Mafioso: The Criterion Collection (DVD)

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You can´t go home again. Or, if you´re Nino Badalamenti, you sure as hell shouldn´t.

Nino´s a good Sicilian boy who made it big in Milan. He´s got a comfortable job as an auto factory foreman, a gorgeous sophisticated wife and two adorable daughters. Now he can´t wait to go back home to show off his success and bask n everyone´s admiration. Literally on his way out the door, his boss asks him to do him a small favor: deliver a package to Don Vincenzo in Sicily. Nino gladly accepts. Big mistake.

Nino´s problems begin before he ever leaves home. His wife Marta is used to the finer things in life, and doesn´t want to slum it down south. But nothing will spoil Nino´s good time. With his family in tow, Nino returns home and happily greets his entire family. Marta stares in silent horror as one Sicilian after another pours out of a tiny shack as if they were tumbling out of a clown car. Mom and dad each look approximately as old as time itself; sister Rosalia has a lovely moustache. Marta´s patience is further tested when they have to share a tiny room with the kids and a tasty chicken. Bad turns to worse and quickly to worst once Nino delivers his package to Don Vincenzo, the town´s great patriarch. Once Don Vincenzo makes Nino an offer he can´t refuse, Nino´s true Sicilian pride will be put to the ultimate test.

Nino is played affably by Italian comedy star Alberto Sordi, an everyman with the easy charm of a Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks. Sordi makes all of Nino´s little foibles irresistibly endearing; even his vanity plays as an innocent affectation, and provides a much-needed identification point for the audience when the self-styled big shot finds himself lost in a world of much bigger-shots. The Sicilian cast is populated with wonderful character actors who are convincing even while playing stereotypes. Norma Bengell, as the shrewish wife, doesn´t get quite as much to work with though she plays "uptight" with aplomb.

Director Alberto Lattuada creates the same caricatured Sicily as seen in the films of Pietro Germi ("Seduced and Abandoned," released by Criterion last year, being the first that leaps to mind) and many other Italian directors of the 50s and 60s. This North/South schism no doubt plays differently for non-Italian audiences than it does for Italian audiences. Superficially, at least, it bears some resemblance to some of the North/South stereotypes seen in American films; the Sicily of "Mafioso" is not entirely dissimilar to the Georgia Back Country of "Deliverance." Nobody is forced to squeal like a piggy, though Nino might be feeling pretty jealous of Ned Beatty by the end of the film. As an American, I find it hard to tell whether the film crosses the line from vicious satire to outright offensiveness. Suffice it to say Lattuada´s portrait of Sicily, while not entirely unsentimental, is not a generous one.