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Italian cultural icon and cinematic great Alberto Sordi (1920-2003) was in peak form when he starred as Antonio Badalamenti, a Sicilian who's become a successful FIAT executive and efficiency expert in Milan and goes on a two-week vacation to his hometown of Catanao in Sicily with blonde northern wife and two little blonde daughters. Laughs and thrills happen when they're welcomed back into Antonio's family – and the good graces of Mafia boss Don Vincenzo. It turns out Antonio not only owes the Don a favor for getting him the job up north, but is regarded by the local Cosa Nostra as a piciotto d'onore, a kid who distinguished himself in the ranks (maybe you could loosely translate the phrase "good old boy") and he also happens to be the best marksman the town has ever known. What starts out as a broad comedy and a warm social satire on the Italian south turns more serious and intense as the hero fits right in and his initially standoffish wife starts liking the family and bonding with one female member whose beauty she's able to bring out.

Fine writing, direction, and use of locations add up to a seamless film. You're never bored for a minute and most of the time you're hugely entertained, so it makes sense that Mafioso is going to have a revival release in the United States. It's unseen here, not on DVD and would be worth seeing not only for the fun it provides but for the display of Alberto Sordi's range and fluency as an actor. Sordi starred in Fellini's early pair, The White Sheik and I Vitelloni. Andrew Sarris has said Lattuada is "a grossly under-appreciated directorial talent." Il Mafioso shows the writing skills of Marco Ferreri and Rafael Azcona, working with the team known as Age & Scarpelli (Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli). Their screenplay may be tongue-in-cheek, but it nonetheless provides insight into the Mafia, and the film's picture of Sicilian town life (in wonderfully rich grainy black and white, high style for the time) is vivid and authentic-looking and -feeling. Music by Piero Piccioni, another mainstay of Italian cinema (Il bel Antonio, Salvatore Giuliano, Una vita violenta). Produced by Dino De Laurentis with Antonio Cervi; this can also be seen as a product that reflects the energy and spirit of Italy's postwar "economic miracle" period when so much was exciting culturally in the country – cinema, literature, design.

Shown in a handsome new print as part of the 2006 New York Film Festival. I would give this a 9 out of ten but the overall plot somehow seems too incongruous.

A factory efficiency expert decides to take his family on a nostalgic vacation to the small town in Sicily where he grew up. Big mistake. He quickly becomes embroiled with the local Mafia, who see him as the perfect candidate to take care of a little job for them in America. Long before THE GODFATHER or THE SOPRANOS, Alberto Lattuada made this tragicomedy about Mob life. Between this and SEDUCED AND ABANDONED, one gets the impression that Sicily in the early sixties was an outer circle in Dante's Inferno. Shot in glorious black and white on location. A forgotten gem, recently restored. Note to foodies: there are several terrific meals in this movie. You may not live long in the Mafia, but you'll dine well.

How wonderful it is to start the year and to know that you have possibly already found what is going to be your favorite movie of the year: MAFIOSO is that movie!

I had never seen the film and never seen much of director's LAttuada's work either. I am Italian yet in Italy LAttuada is not really considered as one of the great directors...well it is about time this changed. We have to thank the folks at Rialto Pictures (who id re-releasing the film in the US) for rediscovering this great talent. I wish they started rediscovering him also in Italy...well, too often a country doesn't appreciate its talents! Anyway...

LAttuada directs with a great sense of storytelling, every shot has its reason to be and is there to bring the story forward. His capacity of being in control and keeping all the aspects of the film together is exemplary: The cinematography is incredible, manages at the same time to create a mood and to be absolutely concentrated in serving the script. The way the film uses its musical score is super modern (I would like to mention the genius score by Piero Piccioni) The editing is exceptional, never a flaw, never a scene that lasts too log or too little. The overall feeling at the end is that of a perfectly cohesive film. And one that makes you think too...and think a lot!

I am not a big mafia movie fan, but this one is different from any other I have ever seen, has a way of turning comedy into tragedy and tragedy into comedy that I have not seen too often on the screen.

Alberto Sordi is one of the best actors Italy has ever had: please go and discover his talent and his genius. I say MAfioso is well worth your time, if you don't go and see it it is your big loss!

