Customer Reviews

Mafioso (The Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Italian actor Alberto Sordi stars in this brilliant, mordant comedy about a jovial Sicilian engineer who returns to his hometown (with his new family in tow) and exults in the simple country pleasures of rural Sicily. Meanwhile, Nino's blonde, glamorous Northern Italian wife is utterly horrified: her husband's hometown is seen as a parade of the broadest ethnic stereotypes, all the disparaging images that Northerners hold against Southern Italians: that they are swarthy, crude, loutish, loud, hot-tempered, and completely mired in the criminal culture of the Mafia.

For the first half of the film, Nino appears an utter innocent, happily embracing all his childhood kith and kin, speaking glowingly of charity of the local Mafia Don, cheerfully accepting all the absurd explanations of why half the town seems to be either dead or in jail. But slowly, the truth of Nino's past emerges, and we realize that this dumb country cluck is a little more savvy that he lets on... About the same time, the film does an equal about-face, shifting from a broad farce into a chilling Mob movie. It's a fascinating film; also a nice glimpse into Italy in the early 1960s, a forward-looking, industrialized nation with deep ties to its old past. Definitely worth checking out. (Joe Sixpack, Slipcue film reviews)

I saw this film on the big screen and it was quite an experience. I went in thinking it was going to be some boring 1960's black and white film.

How wrong can you be?

This movie is absolutely hilarious. It's lighthearted and funny for most of the movie and the lead character really drives the story. He wants his wife and two daughters, his modern Italian family in Milan, to see his hometown in Sicily -- his "roots."


The lead character remembers his beloved Sicily as an idyllic countryside with good people, good food, and good times. However, now that he is a grown man, upon his arrival, certain parties are interested in what he can do for them. The events that follow are what make for very good movie watching. You just never know where its going to go.

This movie is in Italian, so it has subtitles. Don't let that discourage you from watching this. The expressions on the people's faces are all you need.

You'll never look at The Godfather or any mob movie the same way again.

Brilliantly directed and acted - amongst the top tier of films ever created.

This movie is a brilliant, consistently ironic and finally grim comedy, and as such far sadder than tragedy. Rather than showing us an imperfect man attempting to rise to the occasion when it's sadly too late, this film shows him instead too easily falling to it.

A northern Italian auto factory foreman, the marvelous Alberto Sordi first appears standing before rows of wonderfully photographed clanging machines, performing dully repetitive tasks. Eagerly, he demands his workers obey his directions for a robot like speed of their own - i.e. man as boss dehumanizing man as underling. Soon taking a vacation to the South, Sicily, to introduce his family to his "roots," the Sordi character is asked by his own northern boss to deliver an objet d'art to the Mafia leader down there. This delegated task creates a meaningful link between the seemingly opposite "economically booming" North and the impoverished South, one which the film never loses sight of. Weak humanity is easily corruptible into the pawns of superiors, North or South. In the movement of the film, we are taken then not so much from an urbane, civilized North to a rural, primitive South as a much shorter distance - out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The director of this film, Alberto Lattuada, stated that he habitually looked through the lens of the camera and was essentially the author of every shot. One can easily believe him. The story-telling images of mouth-watering but excessive amounts of food (fried eggplant, swordfish,and octopus-ink flavored pasta) being pressed upon Sordi and his family in Sicily are unforgettable, as are the mind-boggling images of the unique skyscrapers of New York when the impressionable Sordi is transported there late in the film for yet another delegated task, this time southern variety.

I'd argue against the notion that the movie neatly splits into a tragic mode after a comic beginning. Instead, it reveals from the outset that men in the North are considered as dispensible tools for obedience to bosses of industry, just as later and with disturbing consistency, they are shown to be to bosses of the Mafia in Sicily. Underneath the grinning mask of the comedy, there is from the very beginning a solemn mask as well.

i finally got to see this film recently and enjoyed it from start to finish. the Humor at first was a trip and then the film got real dark and serious.the Main character was coming back home and he wanted to still be down with his roots and he was being tested. his wife represented the new world he had undertaken and his family and old running buddies didn't know if he had changed or if he was still down. he was working a auto plant and they wanted to see if the big city life had changed him from his past ways. this film was the one that got the Godfather and other classics off and running. Giada De laurentis of the Food Channel who has a show called Everyday Italian,well her Grandfather Dino De Laurentis Produced this film.this is a must see film.

