Mafioso (1964)

I love this movie so much

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Mafioso was filmed in 1961 with the Barber Shop, in which Alberto Sordi shot his target who was sitting in the barber chair of the Embassy Barber Shop which was in Guttenberg, Hudson County, NJ. My certainty is my Dad owned the barber shop and both he and I were in the movie. Just wanted to set the record straight. I have the original VHS tape of the movie. It was first released in the United States in a theater in Union City about 1 or 2 years later. I did see it, of course. The movie followed me for over 20 years giving me wonderful memories. My father's wish before he died was see the movie once more before he died. I was able to have friends who owned an Italian store locate a copy that a store in the Bronx, NY would sell. I bought it and had a private showing for my Dad.

I really liked this Italian film about the mafia because although it lacks the flash and stereotypes of this sort of film, it really manages to produce an excellent portrait of real people caught up in an ugly lifestyle. While not filmed by such Neo-realists as DeSica or Rosselini, this film sure looks a lot like this style of film that was so popular in the 40s and 50s. That's because so many of the actors appear to be real people--real people who are neither handsome nor glamorous. Heck, even one of the women in the film has a rather significant mustache! The story begins in Milan with a well-respected engineer for an Italian car manufacturer at work just before leaving for vacation in Sicily. His boss asks Antonio to give a present to Don Vincenzo who also happens to live in the same town where he's headed. Apparently, Antonio grew up there and is going back for the first time in many years to introduce his wife and kids to his extended family. However, once in Sicily, it's rather apparent that Don Vincenzo is the local Mafia boss and the town appears to be under his control. Despite Antonio seeming to be a good father and husband, as well as a decent all-around guy, eventually the Don wants him to "do a little favor"--and it shows how seemingly good people become pawns of organized crime.The film excels with its realism. This isn't just because of all the non-professional actors, but because the film manages to tell the story in a way that makes you connect with Antonio and understand how such a good person could do evil. Well acted, directed and written--this is a highly underrated little Italian gem.

Contains Spoiler I just saw this movie which was certainly as wonderful as most of the other reviewers are saying.But one thing several of the other reviewers seemed to miss (to me, at least) was that the entire culture of his hometown was invested in his doing his little errand for the Don. The societal structure is based on doing "favors" for each other. The Don does a favor for his parents, his parents in turn, turn on a dime in their treatment of their Northern Italian daughter-in-law in order to get her to be willing to stay for a few extra days. His father presumably has some idea of the kind of errand he's actually going to be going on.Everything operates from a complex web of familial and social obligations, guilt and fear and he's completely trapped. Not just his wife and children but his parents and sister could all be forfeit if he doesn't do what they want him to do.He only has one skill they care about; his marksmanship. His humanity, his pride, his love for his family; none of that means anything to them.This is a scathing indictment of what brutality, not just Mafia brutality, can do to the human spirit and the acting is wonderful.

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.