Mafioso at NYFF

One of the great privileges of attending good film festivals is the chance to see archival prints on the big screen, with great audiences, usually seeing a new or clean print. Even better, sometimes I come across a little gem of a film I hadn't seen before. Such is the case with the fabulous Italian film Mafioso showing this afternoon at NYFF.

MAFIOSO
Director: Alberto Lattuada
Country: Italy, Release: 1962, Runtime: 99

Antonio Badalamenti (Alberto Sordi) is a detailed and dedicated floor-efficiency employee at a Milan auto metalworks plant. He has traded in his bonus for twelve days of vacation. He's anxious to take his wife and two daughters to his hometown in Sicily. He hasn't been home in over four years. But before he gathers up his family for the trip, he promises to carry a package for his boss to the local patriarch in his town, Don Vicenzo (Ugo Attanasio). When arriving in Sicily, he introduces his Northern, blonde wife, Marta, (Norma Bengell) to the cavalcade of local characters representing Southern Italy. The town has every cliched persona including the black clad nonas and zias, hairy lipped sisters, and wiry old men still scrappy to fight.

Lattuada keeps the humor and local charm alive as he slowly brings in a more distressing element of mob danger. Don Vincenzo soon has his eye on sharp-shooting Antonio for a 'job' he has in mind. But even when the family yanks Antonio into their plans, the director keeps some brief moments of humor to prevent the film from despair. Sordi's face easily moves from jokester to childlike love to scared patsy.

The film themes of North vs. South and honest men vs. the Mafia still resonates today. Northerners still feel like Sicilians are draining the wealth from the industrial and prosperous north with their unemployed youth and the underhanded Dons. Southerners still think of modern northerners as stuck-up and reserved. Perhaps if they took Antonio's advice to his wife to give the relationship some time to get to know each other, Italians would become just a little less distrustful of each other.

This spirited film has charm, allowing one to laugh at the strongest of stereotypes representing the complexity of Italy. Mafioso also pulls in the stronger, but never preachy, message of how getting caught up in 'family' business can haunt you, probably for life. Just watch out for the kiss on the lips.

Mafioso will be re-release in the U.S. in January 2007

Q&A afterward
Lattuada's wife and actress, Carla Del Poggio, was present to take questions after the film. She was one talkative Italian, animated and verbose. Luckily the interpreter was very thorough and took notes to keep up. She was able to wax nostalgically about the two composers who worked on the film - Piero Piccioni and Nino Rota- who each brought jazz/moderninity and classical compositions to the two worlds of Mafioso. Humorously, Del Poggio knew some English since she corrected the translator when he described some of the music as classical when she was articulating lyricism. On and on she talked about her husband's eclectic work, collaboration with Dino De Laurentiis and Sordi. Her father played Don Vicenzo but his dialect had to be dubbed over with Sicilian accent. She was a joy of chatter but I feel a bit slighted since she only signed one person's program before raising her nose high and walking to the exit. And I'm an autograph stalker at film festivals - as long as the restraining orders keep getting lost in the courts.


preceded by
JIMMY BLUE
Joseph Infantolino, USA, 2006, 15 min.
A pathetic New York borough thug gets high in the bathroom while his child waits in the hallway and his wife walks about catatonic. He has a gambling problem and has to rough up his bookie's clientele to make-up for past debts. One call send him to a strip club to smack an old girlfriend about for payment's past due. While the camera work is fancy and the acting suitable, the film falls short of providing anything worth telling again. Sure, the editor has some fun with all the cuts but beyond the technical showmanship on rather low production costs, this film could use a punch or two to bring it to life.