Jay Carr          January 18, 2007

'Mafioso' Swaggers into the Present

Alberto Lattuada (1914-2005) was a giant of Italian cinema. Although not widely known in America, American filmmakers know him, study him, revere him. And American audiences who see his newly restored 1962 "Mafioso" won't soon forget it, or want to. It's the mother of all Godfather movies, the forerunner of every mob opera from Coppola's to "Married to the Mob" to "The Sopranos." It's a blast from the past that swaggers undimmed into the present.

As few films do, "Mafioso" marries comedy and terror, reminding us of the profound link between them. It's driven by the great Alberto Sordi, with his matinee-idol looks and perfect comic timing, as a Fiat plant foreman in Milan who takes his northern Italian wife and their two little girls to visit his family in Sicily. Bursting with exuberance and unease, he's a riot as he strains to put a good face on the fact that he has brought a modern woman into a brutal, vicious, feudal peasant world he dare not offend.
 
The culture-clash humor segues into terror as he realizes he's been chosen by the local godfather to travel to the U.S. in a packing crate to carry out a killing in New Jersey. The matter-of-factness of the Mafiosi at work has never been more convincingly or naturalistically rendered. Neither has the fatalism of Sordi's pawn, who regresses into helpless infantilism as he realizes the system he was born into is much bigger and stronger than he is. If you care about Italy, movies or the mob, you just can't say you've lived a full life without seeing it.