One of the first Italian films to realistically portray the Mafia

Directed by Alberto Lattuada
Starring Alberto Sordi
Released in 1962
You can stream Mafioso on the Criterion Channel
A film critique by Alice Gebura

Introduction

Mafioso was made in 1962. At the time the Mafia was getting away with whatever it wanted to in Italy and internationally.  The sordid history of organized crime and attempts by authorities to bring these criminals to justice since 1962 is long and complex. What we know today, thanks to the courage of many in undercover investigations and the courts, was not known by the filmmaker, Alberto Lattuada, in 1962. Yet he crafted a revealing story informed by the streets and the whispered anecdotes of family stories and witnesses. My review shows how factual history informs the story of one man’s existential tragedy in a dehumanized capitalist system that dances with international crime.

I begin with a very short history of the Mafia in Sicily based on two excellent books: Mafioso by Colin McLaren (2022) and Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb (2008). I can’t recommend these books highly enough.

What is “Mafia”

Mafioso takes place in Sicily so this is the particular story of Sicily. I look at three eras in its history that inform our understanding of the film:

• Before the Risorgimento (the unification of Italy)
• 1861 – WWII
• Post WWII

Before the Risorgimento (the unification of Italy)

“Greek-speaking Sicily became a Roman province in 200 BCE…Most of the following two millennia were also spent under foreign rule…It is impossible to calculate how much produce and money have been taken out of Sicily in rents, taxes, and just plain looting in the past 2000 years.”1

The corruption of justice in Sicily can be traced back to the eras of the Greeks and Romans. Occupation continued with the Arabs then the Normans, relatively quiet times.  Injustice metastasized with the arrival of  the Spanish and the Bourbons.  The stories are truly horrific.

For centuries the latifondi (large, landed estates) were owned by aristocratic families who were seen less and less on their land. They put the hated gabellotti in charge of their estates, guarded by armed campieri. The gabellotti leased land to sharecroppers who oversaw day laborers working the fields. They subsisted on bread, pasta, and beans, living in dire poverty.2

The gabellotti were estate administrators and tax collectors who used extortion and intimidation to control the people. They were a parasitic presence that grew in the space between the absentee landowner and the people.  Playing both sides, they protected and ripped off the landowners as they protected and ripped off the peasants.3

1861-WWII

In the 1800s, the push to create a unified Italy began in the north and eventually initiated a military campaign to oust the Bourbons in the south.  The Bourbons had a large, well-equipped army. To overthrow this formidable force, the north enlisted the aid of the gabellotti and campieri in Sicily. In exchange for their help, the north promised these local, hard-nosed criminals that they would be rewarded with land ownership.

Despite the promises of land reform made to Sicily in exchange for fighting with the troops of General Garibaldi,4 land reform did not materialize and miserable conditions continued in Sicily from the 1860s on. In addition, the new government of unified Italy levied onerous taxes on Sicily while favoring the north with public works. Protests were met with bloody suppressions while the gabellotti and campieri  continued their reign of terror.  The police were just as corrupt. Terrible hunger and poverty drove emigration to the US and elsewhere during this time. The unification of Italy had resulted in yet another occupation of Sicily – this time by the north.

By the time of the Risorgimento, Sicilians had developed an ingrained distrust of government and a deep suspicion of all outsiders. These were coping mechanisms born of necessity.

“The Sicilians had no alternative but to rely on their own popular tribunals.”5  In other words, people took the law into their own hands. “Brotherhoods” sprang up to redress injustice. For example, if livestock was stolen, a farmer could contact someone to recover it regardless of the method used. The “recovery man” was likely a hardened criminal suitable to the job.

In time, this practice became an income stream – with one difference. The brotherhood did both – the stealing and the recovery – and also got into the business of kidnapping people for ransom. The practice of collecting protection money evolved from this system as well. Bribery was another form of surviving within this corrupt system.

Ernesto Marasa (1881-1948) codified mafia operations in a document known as the “manifesto.” He instituted the practice of omerta – the code of silence. Anyone who talked was disposed of permanently.

