"Mafioso" isn't a straight black satire of Sicilian culture so much as a suspenseful near-tragedy leavened by the zesty, irreverent wit that helped define the golden age of Italian comedies. Directed by the late Albert Lattuda (largely unknown on these shores beyond his fought-for credit as codirector on Fellini's first feature, Variety Lights), this is the story of happy-go-lucky Antonio (an impeccable Alberto Sordi), an auto plant foreman in Milan who has brought his family on vacation for "12 days in the home country." Still in postwar recovery, the rural Sicily where he was raised has the intimate small-town despair of a neorealist classic, and it's unquestionably clear from the family's arrival by taxi (an absurd chat out the window reveals a funeral-in-progress for a murdered man) that Antonio's life in the prosperous North is the direct inverse to that of this pitiable South that time forgot.

The alienation between the two regions hits its comic stride when, in the tradition of meet-the-parents embarrassment, Antonio's blond bombshell wife (Norma Bengell) instantly offends his salt-of-the-earth clan (moustachioed sister, one-handed father, and the toothless rest) with her smoking and metropolitan pride.

The film takes a somewhat darker turn as Antonio pays his respects to Don Vincenzo (Ugo Attanasio) as a picciotto d'onore ("child of honor") who owes much of his success to the aging godfather. The weeklong sizing up of Antonio to make sure he's fit to fulfill a favor for the don leads to a most unanticipated shift during the climax, which distributor Rialto Pictures has asked critics not to disclose. A film this uproariously delightful couldn't be ruined by revealing its ending (it ain't no rug-pulling Shyamalan surprise), though let's just say it's a solid whopper.