Paga ou Morre

"Pay or Die!" is a very good film....not the least of which is because it's amazingly accurate for a Hollywood biopic. It's about Lt. Joseph Petrosino (Ernest Borgnine), the first Italian-speaking cop in New York City...and a crusader against organized crime.

When the story begins, various members of the Italian-American community are being harassed and threatened by 'the black hand'...an Italian organization based on extortion. The problem is that despite the damage they cause the community, everyone is afraid to cooperate with the police for fear of reprisals from this group. What Petrosino doesn't realize, however, is that the problem is much larger and well organized than he thinks and is actually part of the Mafia. To combat this, Petrosino starts an Italian Squad--a group of Italian-American cops who integrate undercover into the community to get the goods on the mob. What's next? See the film.

Why did I score this one so high? Much of it is because the acting is so good...as is the writing. The characters seem real and you really find yourself caring about Petrosino and his friends. Additionally, the film generally sticks to the true facts and is a nice history lesson. Well worth seeing...and quite exciting.

This is a fine old film about the beginnings of the mafia in America. Their nemesis was the Italian squad of the NYPD of which my grandfather was a part and whose notes and case books were used in the making of the film. The mafia at the time was called the black hand and was made up in this country of cheap hoods who mostly ran protection rackets on the small business owners of little Italy. They were backed by the dons in Sicily and the Italian squad's task was to shut the rackets down. They tried hard but the squad was pretty much broken up after the death of Lt. Petrosino in Sicily. This film shows the good and bad guys of the time and what my grandfather called, very un-pc,"one guinea killing another".

This 1960 crime drama was directed by Richard Wilson, who had just made a highly successful film on the life of Al Capone the previous year, and does another fine job with this one, set in New York's Little Italy in the early twentieth century. Ernest Borgnine is the hero, a policeman who takes on the dreaded "Black Hand" that was terrorizing shopkeepers and various other innocent, law-abiding people by forcing them to pay "protection money" (or else). It's the usual cops and robbers story, but with more heart than most, and with an unusual setting, stunningly realized by set designer Darrell Silvera. That the story happens to be based on fact gives the movie gravitas. Although it's filmed as melodrama the film is in many respects a semi-documentary of tenement life, much of it sadly true. There's nothing romantic about the Mafia depicted in this movie. They're presented as the brutal thugs they really are, without a trace of sentimentality. The sympathy here is all for the poor people of the streets, and for the man who was their champion.

This movie stars Ernest Borgnine in a straight dramatic role, and he pulls it off quite well. Set in New York City in 1906, newly arrived Italian immigrants are preyed upon by the Black Hand (La Mana Nera), which eventually became the Mafia. Borgnine plays lieutenant Petrosino, an immigrant himself, who realizes that the new immigrants will not cooperate with the police because the police in Italy were corrupt, and they expect the same in their new country. Petrosino realizes that he needs a squad of men - immigrants themselves - who speak the language, and can convince the people that things are different here. The Police Comissioner - who happens to be Teddy Roosevelt - agrees with him, and he gets his Italian Squad. Some violence ensues, as the Squad goes about breaking the power of the Black Hand, including a plot to kill Enrico Caruso, the greatest tenor of his time. Zhora Lampert plays the role of Petrosino's girlfriend, and later wife with excellent restraint, and the final scenes (this is a true story) are wrenching.

In the early 1900's police detective Lieut. Joseph Petrosino (Ernest Borgnine) forms a special squard to combat the menacing Black Hand in New York City in this tough and convincing drama based on actual events. Hardworking store keepers are threatened with torture, death and destruction if they don't come across with "protection" money. Other than Borgnine's fine performance there's good support from Zohra Lampert (an actress who should have risen to the top), Al Austin, John Duke, Renata Vanni and John Marley (Hollywood mogul Woltz in "The Godfather"). The essence of the period is captured with the stunning black and white photography.