Widely acclaimed as America's greatest living film director, Martin Scorsese is also, some argue, the pre-eminent Italian American artist. Although he has treated various subjects in over three decades, his most sustained filmmaking and the core of his achievement consists of five films on Italian American subjects - Who's That Knocking at My Door?, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and Casino - as well as the documentary Italianamerican. In Gangster Priest Robert Casillo examines these films in the context of the society, religion, culture, and history of Southern Italy, from which the majority of Italian Americans, including Scorsese, derive.

Casillo argues that these films cannot be fully appreciated either thematically or formally without understanding the various facets of Italian American ethnicity, as well as the nature of Italian American cinema and the difficulties facing assimilating third-generation artists. Forming a unified whole, Scorsese's Italian American films offer what Casillo views as a prolonged meditation on the immigrant experience, the relationship between Italian America and Southern Italy, the conflicts between the ethnic generations, and the formation and development of Italian American ethnicity (and thus identity) on American soil through the generations. Raised as a Catholic and deeply imbued with Catholic values, Scorsese also deals with certain forms of Southern Italian vernacular religion, which have left their imprint not only on Scorsese himself but also on the spiritually tormented characters of his Italian American films. Casillo also shows how Scorsese interrogates the Southern Italian code of masculine honour in his exploration of the Italian American underworld or Mafia, and through his implicitly Catholic optic, discloses its thoroughgoing and longstanding opposition to Christianity.

Bringing a wealth of scholarship and insight into Scorsese's work, Casillo's study will captivate readers interested in the director's magisterial artistry, the rich social history of Southern Italy, Italian American ethnicity, and the sociology and history of the Mafia in both Sicily and the United States.

马丁-斯科塞斯被广泛誉为美国在世的最伟大的电影导演，有人认为他也是杰出的美国意大利艺术家。尽管他在三十多年里处理了各种题材，但他最持久的电影创作和他的成就的核心包括五部关于意大利裔美国人题材的电影--《谁在敲门》、《卑鄙的街道》、《愤怒的公牛》、《好家伙》和《赌场》--以及纪录片《意大利裔美国人》。在《黑帮牧师》中，罗伯特-卡西罗在意大利南部的社会、宗教、文化和历史背景下研究了这些电影，包括斯科塞斯在内的大多数意大利裔美国人都来自那里。

卡西罗认为，如果不了解意大利裔美国人的各个方面，以及意大利裔美国人电影的性质和第三代艺术家所面临的同化困难，就无法在主题上或形式上完全欣赏这些电影。形成一个统一的整体，斯科塞斯的意大利裔美国电影提供了卡西罗认为是对移民经历、意大利裔美国和意大利南部之间的关系、各族裔世代之间的冲突以及意大利裔美国人在美国土地上一代代形成和发展的长期沉思。斯科塞斯作为天主教徒长大，深受天主教价值观的熏陶，他还处理了某些形式的意大利南部乡土宗教，这些宗教不仅在斯科塞斯本人身上留下了印记，也在他的意大利裔美国人电影中的精神折磨的人物身上留下了印记。卡西洛还展示了斯科塞斯在探索美国意大利黑社会或黑手党的过程中是如何审视意大利南部的男性荣誉准则的，并通过他隐含的天主教视角，披露了其对基督教的彻底和长期的反对。

卡西罗的研究为斯科塞斯的作品带来了丰富的学术成果和洞察力，他的研究将吸引对这位导演的伟大艺术作品、意大利南部丰富的社会历史、意大利裔美国人以及西西里和美国的黑手党的社会学和历史感兴趣的读者。

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