Mafioso - Criterion Collection

Mafioso - Criterion Collection
by Alberto Lattuada

Mafioso - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Albert Sordi, Gabriella Conti, Norma Bengell
Director: Alberto Lattuada
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Italian (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Restored, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion Collection

Movie Reviews of Mafioso - Criterion Collection

Movie Review: A sobering black comedy
Summary: 4 Stars

Sold on its original Italian release in 1962 as a dramatic expose and in its 2006 US release as a laugh-a-minute comedy, Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso is neither - rather it's an occasionally dark dramatic comedy that doesn't trivialize the way the Mafia have helped hold Sicily in the 19th century for easy laughs. Indeed, considering how much of the film is a gently observed culture clash comedy as auto worker Alberto Sordi takes the wife and kids to his Sicilian hometown for the first time that at times threatens to become M. Sordi's Holiday, it's surprising how morally bleak the ending is when a small favor leads to big trouble. Along the way there aren't many big laughs, more gentle smiles of recognition, and Sordi resists the temptation to overstate to keep his character a recognisable human being rather than a crude stereotype even as he reverts back from the model modern Milanese to the proudly subservient Sicilian piciotto he thought he'd left behind. The film's also subtle and perceptive in its treatment of the Mafia. Though some details - such as the despised owner of the local estate the Mafiosi `manage' for her (the original source of the Mafia's power in Sicily was running estates for absentee Northern landowners) - could be lost on the less informed viewers, it does demonstrate the way it worked on a feudal system of obligation and unspoken threats, be it the threat of ostracism from the community or an inquiry about the health of your family.

Working from a screenplay by as disparate talents as comedy writers Age and Scarpelli (Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli), shockmeister Marco Ferreri and his occasional collaborator Rafael Azcona (La Grande Bouffe), Lattuada has a great eye both for the shop floor scenes in Milan that bookend the film and the Sicilian locations, playing the comedy straight and the drama occasionally dryly comic, with Piero Piccioni providing a driving score that often leaves you wondering if the film is a comedy or a drama. In truth it's both, and if it's not the masterpiece that US critics claimed when it screened 2006 New York Film Festival, it's still a worthwhile rediscovery with a surprisingly sobering ending that doesn't cop out.
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Summary of Mafioso - Criterion Collection

In Alberto Lattuada s brilliant dark comedy MAFIOSO, auto-factory foreman Nino (Alberto Sordi) takes his proper, modern wife (Norma Bengell) and two blonde daughters from industrial Milan to antiquated rural Sicily to visit his family and get back in touch with his roots. But Antonio gets more than he bargained for when he discovers some harsh truths about his ancestors and himself. The first Italian film to dramatize the modern mafia, Lattuada s devastatingly funny character study is equal parts culture-clash farce and existential nightmare.

Special Features
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* - A 1996 interview with director Alberto Lattuada by filmmaker Daniele Luchetti
* - New video interviews with the director's son, Alessandro Lattuada, and wife, actress Carla Del Poggio (Variety Lights)
* - Italian and U.S. theatrical trailers
* - Stills gallery of promotional caricatures by artist Keiko Kimura New and improved English subtitle translation
As one of the earliest films about the mafia's influence over the personal lives of those involved, Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso also established the way humor is used in gangster movies as respite from tragic, violent circumstances. In it, Antonio (Alberto Sordi), nicknamed Nino or Ninuzzo by his Sicilian peers, takes his blonde, northern Italian wife, Marta (Norma Bengell) and two daughters back to Sicily, since they know little of his Sicilian heritage. Taking vacation leave from his factory job in Milan, Nino's family vacation becomes a full-force effort to convince his modern wife and traditional parents that their differences are merely superficial. Hilarious scenes underscore the differences between northern and southern Italian culture. Marta is appalled by the multi-course banquet served, for example, yet the whole family gawks when she lights a cigarette after eating. Once this familial conflict is resolved, by Marta's applying her beautician skills to rid Nino's sister, Rosalia, of profuse body hair, Nino's "other" family beckons. His past alliance to Don Vincenzo, the town's mysteriously powerful sports association president, means that he owes repayment for past favors. Besides Mafioso's sumptuous depictions of robust Sicilian life, it also humanizes mafia members to explain their eye-for-an-eye mentality. Don Vincenzo is certainly a prototypical Godfather, fair and uncompromising. From the outset, Mafioso emphasizes the importance of love and loyalty, giving one a renewed sense of appreciation for those one knows, trusts, and relies upon. --Trinie Dalton

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