Further to Mafioso

L-R: Don, Sharon, Barry, Rebecca, Nona, Lina, Gail, Rand, Rose, Art. Not pictured: Photographer R.I. Williams

Mafioso recap: 8/27/11

On Saturday last we resuscitated “Italian Film Night,” a tradition begun here almost seven years ago, and which we contrived to maintain very nearly monthly for its first three years (January 2005 to December 2007; thirty-three film nights), falling off slightly in 2008 (just eight), steeply on 2009 (three, I think) and off the cliff thereafter, with two in 2010 and just one so far this year. There were extenuating circumstances, but that’s a long and not very interesting story.

Still: a decent turnout of the Usual Suspects assembled at the Crumbling Manse for our screening of Alberto Lattuada’s 1962 dark comedy Mafioso, and no one departed disappointed. The theme was familiar from previous features, involving as it did the cultural tension between Italy’s forward-looking northern provinces and the hidebound, suspicious, conservative south—in this instance Sicily, vividly exhibited on film by means of the menagerie of rural grotesques with which Italian cinema has previously acquainted us. This comedy of clashing manners takes a sudden dark turn when our pompous protagonist, who had thought to show off his roots to his highly assimilated northern family, finds himself shipped (actually airfreighted) to New York as a reluctant assassin on behalf of his criminal cousins.

September looks crowded, but we have high old hopes for another Film Night in October.

Above: Assimilated Sicilian transplant Nino, accustomed to Milanese ways, gets a taste of life back in the Old Country. He has no idea...