O Segredo da Cosa Nostra

America has always been a land of opportunity. For the Italians, none more so than giving rise to an American icon, the Gangster. For many years, the U.S. government denied the existence of Organized crime. Even the top U.S. law enforcement officer and head of the famed Federal Bureau of Investigation, J.Edgar Hoover, denied such an organization existed. His apathy was due in part to his own shadowy complicity with the Giancana crime family. That's pretty much how it stayed until the advent of the McClellen commission. The movie " The Valachi Papers " is the direct result of that investigation and brought to the forefront of public awareness the vast network of the underworld's crime bosses and their families. The wellspring of that knowledge was none other than the most famous gangster since Al Capone, one, Joseph Valachi. His testimony, created a healthy respect and awe for the Mafia or as Valachi termed it, La Cosa Nostra. (Our thing) This movie is a compilation of his criminal life, dastardly deeds and the revelation of some of the nation's most notable names. Men like Vito Genovese, Anastasia, 'Lucky Luciano' Don Masseria and Marazano. The film is honest when it deals with its legendary brutality and bodies are left throughout the story including its most graphic moments. The end result is perhaps the best Mafia movie since the Godfather. ****

(Minor Spoilers) Facing the death penalty for the murder of a fellow inmate Joe Saupp, whom he mistakenly thought was assigned to murder him, Mafia button man or soldier Joe Valachi, Charles Bronson, is now facing death from both the federal government and his boss Mafia Kingpin and fellow convict Vito Genovese, Lino Ventura, who put a $50,000.00, later $100,000.00, contract on his head.

Don Vito the boss of bosses of the five New York Mafia families has been suspicious of his friend and mob associate Joe Valachi for some time of rating him out and setting him up in a government sting on a narcotic rap and has decided to have Valachi who had nothing to do with it hit. The final straw for Joe Valachi was when Don Vito gave him the "kiss of death" after he had a friendly talk with him in his prison cell.

The movie "The Valachi Papers" is no where as good as movies about the Mafia like "The Godfather" or "Goodfellows" but has the distinction of being the very first Hollywood-made movie,as far as I know, to show the inner workings of the Mafia and it's secretive and shadow-like organization La Cosa Nosra; roughly meaning "our thing" in Italian.

In protective custody and being prepped for the upcoming 1963 Sen. McClellan/Kennedy hearings on Organized Crime we and federal agent Ryan, Gerald S.O'Loughlin, get the truth about the Mafia/Cosa Nostra straight from the horses mouth Joe Valachi himself. In a long flashback Valachi takes us through the turbulent 1930's 40's and 50's when the mob went from a group of petty and unimaginative crime bosses to the powerful and well oiled crime machine that it eventually became.

There are those who feel that Joe Valachi's claims of his being somehow involved with almost every major Mafia figurer over those 30 some years is a bit overdone and boastful on his part in order to give himself much more credit then he really deserves. The fact that his expert testimony didn't have a single Mafiso, from solider to mob boss, even indicted tends to confirm that. Still there's no denying that he was in fact the first made Mafia member to talk and expose what ever he knew about the crime syndicate that he was involved with. All that will always have his name, Joe Valachi, as a major force in exposing the Mafia to the unaware public despite his low standing, he never rose above a button man, in that crime organization.

Charles Bronson did a better then average job as the Mafia thug Joe Valachi with him acting more then using his fists and his real-life. Bronson's wife Jill Ireland was more or less window dressing playing Valachi's wife in the movie Maria the daughter of Joe's boss Gaetano Reina, Amedeo Nazzani. The person who really stole the acting honors had to be Joseph Wiseman playing the first Mafia Boss of Bosses hyped-up Sal Maranzno. Wiseman was so tuned, or wired, into his role that he looked and acted like he was doing a stand-up comedy routine aided by downing a bottle of uppers. There was also the rest of the legendary "murderers row" of the mob in the movie that included Albert Anastasia Lucky Luciano & Joe "The Boss" Masseria played by Fausto Tozzi Angelo Infanti and Alessandro Sperll.

