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VILLAGE VOICE
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by Jan Stuart
January
19, 2007
The
'50s and '60s were sprinkled with frothy comedies
about middle-class Everymen who go on dream
vacations that devolve into chaos, a mini-trend
influenced at least in part by the success of
Jacques Tati's classic farce "M. Hulot's
Holiday."In 1962, the same year that James Stewart starred in "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation," Alberto Sordi made "Mafioso." As might be inferred from its title, this long-ignored film by Italian director Alberto Lattuada offered a darker spin on a sunny trope. Resurfacing at last fall's New York Film Festival to great acclaim, this bracing winner is getting a second lease on commercial life in New York theaters. So, what are you waiting for? Avanti!
As Antonio Badalamenti, a dedicated auto-plant manager, Sordi gives a vivacious, multidimensional portrait of a corporate martinet who is shocked out of his daily lockstep by a trip into the past. Bundling his two young daughters and beautiful Milanese wife (Norma Bengell) onto a train to Sicily to meet his family, Antonio stage-manages this long-delayed trip with the same precision he brings to his job.
Once in the old country, the layers of northern urban refinement peel away as Antonio reconnects with his southern provincial family, which include a sister whose mustache offers a maidenly rebuke to his own and an aunt so veiled in the generic vestments of peasantry that he mistakes her for his mother. Everywhere there are piles of food, old faces, and more food.
There is also the obligatory visit to pay respects to Antonio's former patron, the local Mafia boss Don Vincenzo (Ugo Attanasio). Vincenzo's fawning, avuncular relationship with Antonio conceals a hidden agenda. Before he is fully aware of what is happening to him, the dutiful manager is hijacked into performing a mission unlike anything he had to do back at the factory.
"Mafioso" switches masks from homecoming comedy to gangland thriller with a startling swiftness that is almost as disorienting for the audience as it is for its protagonist. But Lattuada and writer Rafael Azcona plant the seeds of this metamorphosis the minute Antonio and his family arrive in Sicily: Local customs that seem perfectly natural to Antonio bear traces of something quite antisocial, if not sinister.
Antonio's transformation runs concurrently with that of the film, which is really about the denial embedded in romanticizing one's roots and the rude awakening that often occurs when one goes back. We can only wonder how "Mafioso" struck American audiences in its brief 1962 appearance. In 2007, it reveals the universal hallmarks of a classic.
by Jan Stuart September 29, 2006
The most unalloyed pleasure
I've had from a festival offering this week
came from "Mafioso," a humdinger
of a comedy that has been l\ovingly resuscitated
from the vault of Italian cinema's vintage
'60s. Directed by Alberto Lattuada (who co-helmed
Fellini's first film, "Variety Lights"),
this dark-hued 1962 delight boasts a rich,
exuberant performance by Alberto Sordi as a
Milanese factory foreman who takes his wife
and daughters down to Sicily to meet his family
and is drawn into the old life in more ways
than he bargained for.
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