The Mafia, in summary, evolved historically at the intersection of:

• Centuries of occupation, misgovernment and injustice
• Distrust and hostility towards government and police as a result
• Dependence on criminal elements to redress grievances that then inspired the people’s loyalty and silence
• An established criminal element (gabellotti and campiere) allied with those in power who were well-versed in social control through extortion and intimidation
• When you have nothing, all options are open

WWII: The Mafia is Strengthened and Gains Political Power

During Italy’s fascist era (1922-1943), Musolini tried to stamp out the Mafia in Sicily which sent many of these criminals into hiding. These Mafiosi thus acquired an anti-fascist identity. The Americans assumed the anti-fascist identity of the Mafia in hiding meant they were allies of the resistance. Mafia, already well-versed in playing both sides, took advantage.

Meanwhile Italian organized crime had got a foothold in the US in the late 1800s and eventually had control of the New York City waterfront.

“The Navy [needing the ports for wartime shipping] realized that they did not have full security control over the Port of New York. They couldn’t get into the unions, they couldn’t get next to the shopkeepers, the longshoremen. Nobody was talking to them. The Navy was surprised to learn that not only would the Mafia be ready to help, but they would be happy to.”7

Post WWII

Mafiosi were rewarded by the US for their role in the American invasion of Sicily. The wealth and access provided to the Mafia by the Americans re-established Mafia power in Sicily and from there it metastasized to Rome and the Vatican.

The US/Italy Connection

• Immigration, especially from southern Italy with its particular history
• WWII – Mafia/military alliances
• International cooperation between criminals in managing drug routes and money laundering

Calogero Vizzini: Real-Life Sicilian Capo

“In the 1890s, some people, including the young Calogero Vizzini, decided to do something about the absence of peace and security in the country town of Villalba. The state police at the time was as much a danger as the brigands.

The Villalba Mafia thus emerged as an alternative social regime centered on membership in church-sponsored associations that generated considerable social capital. It later transformed into a protection racket, victimizing villagers and landowners alike through violence, intimidation and omerta.”10

“The supreme head of the Mafia after WWII was Calogero Vizzini who died in 1954. He is said to have been half-illiterate and to have been made the mayor of Vilalba with the support of the American Army.”11

“Because of his excellent connections, Vizzini also became the ‘king’ of the rampant post-war black market* and arranged to get Villalba’s overly inquisitive police chief killed.”12

[*American food aid meant for the Italian people was diverted by the Mafia to the black market where they then sold it for high prices.]

“In 1949, Vizzini and Italian-American crime boss Lucky Luciano set up a candy factory in Palermo exporting products all over Europe and to the US. Police suspected that it was a cover for heroin trafficking.”13

“Vizzini’s criminal record included 39 murders, six attempted murders, 13 acts of private violence, 36 robberies, 37 thefts and 63 extortions.”14

Mafioso the Film

Now let’s talk about Mafioso the film. I assume you’ve watched it so I will not repeat the story here. Instead I provide the contemporary context for when the film was made in 1962. Then I deconstruct some of the scenes in the film.

The Context

In 1962 the power elite denied a fact well-known to the people – the existence of organized crime that permeated all levels of Sicilian life as well as the government of Italy and the Vatican.

The criminal organizations in the south were known to themselves by their names such as Camorra and La Cosa Nostra, but these names were unknown to the general population. The term Mafia defined a criminal way of life while the existence of a formal crime organization by that name was denied. Certainly, as in the film Mafioso, it was not spoken of openly. According to Peter Robb, author of Midnight in Sicily:

“[In Sicily] police practice and judicial practice, the very articles of the law, reflected a belief that Cosa Nostra didn’t exist. Nobody even knew its name until Tommaso Buscetta revealed it in 1984.”15

“Buried in Concrete”

The “Sack of Palermo” began in 1958. Salvo Lima, a Mafioso and mayor of Palermo, collaborated with Vito Ciancimino to issue 4,200 building permits. 17th and 18th century palazzi were razed and replaced with massive, ugly concrete buildings that “multiplied like cancer cells.”16  They profited from real estate development, as follows:

• Supplying inferior materials while charging for premium
• Embezzlement
• Easy environment to launder drug money
• Taking the money then abandoning the project

The gentry were happy to work with the Mafia  to profit from the sale of their old agricultural lands. This destruction of history and beauty broke the hearts of the powerless Palmeritans.

“Thanks to inroads made in the political sphere, the Mafia created fictitious shell companies and won every bid. Hundreds of those apartment blocks were built unregulated, some without running water or toilets. In less then twenty years, the city, an architectural jewel, had been disfigured.”17

The story of Mafioso the film happens within the context of an entrenched criminal enterprise  with a lurid history that since WWII had expanded nationally and internationally, its tentacles reaching across business, government and the Vatican.