Valachi a good soldier almost to the end broke from tradition and the Mafia code of "Morte" or silence. Thats when he saw that after all the hard work he did in dedicating his heart and soul to the Mafia he was given the short end of the stick by boss Vito Genovese for something he didn't do. It's then that Valachi spelled the end of the powerful mob organization that took the likes of Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, incidentally a non-Italian, over thirty years to build. If Joe Valachi was only treated with more respect and understanding by the paranoid and homicidal Vito Genovese things may well have been different for all those represented in the movie.

P.S Joe Valachi did in the end get his wish from the Federal Government by outliving his boss and the person who put a price on his head, for $100,000.00, Vito Genovese by almost two years. Joe Valachi died in prison in 1971 at age 67 of natural causes.

This is an unfairly underrated crime film directed by Terence Young for whom it is also one of his best, a movie where he put all his "guts", if I may say. Charles Bronson and Lino Ventura, two heavies of the US and French cinema playing together, only missed Marcel Bozzuffi and Leo Gordon....yes, it is an accurate and detailed document about actual events, without excessive useless, gratuitous violence as we often saw in Italian polizziotescos of this period, the seventies. But it remains brutal, bloody in a factual violence, factual and not gratuitous. No clichés nor good guys vs evil ones scheme either. I am sure that many French Lino Ventura buffs don't know this film. Such a shame.

The gangster Joseph "Joe" Valachi (Charles Bronson) has worked for the Mafia for more than thirty years in New York. When he has been imprisoned for fifteen years, he learns that the mobster Don Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura) is offering a reward for his life. Without any alternative other than stay in the solitaire, he accepts the DA offer of protection. In return, he has to disclose the secrets of the Cosa Nostra.

"The Valachi Papers" is based on a true story and tells the rise and fall of a gangster from the Mafia. The role of Joseph Valachi is tailored for Charles Bronson and fans of gangster movie will certainly enjoy this film. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Segredo da Cosanostra" ("The Secret of the Cosanostra")

One of the other reviewers to The Valachi Papers makes the suggestion through his review heading that "It probably didn't help that this came out the same year as The Godfather". Ironically the release of The Valachi Papers was brought forward to 1972 from its original 1973, to cash in on the huge publicity and general buzz The Godfather was creating world wide. Because of such an occurrence it's difficult not to compare and contrast both films, especially since their content involves Mafia stories. At the same time, their main point of difference as the above reviewer again correctly points out, is that The Godfather is a fictional work, whilst Terence Young's The Valachi Papers is based on Peter Maas's non-fiction book of the same name.

I'm always amused particularly after watching historical fiction, when fans argue the case over historical veracity, with the frequent protest being tendered, that some scene or episode wasn't real enough or true to the facts, bearing in mind that anything not labelled documentary in my view, has a licence to take artistic liberties with the truth to enhance the story. A perceptive audience will generally always know and be aware of changes made.

The Godfather is a masterpiece of cinematic storytelling and in the telling of the tale, there are also significant insights into the workings of a fictional Mafia operation.

The Valachi Papers in my opinion is a good film about a middle level Mafia soldier and his life in the Cosa Nostra amongst many real life gangsters. It's a truer story than The Godfather, but not of the same quality and neither is the film. It's worth remembering that both films were commercially successful, though The Godfather was the mega-hit. The Valachi Papers was less critically successful too. In fact many of the critics, in my opinion were unjustifiably harsh, though I do understand from where they are coming.

Terence Young is guilty of following the book too closely. His story is just too episodic in nature.There's no smooth narrative flow. There's Joe Valachi doing something in 1929 and there he is again in 1937 etc. Though always interesting, it isn't helped by us continually returning to the (1962) present, where Joe is being interviewed/interrogated by the FBI guy Ryan. I liked the movie, but its uneven pacing is notable. Just another very brief example. We see Joe get married in your typical Italian Mafia wedding. The next time we actually see he and his wife together, they are middle-aged!

But don't be put off. In my opinion the Valachi Papers is still a very interesting film which features one of Charles Bronson's better performances, where he is really forced to act and to enunciate a lot more dialogue than you'd normally see him do. After all, he's in about 95% of the movie's scenes. One of the few times I can remember him playing a real life figure. It's a worth while watch.