Plucked a few years ago from the obscurity of anonymously commercial early 60s Italian cinema, Mafioso appears to have once again settled back into that subset of easily overlooked gems that surprise us upon first discovery. Criterion picked it up in their deal with Rialto Pictures, releasing it on DVD in 2008 after the film completed a brief tour on the art house revival circuit. The package promptly got lost in the shadows cast by best-sellers such as Pierrot le fou and The Last Emperor at the time, and not much has happened since then to draw more attention to the film either. The two Albertos at the heart of the project, director Lattuada and actor Sordi, were successful enough in their prime, and fans of Federico Fellini's early work in The White Sheik and I vitteloni will recognize Sordi's face even if his name doesn't ring a bell. But neither of them went on to the kind of lasting renown achieved by contemporaneous peers like Fellini (a former colleague and eventual rival of Lattuada's, after their dispute over authorship credits for Variety Lights) and Marcello Mastroianni, whose continental look and fortunate alliance with Fellini at his artistic peak served his reputation so well.
Compare the virtual instructions, delivered with almost apologetic deliberation, contained in that clip with the one below, created by Rialto to promote Mafioso's re-release back in 2006-07. Some 45 years after the film first came out, mob affiliations and all the trouble in life that accompanies such family ties have become a whimsical punchline, even for us non-Italians with no overt familiarity with organized crime, as we smirk and shake our heads knowingly while decoding the familiar wise guy gestures and other shorthand indicators of unavoidable Mafia infiltration:
Of course, back in 1962, the Mafia wasn't so used to being laughed at, and even in the Italian north where the film industry was based, some degree of prudent caution was advisable lest one risk needless provocation of some easily offended Sicilian "gentlemen of honor" - or their socially unconstrained henchmen...
Beyond serving as a primer on la Cosa Nostra's pervasive influence on everyday Italian life, Mafioso also turns out to be quite a funny movie, especially in the early scenes, which work as a platform for examining the culture clash running so hot in that society at the time. The film opens in a vast automotive assembly line, where foreman/inspector Nino Badalementi prowls in his white lab coat and clipboard, making precise measurements of the machinists' production and giving no-nonsense feedback whenever the productivity standards are not met. He's obviously a stickler for the details, a hard worker whose diligence has earned recognition, promotion and the attendant middle-class comforts that come with management responsibilities. Once his characteristic fastidiousness is established, we see Nino heading into a two-week summer's vacation in which he will bring his wife Marta, their two young daughters, and a portentous package given to him by his boss to deliver to their mutual acquaintance, one Don Vincenzo, from their tidy modernistic apartment in Milan to their first-ever family visit to his Sicilian home village. Catania is a dry, dusty place, sun-baked and situated between a craggy mountain peak and a languid sandy beach, stuck firmly in the grip of stern, unshakable traditions, chief of which are fidelity to one's clan and an unquestioning loyalty to the old ways, however they're interpreted and enforced in a given moment by the most venerable patriarch or matriarch on the scene, or lurking quietly in the shadows.
The culture shock and social awkwardness on both sides of Nino's family as they first encounter each other makes for some robust laughter of an "Italian Beverly Hillbillies" sort as the rubes and the city slicker Marta eye each other warily, with the befuddled Nino stuck in the middle trying to bridge the communication gap. Though he does his best to help his wife assimilate into the stifling surroundings, he himself turns out to be incapable of resisting a relapse into the subordinate role and petty familial rivalries that village life inevitably pushes on everyone subject to its gravity.
At the center of all the film's action, seemingly never off screen for more than a minute or two, Alberto Sordi proves to be a brilliant commander of our attention as he navigates Nino's emotionally complex journey with effortless ease. As a native son returning home with rightful reasons to boast, and even feel a bit superior to the small-minded squabblers and petty tyrants he thought he left behind, we can easily empathize with his initial comical smugness, then with his gratuitous renewed embrace of the down-home customs he's rediscovering, and finally with the appalling recognition of just how deeply indebted and controlled he is when his benevolent godfather Don Vincenzo calls upon him to do a small favor for his extended family.
Equally adept is director Alberto Lattuada, who got a lot of acclaim in Mafioso's 2006-07 press reviews as unduly neglected, under-appreciated and deserving of further exposure. To my knowledge, none of the other 40 films he directed has gotten any kind of promotional bump in the USA since then (and Variety Lights, his other Criterion Collection entry, has since gone out of print, with no apparent plans from Studio Canal to buff it up or capitalize on the Fellini connection in the foreseeable future.) So much for all the overdue plaudits that were supposed to be sent his way! It looks to me like he's back to being just as ignored as he ever was.
Maybe this is Lattuada's masterpiece, for all I know, but he was clearly a talented filmmaker, known to be efficient and aesthetically sound in cranking out films across a wide range of genres. Mafioso is clearly the work of an experienced, well-disciplined hand, offering gorgeously composed and vividly crisp black & white images - the geometric Milanese factory interiors and sun-blanched Sicilian exteriors are equally impressive - in addition to the genuinely heartwarming character studies thrown in as side offerings as we grow more familiar with Nino's relatives and associates. Even as a non-Italian (my ancestry is Dutch on my mom's side, Anglo-Saxon mutt on my dad's), I could find a lot to relate to in the general sense of struggle that Nino had to endure in staring down, and ultimately succumbing to the inexorable pressures his culture imposed on him. Of course, the particulars of what goes down in Sicily are such that the story rises above mere pedestrian ruminations of a younger generation estranged from past traditions, now having to make their peace, at least temporarily, with discarded customs and outmoded expectations. But still, for viewers who have just had to make their own pilgrimage back home during this holiday gathering time of year (or more pointedly, for those of us who are responsible for choosing which traditions to pass on and enforce to our kin, and which ones to let go so they can live on their own terms), there are some generic chuckles and more than a few wince-inducing moments to be found as we empathize with Nino and Marta's plight. Of course, the tension ramps up to a whole new level in the last half of the film, well beyond what I hope any of us have to put up with just for the sake of upholding our familial obligations...
Mafioso can be summarized as a dark comedy contrasting various types of engineering. Whether they're of the mechanical, economic, cultural or criminal sorts, we see a spectrum of techniques employed throughout the film to bend, cut and conform resistant materials. Cold hard steel at the beginning and stubborn, frightened, bewildered human will at the end - each seem impervious to persuasion and require skillfully applied tools before they finally yield and take on the desired shape. The life of a city, with its flash of money and ostentatious displays of power, its boasting of economic miracles and disdain for the bumptious, ignorance of the past, represents to most of us the clearest advance of human progress. But the old methods of taking care of business, crude, brutal and coercive as they are, still seem to find their way of motivating and animating the most mundane of our daily transactions. Most of the time, we hardly stop to calculate their price.
Next: An Autumn Afternoon