Excellent, underseen comedy/drama by Alberto Lattuada, best known for co-directing Variety Lights with Federico Fellini. In a Fellini biography I once read Lattuada was quoted as bitterly claiming that he invented Fellini, that Fellini had basically participated in the making of Variety Lights but it was Lattuada's film. Lattuada was just trying to be nice, to help the kid start off his career, and Fellini pretty much stole the style for his subsequent films. Judging by this film, made 12 years afterward, Lattuada had apparently moved on, because this isn't much like Fellini's style (though one could imagine Fellini making a similarly plotted film). However, it is an excellently directed film, one that makes me wonder how many other gems might be hiding in Lattuada's filmography. It stars Alberto Sordi, whom you'll recognize from two early Fellini films, The White Sheik and I Vitelloni. He plays a Sicilian who is now a successful man in Milan. He's married with two young daughters, but he hasn't been home to visit the family since he left. This is the story of his twelve day vacation visiting home, bringing along his family. To his wife (Norma Bengell, a Brazilian actress), Sicily seems an extremely backward country. The whole culture is strange and very different from mainland Italy, and there seem to be hints of criminal activity between every line. She's not wrong. Sordi was never exactly in the mafia when he lived in Sicily, but he was more than a little connected, and now some of the high ranking criminals are thinking his status as unknown outsider might be useful to them. The film is very funny, but it also goes to some dark places. One thing's for sure: I don't think he or his family will want to visit the family again anytime soon.

This film has several amusing scenes and an attractive, understated performance by the female lead, Norma Bengell, but when it starts to take itself seriously, it becomes pretty much of a mess. The celebrated Alberto Sordi is fine in the lead, but he is asked to do too many silly things for his character to be effective.

Sordi plays a successful man taking his beautiful wife and lovely children back to visit the home folks--but his home folks are in Sicily and include the local mafia boss, so many complications ensue. There are some laughs when Sordi's mom and dad force-feed their guests and when Sordi meets some of his old cronies, but it is all pretty broad humor. It is when the mafia boss demands repayment of an old favor that things begin to seem ridiculous and viewers, at least this one, start looking at their watches.

Albert Sordi is virtually unknown here in the United States. He's been called the Italian Peter Sellars but I think that should be reversed, Sellers was the British Sordi. Just one look at his performance in this film should cement that fact that Sordi was by far a better dramatic actor then anything I've seen Sellars do.

I had the pleasure of seeing this film twice and it really improves the second time. The loud behavior is a little off-putting the first time but the second viewing revealed all the incredible subtleties in the film and the performances.

The direction is extremely good. Director Lattuada is unknown here despite his extensive resume. I could see a definite influence on Sergio Leone in the camera placement and attention to detail. And the music is exceptional as well. The switch to serious drama is what makes this a great film. A lesser production would have made the mafia into clowns.

If the film comes into town make a point to see it. It's better then most of the stuff being made today.

I've never seen black and white film look so rich, sensuous and stunningly attractive; Cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi hit the nail on the head, creating a very rich and vibrant looking film. At times my mind naturally filled in the colors due to the crisp clarity of all the images, both of natural, rural scenes, and modern, city/industrial settings.

Art director Carlo Egidi masterfully blends the surrounding background of everyday life with his set designs and costumes so that it is impossible to separate the two; truly a mirrored recreation of the day in the life of a modern Sicilian during mid-60's. Each scene is so thought out, and crafted so well that at times their is an almost alien effect, due to the deep endearing political and social dynamics which has become lost in our culture and films today in the 21st century. This effect at times appears exaggerated due to its robust social nature, yet does the job in creating a warm, stunning and beautiful feel to this film.

(1964) Mafioso (In Italian with English subtitles) COMEDY/ DRAMA

It's been said this was the first actual movie about the Italian mafia before Francis Ford Coppola made famous with his "Godfather" trilogy! Story involves hard working factory worker, Antonio Badalamenti (Alberto Sordi) visiting relatives on a trip before unknowingly showing gratitude to powerful Don (Ugo Attanasio) where he asks Don to do a favor for him. More black comedy focusing on his quips with his family and relatives than direction becomes a serious Italian gangster film. Interesting but tame compared to what's being shown today.

I just had the opportunity to see this film in a newly restored print of the Italian original. The story concerns a manager of an auto plant (played to perfection by Italian screen idol,Alberto Sordi) in Milan who takes his family to Sicily to meet his family & his old friends, when he finds himself involved in the local Mafia Don & his ner do well cronies. The screenplay was written by it's director (Alberto Lattuada), Raphel Alzcona & Marco Ferreri (some years before he raised eyebrows with his films 'The Grand Bufet' & 'The Last Woman'). Although the films use of black & white was quite striking, I kind of wished it had been shot in Technicolor (for the panoramic shots of Sicily & it's beautiful coastline). An overlooked gem that's well worth seeking out, if it's being screened in a proper cinema,but it won't lose much on DVD either.