Sold on its original Italian release in 1962 as a dramatic expose and in its 2006 US release as a laugh-a-minute comedy, Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso is neither - rather it's an occasionally dark dramatic comedy that doesn't trivialize the way the Mafia have helped hold Sicily in the 19th century for easy laughs. Indeed, considering how much of the film is a gently observed culture clash comedy as auto worker Alberto Sordi takes the wife and kids to his Sicilian hometown for the first time that at times threatens to become M. Sordi's Holiday, it's surprising how morally bleak the ending is when a small favor leads to big trouble. Along the way there aren't many big laughs, more gentle smiles of recognition, and Sordi resists the temptation to overstate to keep his character a recognisable human being rather than a crude stereotype even as he reverts back from the model modern Milanese to the proudly subservient Sicilian piciotto he thought he'd left behind. The film's also subtle and perceptive in its treatment of the Mafia. Though some details - such as the despised owner of the local estate the Mafiosi `manage' for her (the original source of the Mafia's power in Sicily was running estates for absentee Northern landowners) - could be lost on the less informed viewers, it does demonstrate the way it worked on a feudal system of obligation and unspoken threats, be it the threat of ostracism from the community or an inquiry about the health of your family.

Working from a screenplay by as disparate talents as comedy writers Age and Scarpelli (Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli), shockmeister Marco Ferreri and his occasional collaborator Rafael Azcona (La Grande Bouffe), Lattuada has a great eye both for the shop floor scenes in Milan that bookend the film and the Sicilian locations, playing the comedy straight and the drama occasionally dryly comic, with Piero Piccioni providing a driving score that often leaves you wondering if the film is a comedy or a drama. In truth it's both, and if it's not the masterpiece that US critics claimed when it screened 2006 New York Film Festival, it's still a worthwhile rediscovery with a surprisingly sobering ending that doesn't cop out.

This movie is fantastic. I have been to Italy many times, and visited Sicily. This film really brings it home to me, especially when the wife of Antonio thinks her afternoon meal is over and wants to light a cigarette only to find out she finished the first course and more food was to come. Great movie. Higly recommended for both Italians and non-Italians.

Un film molto bello! Alberto ti fa' morire dalle risate solo a guardarlo!
Complimenti al regista una storiella molto bella e divertente allo stesso
tempo tragica riflettendo i tempi di allora in Sicilia!

A MUST SEE FOR ALL ITALIAN AMERICANS: Black and White. A Wonderful Film. I won't repeat what has already been very well said by other reviewers here.

Being Italian American, this film validated and provided insight into my Italian Heritage. After my grandparents came to the United States and became citizens here, much of the behavior depicted in this film stayed with my family in their habits, customs, tradition and Italian American culture. The scene of Antonio "paying repsects" to his "Godfather" really struck a chord. I spent countless hours with my grandparents "paying respect" to countless paesani - some related to us, many not blood relatives.

When I became an independent adult with my own home, nothing could please my Italian grandparents more when they came to visit than to find some paesani nearby that I could take them to visit, speak Italian and share their common bond. You can take an Italian out of Italy, but, you can't take Italy out of an Italian.

There are so many things in the film that are genuine. The hirsute Sicilian sister, dark, with moustache who is helped by the Nordic blonde Italian wife getting rid of her unwanted hair. The scenes of meal time. The utter horror of a Northern Italian woman breaking out a cigarette at the dinner table. When I was a boy in America, my mother, a 1st generation American, still had to hide in the attic to smoke so my grandparents wouldn't see her.

There are hilarious scenes - the beach scene where the Sicilian men have carved a mermaid into the sand and are discussing certain anatomical features of their model. Risque for the time this film was made.

I would also recommend the film for those studying Italian language and culture.

My husband and I enjoyed "Mafioso" very much and wished that there were other movies equally enjoyable that we could watch. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be too many around. Most of the current selections are rather silly and unfunny. I prefer a good story with talented actors -- I just watched "Doubt" and it was great. So, I just have to be patient and wait till the movie industry get serious and start to produce movies for adults.

Mafioso- The movie is a classic Italian-American flick with superb cinematic backgrounds encompassing 1960's Naples,Sicily and New York settings. Actor Alberto Sordi puts on the performance of his life as a factory worker dragged into the gangster life.A must-see for cinema buffs. Look for American boxing great Charley Norkus,playing the part of mob associate in New York.(He is the fellow that turns on movie projector at New York meeting). Great film to enjoy all around.