In this September 2006 video interview, actress Carla Del Poggio (VARIETY LIGHTS, LOST YOUTH) remembers her husband Alberto Lattuada; her father, actor Ugo Attanasio; and the production of MAFIOSO. Lest the film be thought of as historically bound to some quaint period in the past, we are reminded that recent statistics show organized crime still occupies the largest sector of the Italian economy. One word: vivacity. Black levels are quite strong and contrast is good presenting strong gray levels. Classics and discoveries from around the world, thematically programmed with special features, on a streaming service brought to you by the Criterion Collection. Mafioso is a prime example of the commedia all'italiana as a complex film blurring the lines between comedy and drama. On the one hand, you had the postwar art-house powerhouses—Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni—all operating in full gear, with a younger crop (Pasolini, Zurlini, and Scola) bringing up the rear. Brought up by his father, the composer Felice Lattuada, in an opera-drenched atmosphere, he trained as an architect, but was movie mad and helped start Italy’s first film archive. Nino tries to bridge these two worlds with an increasingly desperate bonhomie and gregarious flattery; but no one is fooled, especially not the old Mafia chieftain, Don Vincenzo, who calls in a favor and enlists Nino as a hit man. Mafioso is filled with delicious touches, such as the discussion about alienation by several Sicilian beach bums, the alarmingly abundant welcome-home feast, or the dilemma around Nino’s unmarried sister’s mustache. Without this engine of fate, we would have had merely a stock, if amusing, comedy about culture clash, such as Meet the Parents; with it, the stakes and the danger keep being raised. In its pre-Godfather, anti-nostalgic, decidedly unromantic treatment of the Mafia, Mafioso uses the criminal-society plot to impose implacability on an otherwise random, frivolous world. Francesco Rosi’s film is a painstakingly documented reconstruction of the nefarious relationships between the Mafia, banditry, and economic and political power in Sicily between 1943 and 1950. The black and white image for this release looks fantastic. One of the first Italian films to look frankly at the Mafia, Lattuada’s devastatingly funny character study is equal parts culture-clash farce and existential nightmare. Known to his fans and detractors as the Emperor, Sordi was almost handsome enough to be a matinee idol, had not a certain pudginess of cheek and largesse of nose gotten in the way. (Read my Mafioso review. On the one hand, you had the postwar art-house powerhouses—Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni—all operating in full gear, with a younger crop (Pasolini, Zurlini, and Scola) bringing up the rear. The 1960s were a heady time for Italian cinema. After Italy was liberated by the Allies, Lattuada called for a neorealist cinema: “We are in rags? As Edgardo Cozarinsky, the film critic–director, wrote admiringly, Lattuada’s “eclecticism has obstructed an evaluation of his unusual achievement . The most startling stylistic tour de force occurs when the film suddenly shifts location to New York City. It’s sharp and crisp, incredibly clean. Half the townsmen are unemployed lechers, the other half work for the Mafia. We move from the horizontal, parched landscape of Sicily to New York’s vertical cityscape (Nino plays tourist, craning his neck at the skyscrapers, to distract himself from the murderous task ahead), and from the operatic intensity of Verdian verismo to the deadpan, sunlit, semidocumentary cinematography of Don Siegel’s The Killers or Irving Lerner’s Murder by Contract. The print provided by Criterion is progressive, with an excellent contrast, free of debris/damage, and with a healthy dose of film grain. He keeps the action moving by any means necessary: sometimes tracking, sometimes employing enormous close-ups, or cutaways to the landscape, zooms, stylized lighting. Yet even here, Nino’s city-dude smugness undermines his enlightened feminist message, so you’re not sure whether to applaud him or laugh at him. When we have subtracted the contributions of great comic acting, brilliant scriptwriting, a splendid score by Piero Piccioni, what is still left to characterize Lattuada’s direction? Best Offer: Make Offer. He is certainly not a macho, even correcting one of the Sicilian toughs: “Doing what your wife wants isn’t a sign of weakness.” (Norma Bengell, the non-Italian actress who plays his wife, brings an endearingly convincing air of baffled estrangement to the proceedings.) Lattuada is an especially interesting case. . He has written extensively on the movies for the Criterion Collection, Film Comment, Cineaste, and the New York Times and is a professor at Columbia University. Adding to your cart. This bittersweet comedy about a troupe of traveling players—often erroneously attributed to Fellini, who wrote the script and is credited alongside Lattuada as codirector—was actually a full-fledged demonstration of Lattuada’s flair for exposing the weakness of masculine vanity and the strength of female opportunism. Get info about new releases, essays and interviews on the Current, Top 10 lists, and sales. One of the first Italian films to look frankly at the Mafia, Lattuada's devastatingly funny character study is equal parts culture-clash farce and existential nightmare. Here’s my quick rundown of the extras on the Criterion Collection Mafioso DVD. Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and enhanced for widescreen TVs Mafioso looks great. It also demonstrated what Lattuada himself called his main theme: the isolation of the individual, attempting to pursue a glimmer of happiness, in the face of society’s opposing pressures to conform. The bedrock of Italian film comedy of this era was its terrific corps of veteran dialogue writers; and this film boasted not only the great Age and Scarpelli (Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli)—the most famous screenwriting team in Italian film history, responsible for many of that nation’s best comedies and dramas, including Seduced and Abandoned, La grande guerra, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—but also Marco Ferreri (who directed his own comedies, such as The Ape Woman and La grande bouffe) and Rafael Azcona.