An important and overlooked film that unfolds to reveal a reality as immutable as family: family. Alberto Sordi's first return after eight years to his Sicilian homeland after establishing himself as an engineer in Milan, a position given him by his Sicilian Patron, proves his life on mainland Italy was the real vacation. This film understands its message and never misses the mark, an expectation Sordi's character is expected to fulfill. Mafioso makes Coppola's "The Godfather" an over-produced operatic spectacle. Mafioso is family.

Mafioso was filmed in 1961 with the Barber Shop, in which Alberto Sordi shot his target who was sitting in the barber chair of the Embassy Barber Shop which was in Guttenberg, Hudson County, NJ. My certainty is my Dad owned the barber shop and both he and I were in the movie. Just wanted to set the record straight. I have the original VHS tape of the movie. It was first released in the United States in a theater in Union City about 1 or 2 years later. I did see it, of course. The movie followed me for over 20 years giving me wonderful memories. My father's wish before he died was see the movie once more before he died. I was able to have friends who owned an Italian store locate a copy that a store in the Bronx, NY would sell. I bought it and had a private showing for my Dad.

Antonio Badalamenti, a good-natured supervisor at the Fiat plant in Milan, is a native Sicilian who has lived comfortably and complacently in the North for a decade with his blonde wife and two beautiful daughters. Before leaving on a rare two week vacation back to his ancestral hometown, one of the plant managers tasks him to personally convey a mysterious gift to Don Vincenzo, the local godfather In Nino's town.

Even though Nino's wife has misgivings about leaving the comforts of her comparatively luxurious life, she is unprepared for what she encounters. Marta undergoes culture shock when confronted by the poverty and comparatively crude customs of the provincial Sicilians, especially the Baladamenti family, who in turn view the refined blonde Northerner as a snobbish interloper.

Bringing his family with him to pay his obligatory respects to Don Vincenzo, the always affable Nino discovers the giift he has been tasked with delivering to the Don to be a beautifully bejeweled heart pendant enigmatically inscribed with the names of of nine deceased "friends" of the Mafioso, evidently martyrs of some kind for La Cosa Nostra.

After the godfather's nephew Don Liborio reminds Nino of a forgotten oath of loyalty he took as a naive 18 year-old decades before, ostensibly to get the Fiat job, he becomes further indebted when the Don settles a controversial land transaction in favor of Nino's father. Feeling he has no option but to fulfill the unknown obligation and whatever it entails, Nino agrees to honor his fealty by fulfilling a favor to the Don, a nightmarish favor which shakes Nino's safe, complacent world to its very core.

I don't see how you could categorize this film as other than a comedy for adults. That is what it is... tragedy as other reviewers suggest now that is funny...

The first part has fun at the expense of Sicilian stereotypes: peasant women with mustaches... toothless old men fighting with knives and food and more food.

The part in New York is even more hilarious with the mafioso speaking Italian with an American accent... All the stereotypes present and subtle humor every where.

This film is meticulous hangs together well. Best of Italian comedy.

A "dark" comedy for adults. Where did they run down all the Sicilian non actors?

Mafia ties run deep in this film about a middle level manager in an auto plant in Milan who takes his family to his native Sicily for a summer vacation. Admired by his old childhood friends who can't take their eyes off of his attractive wife, he's the local boy who makes good in the big city. But "Mafioso" presents the deep ties that connect him into his ancestral village, portraying a system that runs deep in this Sicilian setting of an ancient village in which his family's connections intertwine with local Cosa Nostra. The director and the lead actor both make this a film in which one can savor just about every scene. Alberto Sordi connects the comedy with the drama, the good humored happy family man obligated into the "brotherhood" by Don Vicenzo and his right hand man to do his part, keeping him literally in the dark.

Only Italians could make such a film, speaking of the mafia thru such this angle, an interesting analysis of the Italian society of the early sixties. I am not too familiar with Italian stuff, but I can easily appreciate this one. Mafia is shown as it really exists, in such a way only Italian can do it. No clichés, no gunfights, nothing to do with THE UNTOUCHABLES nor any other US movie about the Octopuss. It could have been played by Jack Lemmon, if it had been an American feature, the tenderfoot thrown so brutally into a world of violence, not made for him at all. In this so obviously Italian film, you can't avoid the mix up between, comedy, drama, tragedy. A real must see.