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. On the wave of films about Sicily, I've choosen another movie I really like by director Alberto Lattuada, released in 1962 and then re-released in the US in 2006 in occasion of the New York Film Festival.
.. “Mafioso” is a brilliant black comedy, smething Italian cinema was so good at in the 1950′s and 1960′s. In Mafioso, director Lattuada mixes genres, flipping from a bright comedy in the beginning to a dark, horrific nightmarish world.
It is also a story of family and class culture shock where Milan -Northern Italy- meets poor Sicily ruled by suspicions of the law and the Mafia.
The tension between Northern and Southern Italians is of big importance and at the root of much of the humor in this film. While Northern Italy benefited from the Industrialization, Southern Italians remained poor and under educated, generally looked down upon by the north. So when Antonio Badalamenti (Alberto Sordi) gets a job as supervisor at a Fiat factory in Milan, it was surely a big story of success for his family back home in a small village in Sicily.
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| actors on the set { photo } |
Antonio is precise, organized and extremely efficient. He has both a satisfying life at work and at home: he lives in a modern house and is married to Marta (Norma Bengell), a sophisticated beautiful blonde with whom he has two adorable blonde haired young girls. They are about to leave for an holiday in his homeland in Sicily, and it is an important trip as it will be the first time for his wife and kids to meet Nino’s -as they call him over there- family.
Just before he is ready to leave the factory for his vacation, Nino is called by his boss, an Italian-American of Sicilian origins, who unexpectedly asks him if he knows Don Vincenzo and if he would not mind to deliver a gift on the boss behalf when paying his respects to the elderly Don Vincenzo. Antonio Badalamenti accepts with pleasure. It is clear he regards Don Vincenzo highly.
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| Antonio with his dad and family enjoys a welcoming meal { photo } |
Whilst Antonio enjoys meeting again his land, family and friends, for his wife the trip is culture shock, a trip back to a more primitive world she does not perceive as Italy. Antonio family’s small home is filled with relatives, all dressed in black, a sister with a thick moustache and parents who are initially very suspicious of a blonde daughter-in-law. She feels unwelcome, does not fit in at all and wants to go home.
Everywhere they go - as good old italian tradition wants - they are showered with food.
It seems very difficult for Antonio to build a connection between the two worlds.
The story developes into some positive and some less reassuring events, picturing along the way some interesting vignettes of Sicilian village life: family meals loaded with food, food and more food, women always dressed in black, people spying others under closed shutters, Nino’s conversation with his beach friends who ogle his wife when she appears later in this sequence in a skimpy bikini, just to name a few. Half of Nino's old friends seem to be unemployed while the other half seem to be working for the Don Vincenzo, the town patriarch.
Nino finally goes to pay his respects to Don Vincenzo, and brigs him the package as promised. After the visit other odd episodes happen, leading to a crucial point when -at the local fair- the Don and his associates discover Nino is an expert in shooting with a gun. It's somehow clear Antonio's fate will develop into a dark unforeseen direction.
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| Antonio at the local fair { photo } |
Don Vincenzo will ask him a favor: "a journey" to an unknown destination to deliver a letter to someone unknown, a favor that Antonio agrees to comply with doubts and somehow fear. In facts as he would soon find out, he will be flown -blind folded and hidden in a container- to New York where someone will give him instruction to kill a man. It all happens in a night, a time in which his family believe him to be hunting with friends in the hills nearby.
After killing totally in shock a man at the barber shop, Antonio will then be returned to Sicily in the same manner and his wife will never suspect what really happened.
The film ends by Antonio returning to Milan with his wife and kids. Everyday life seem the same but he will never be the same man again.
Ironically, in the last scene Antonio returns to a colleague a pen he inadvertently put in his pockets before summer leave and the man tells him "If every one were like you, the world would be a better place".
... I definitely recommend this film.
Alberto Sordi memorably played his role, with innate style for moving back and forth between comedy and drama.
Lattuada's camera on the other hand soaks in the beauty and style of each location. Though more than forty years have passed “Mafioso” is a classic and has lost none of its bite.
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