Hard to classify, easy to watch
A tragically underknown and scandalously entertaining 1962 film from Italy, Mafioso, arrives today in a mysterious crate stamped unclassifiable. Is it a droll drama? A dark comedy? Let's just say that the film's startling shifts in mood fit this movie about a man and country divided. And that it appears to be padrino to The Godfather.
A tragically underknown and scandalously entertaining 1962 film from Italy,
Mafioso
, arrives today in a mysterious crate stamped unclassifiable. Is it a droll drama? A dark comedy? Let's just say that the film's startling shifts in mood fit this movie about a man and country divided. And that it appears to be padrino to
The Godfather
.
The matchless Alberto Sordi - a contemporary of Peters Sellers and a progenitor of Steve Martin - stars as the buffoon Everyman, Antonio Badalamenti, a perfectly poised figure destined for the pratfall.
Antonio's heart is in his rugged Sicilian village, Calamo. But his head is the industrialized north, in Milan, where he is a quality-control engineer on the Fiat assembly line. He's proved himself to the Northern snobs who think Sicilians uncouth and uncivilized by turning himself into "a human stopwatch." He is a walking contradiction of Northern efficiency and Southern charm.
So, on his first trip home in eight years will Antonio integrate who he was with who he has become?
As the smiling, overenthusiastic figure inhales the perfume of the lemon trees wafting from his beloved island, he is blissfully oblivious that his Nordic-looking wife and two daughters resemble snow leopards on a bed of mussels.
He's oblivious of a lot more than that.
Director Alberto Lattuada, who partnered Federico Fellini early in the latter's career and later was eclipsed by his protege, directs with a light slapstick touch. When Antonio arrives at his ancestral home and embraces one in the retinue of black-kerchiefed dowagers, she turns out not to be his mamma, but cantankerous aunt.
Sordi's comic gift is in how he reveals the cracks in his apparent composure. As the movie takes a surprising turn with the entrance of the village Don (wry Ugo Attanasio), Antonio is unglued by the recognition that he had it wrong. Maybe the real psychological and national division of Italy is between Southern efficiency and Northern charm?
Mafioso *** (out of four stars)
Produced by Antonio Cervi, directed by Alberto Lattuada. With Alberto Sordi, Norma Bengell, Gabriella Conti, Ugo Attanasio, and Cinzia Bruno. Distributed by Rialto Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 39 mins.
Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (brief, discreet violence)
Playing at: Ritz Five, Ritz Sixteen/NJEndText