Solemplex
To me, this movie is perfection.
Exoticalot
People are voting emotionally.
UnowPriceless
hyped garbage
Seamus2829
I just had the opportunity to see this film in a newly restored print of the Italian original. The story concerns a manager of an auto plant (played to perfection by Italian screen idol,Alberto Sordi) in Milan who takes his family to Sicily to meet his family & his old friends, when he finds himself involved in the local Mafia Don & his ner do well cronies. The screenplay was written by it's director (Alberto Lattuada), Raphel Alzcona & Marco Ferreri (some years before he raised eyebrows with his films 'The Grand Bufet' & 'The Last Woman'). Although the films use of black & white was quite striking, I kind of wished it had been shot in Technicolor (for the panoramic shots of Sicily & it's beautiful coastline). An overlooked gem that's well worth seeking out, if it's being screened in a proper cinema,but it won't lose much on DVD either.
John Peters
Mafioso was made in 1962 and reflects a "pre-color" film aesthetic that includes both vivid dialog and precise black-and-white renditions of light and shade. One result of the superb craftsmanship in Mafioso is to pull the viewer, consciously or unconsciously, into the lives of characters. The strongest pull is from the Alberto Sordi character, Antonio Badalamenti, a Sicilian who migrated to Northern Italy as a young man and made good, with a job as factory foreman and a blond wife and daughters. On a vacation, he takes the family, for the first time, to Sicily, giving both Northern and Southern relatives a chance to decide what to make of one another.Mafioso's director, Alberto Lattuada, handles all of this is with a naturalness that immediately makes us accept and believe in his characters. It's a wonderful achievement. That it was possible with 1962 black-and-white technology is cause not only to appreciate Lattuada and his team's accomplishment but to reconsider assumptions on how characters in movies can be brought to life. Approach to film-making may, in the end, matter more than technology. For example, the material poverty of the Sicilian settings is calmly obvious in Mafioso in a way that is not evident in the far grander movies of the well-known Italian-American auteurs.Once in Sicily, things start to happen. Both families prove adaptable and find ways to get along but, for Antonio, there are unexpected implications. Seems he owes the local don (played by Ugo Attanasio in another wonderful, low-keyed performance) a favor. Antonio pretends to his wife and daughters that he's on a hunting trip but is packed into a shipping crate so that he can be sent to America, kill a rival gangster, and be shipped back to Sicily. Everything works. Antonio's upset about killing the stranger but is quite willing to keep the secret (and his acceptance by both Southern and Northern cultures) for the rest of his well-ordered life.
Gerald A. DeLuca
(Contains spoilers!) "Mafioso" may be one of the finest Italian movies of the 1960s, ultimately to rank up there, in my opinion, with treasures such as Antonioni's "L'Avventura," Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" and "8 1/2," Visconti's "The Leopard," Germi's "Seduced and Abandoned," Pasolini's "Accattone" and "Mamma Roma," Olmi's "Il Posto" and "I Fidanzati," Risi's "Il Sorpasso", Bolognini's "Senilità" and "La Viaccia," Bellocchio's "Fists in the Pocket," Bertolucci's "Before the Revolution," Rosi's "Salvatore Giuliano." The name of director Alberto Lattuda is not as well known, but he has made some remarkable films, among which are "Italiani Brava Gente" and "Mill on the Po." In "Mafioso," Alberto Sordi gives one of his finest performances as a loving family man, Antonio Badalamenti, born and raised in Sicily, now living in Milan with a wife and two little daughters. He is a foreman in a factory there and honest, decent, and fair to a fault. He takes his wife and children to his native Calenzano in Sicily to meet the family they have never seen and with great pride shows them the wonders of his this region, the friendly people, the good bountiful food, the ancient traditions.Then a darker reality intervenes and turns the human comedy into a stark moral dilemma with tragic implications. It is in the form of Don Vincenzo, the local don, who may have been instrumental in obtaining the cushy Milan job for Antonio. Antonio had been asked by his Milan superior to consign a packet to him. Antonio is the messenger boy. Now it is payback time. Don Vincenzo wants a favor from Antonio, one that involves a secret mission to New York and New Jersey to act as a hit-man for the mob for one small job. It is to murder a troublesome rival gang member.Antonio can refuse. No overt threats are made. He is, after all, loved and admired by Don Vincenzo and the other friends and family of the village. But the implications should he refuse are dark and sinister. His own family and the lives of his children might be at stake. In this kind of moral dilemma, how far will a good man go to save and protect his family? The crate that will secretly fly him to America for the short mission is a symbol of the moral enclosure and claustrophobic fear that now threatens him. His wife all the while thinks he is off on a local hunting trip, and indeed, he returns with some killed rabbits. The organization has planned everything perfectly. But Antonio, now safe, now happy for the safety of his family, will live as an altered man, harboring a horrible secret he can never share with those he loves or with anyone. Back at the Milan factory he returns a pen borrowed from a worker and inadvertently not returned. He's that honest.This is the theme of the film and it is given vivid life in the details, for it is a movie replete with beautiful details. For example, Antonio's wife is a liberated woman who smokes in a society that still forbids it among women. She appears to be radical and aloof, but she is just uneasy in what is for her an alien culture. And yet she wins the hearts of her relatives through some simple gestures of good will, such as in helping a woman with a bit of hair removal to make her look prettier. There is a nice beach scene where the male locals ogle the women in a kind of pent-up libido. And I love those Sicilian male caps which everyone wears and which Antonio wears again too, symbolizing his becoming a Sicilian again. We view a society that to a great extent values conformity and mistrusts all outsiders, where "honor" surpasses every consideration (as in Germi's "Seduced and Abandoned") and where one cannot make choices based merely on intrinsic merit or on what seems to be the right thing to do.Alberto Sordi, arguably one of Italy's two or three greatest actors of all time, gives a performance that is mesmerizing and on key at all times. It is nothing short of brilliant. His is a bizarre yet believable journey through comedy and joy that comes in touch with genuine fear and terror.It is a shame that this film has not been commercially available or widely seen in the United States since it opened in 1964 (except at a few Sordi and Commedia'all'Italiana retrospectives) and has not been widely available on video or DVD outside of Italy. That failing seems about to be remedied.After a New York Film Festival retrospective showing, it will be re-released commercially and later make its way to DVD for American film enthusiasts to see once again or for the first time. They will have a great deal to look forward to.
kristen Skullerud
The actor Alberto Sordi plays the part of an honest sicilian, just married with a woman from the more 'liberated' Northern Italy, who returns to Sicily to introduce his wife to his very traditional family ! Creating not few cultural conflicts, however she is in the end well accepted , even the local Sicilians look at her with more curiosity than suspicion ! Alberto Sordi plays the part of a meleodramatic Sicilian very well, and the first hour of the film is very funny, but afterwards becomes too serious as he is smuggled into the States to be a mafioso killer !Anyway just for the acting excellence of Alberto Sordi this film gets a 8 vote from me !
