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Let's be realistic.

Absolutely Fantastic

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I don't see how you could categorize this film as other than a comedy for adults. That is what it is... tragedy as other reviewers suggest now that is funny...The first part has fun at the expense of Sicilian stereotypes: peasant women with mustaches... toothless old men fighting with knives and food and more food. The part in New York is even more hilarious with the mafioso speaking Italian with an American accent... All the stereotypes present and subtle humor every where.This film is meticulous hangs together well. Best of Italian comedy.A "dark" comedy for adults. Where did they run down all the Sicilian non actors?

Studied Italian recently at The Ohio State University. Studied some Italian cinema. Enjoyed trying to understand conversation in this movie; tried not to look at subtitles. Wife looked like Brigitte Bardot, and a little like younger Jane Fonda. Girls throwing yucky food on floor was funny. Plant manager sounded like he was speaking Americanized Italian (like me), lol. Wife thinks, "His mother hates me." Creepy friar with water dousing stick. Toothless father too short and emaciated; didn't convince me he could be the father of main character.My Italian coursework included geographical studies, such as Italy's 20 regions. One is Sicily, a separate island with its own dialect. It is known for poverty and Mafia. This movie showed how they go hand in hand. My coursework was up to date, even though decades after this movie. Apparently those two stereotypes are still true. Kidnappings are prevalent in Italy, especially of young children of wealthy parents.Milano (Milan, to Americans) is still the money capital of Italy. Not only is Milano the home of Fiat, Lamborghini and Alfa Romeo, but it is also the fashion design capital with brands such as Gucci, Versace, Armani, etc. There are fancy apartments and lots and lots of material worshipping people. Banks are huge. Capitalism is supreme. Milano is the big metropolis: the New York City of Italy.We saw a movie in class about southern Italy. The story took place in a small, isolated town with rural surroundings. It was creepy. It was prime territory for criminals to hide a kidnap victim. There was no air conditioning, just an old decrepit kitchen table fan. The mother was raped by the crooks. Ick.At least "Mafioso" was funny in places.

Mafia ties run deep in this film about a middle level manager in an auto plant in Milan who takes his family to his native Sicily for a summer vacation. Admired by his old childhood friends who can't take their eyes off of his attractive wife, he's the local boy who makes good in the big city. But "Mafioso" presents the deep ties that connect him into his ancestral village, portraying a system that runs deep in this Sicilian setting of an ancient village in which his family's connections intertwine with local Cosa Nostra. The director and the lead actor both make this a film in which one can savor just about every scene. Alberto Sordi connects the comedy with the drama, the good humored happy family man obligated into the "brotherhood" by Don Vicenzo and his right hand man to do his part, keeping him literally in the dark.

(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.