What Made Gandolfini Great

There's a lot of terrific character actors out there. In fact, there probably always have been and always will be. James Gandolfini, however, stood out. Why? Because he played Tony Soprano, of course. Sure, Galdolfini did terrific work in such films as True Romance and The Taking Of Pelham 1,2,3, but it was his work on HBOs The Sopranos which elevated him into the stratosphere.

Despite a famously disappointing series finale, The Sopranos is regarded as one of the great dramas in all of television history. I'd go a step further, though. I'd argue thatThe Sopranos contained some of the greatest writing in all of history, period. Perhaps I'm committing a sin of literary blasphemy here, but I truly believe The Sopranos was built on scripts which nearly equaled Shakespeare in depth and entertainment value.

Let's look at it this way: there are basically two types of movie and/or television fans. There are those who like quality and those who simply want to be entertained. The writers ofThe Sopranos saw to it that both groups were satisfied – just as Bill Shakespeare had done all those centuries earlier. The Sopranos took the stuff of great drama, like family strife, guilt, and the sense of disappointment many of us feel at a certain age, and delivered it with supreme artistry.

To make their show entertaining, however, the writers of The Sopranos lifted a page out of Shakespeare's book and placed all that drama against an exceedingly colorful backdrop. Not only did the character of Tony Soprano run a criminal enterprise, he ran a criminal enterprise which, like Tony himself, was well past its prime.

For the mafia, much like the American nuclear family, was far different at the turn of the millennium than it had been fifty years earlier. Both were in a state of flux and decay. The writers were aware of this and juxtaposed the two aspects of American culture against each other. It was the greatest, oddest combination since chocolate met peanut butter.

All the great writing in the world, however, wouldn't have worked if it weren't for Gandolfini himself. An underrated thespian, the man could convey more with a passing facial expression than many actors could do with a five page soliloquy. As much as The Sopranos was the work of great writing, it was also the work of Gandolfini himself.

The guy will be missed.