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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mafia film that will defy your expectations..., April 26, 2008
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)
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Set foundation for all mafia movies to follow, February 16, 2008
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.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
North or South, or North IS South?, April 13, 2008
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.
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