and shelves. “
The crew’s quest for historical accuracy extended to the way the film was shot. Morgenthau used darker tones in the sequences that were set in the 1960s, trying to recreate the look of Kodachrome photography. The film transitions into the 1970s where the cinematographer uses more pastels, greens, and blues to bring out the flashier decor and clothes of the disco era.
An intense sense of responsibility loomed over the entire project. “The Sopranos” isn’t just beloved. It’s considered to be the greatest show ever made and the spark that inspired the television renaissance of the aughts.
“There was huge pressure to do something special with this film because of the legacy of the show,”Morgenthau. “It’s almost a piece of Americana at this point. At a certain point you can just stop thinking about it, and get on with your job.