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RESTORED 35MM PRINT!
Toronto finally gets to see the film that has received almost as much acclaim as Melville’s Army of Shadows. That Mafioso was cited as the revelation of the New York Film Festival was no surprise to anyone who saw the film during the Bologna festival’s eye-opening Lattuada retrospective earlier that year. (Now there’s a director! No wonder Andrew Sarris calls Lattuada “grossly underappreciated.”) Recently restored for re-release in splendid black-and-white widescreen, Mafioso may be a classic of the Golden Age of Italian comedy, but like all of Lattuada, it’s deadly serious about certain things: the allure of corruption, for one. One of the first films to explore the forbidden subject of the Sicilian Mafia, it stars ace comedian and matinee idol Alberto Sordi as Antonio Badalamenti, an efficient factory supervisor from Milan who takes his wife and children to Sicily to meet his family. Whether it’s the large meals en famille, or sunstruck memories of his earlier life on the island, Angelo soon finds himself reverting to old ways. The local don calls upon him to perform a certain service, and before he knows it Antonio is heading for Brooklyn. An apparent influence on The Godfather, Mafioso delivers laughs and frissons in equal measure. “**** (highest rating). The mother of all godfather movies. If you care about Italy, movies or the mob, you just can’t say you’ve lived a full life without seeing it!”– Jay Carr, AM New York.
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