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| | Fergus Bordewich: Gangs of New York |
 | | Three years ago, Scorsese finally succeeded in putting “Gangs of New York” in production, thanks to a contentious but durable partnership with the producer Harvey Weinstein of Miramax. |
| | Beginning with a bloody gang war in 1846, the film culminates amid the gotterdammerung of the 1863 Draft Riots, the worst mob violence in American history, when between 70,000 and 80,000 armed men and women rampaged through the streets, pillaging, burning, battling and often defeating the outnumbered police, and lynching helpless African-Americans. |
| | Although immigrants and Nativists (as the Yankee nationalists were known) clashed in other cities, the violence was both greater and more prolonged in New York, where they were forced by geographical circumstance as much as by anything else to wrestle for living space and economic survival in a cramped area near the tip of Manhattan. |
| www.fergusbordewich.com /PAGESjournalism/FBgangs.shtml (3498 words) |
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