Scene: The Capitalist “Miracle”

Mafioso opens in the factory in Milan where Nino works. The factory boss is a man from New Jersey whose parents are also from  Nino’s hometown in Sicily: Calamo. Right away the film connects  criminal elements to Italian industry, the US, and Sicily.

Scene: The Mafia Fetish of Honor

The boss gives Nino a gift for Don Vincenzo. The gift, a bejeweled heart, is engraved with a list of names. It is a coded signal for Don Vincenzo who says upon receiving it: “Our American friends do things in a big way… One name is missing.” The missing name identifies the victim of the hit. The heart and hands are two symbols throughout the film associated with loyalty  (“friends help one another”), duty (“you can’t leave your old friends behind”), and obedience (“mama orders, child obeys”). Kissing the hand (baciare la mano) is a ritual signifying submission and loyalty.

In another scene, Nino asks what happened to his old friend Pesalise di Calamo. “He dug his own grave.” “He betrayed his friends.” Apparently Nino’s old friend had “talked,” a betrayal of omerta.

Omerta is the code of silence. Nothing is to be said outside the criminal enclave. Even within it, nothing is explicitly stated. Conversations are oblique.

Scene: Distrust of Outsiders

Due to centuries of occupation and injustice  Sicilians had developed an ingrained distrust of government and a deep suspicion of all outsiders. These were coping mechanisms born of necessity. In Mafioso, the villagers and especially Ninos mother, look askance at Marta, the outsider.  This scene captures the nature of the Sicilians.

Scene:  Meet Don Vincenzo, the Local Crime Boss

The scenes of the estate from where Don Vincenzo rules and oversees life in Calamo were filmed at the Villa Palagonia in Bagheria, Sicily. Built in 1715 , the villa is famous for its gruesome sculpted figures. Its nickname Villa di Mostri  (villa of monsters) is an apt metaphor for the world of Don Vincenzo.

 

In the villa scene in the courtyard we see i mostri (the monsters) atop the wall in the background. Don Vincenzo sits as if on a throne surrounded by his minions. I mostri and Don Vincenzo sitting above everyone connects them visually. Note also the presence of the clergy, implying the close association between the Mafia and the church.

In this scene we meet Don Vincenzo and learn this is not his villa. He is the estate manager for the Baroness – he is a gabellotti.

 

Nino’s father is fighting with a neighbor who is trying to cheat him over a land sale. Don Vincenzo intervenes and “fixes” the problem. This is a reference to Sicily’s historic reliance on the local “brotherhood” to mete out justice, instead of working through the local government. Because the local police and courts installed by occupiers were notoriously corrupt, Sicilians settled their differences outside the law.

In the scene below, Nino thanks Don Vincenzo for fixing the problem for his father. Nino will find out that favors don’t come for free.

1957 Assassination of Albert Anastasia

On October 25, 1957, notorious mobster Albert Anastasia was shot while getting a shave at the barber shop in the Park Sheraton Hotel (56th Street and 7th Avenue) in Manhattan.

He was assassinated shortly after returning from a Mafia meeting held in Sicily at Palermo’s Grand Hotel et des Palmes. The killers were never identified or caught.

Who was Albert Anastasia

He was the notorious and vicious leader of Murder, Inc. and responsible directly or indirectly for over 400 murders.  He was Involved in loan sharking, gambling, control of the NYC waterfront and longshoremen’s union (conduits for entry of narcotics). He was assassinated during a power struggle between the Mangano and Genovese families known as the Castellammarese War.18

Scene: Nino’s “Hunting Trip”

Nino is “unboxed” in Manhattan and taken to a meeting where he learns what he is to do. He is then driven over the river to New Jersey to carry out the assassination. The motive for the killing is alluded to as “a betrayal” but the specifics are not divulged.

The “assassin in a box” strategy was apparently a real life occurrence known of by one of Mafioso’s screenwriters, Bruno Caruso.19

Scene: Nino murders his target in a NJ barber shop

Calamo or Alcamo?

Mafioso portrays life in the fictitious town of Calamo. Calamo is an anagram of Alcamo, an actual town in Sicily with a notorious Mafia history. It is not known if the writers of Mafioso purposely meant to allude to Alcamo. But I found it interesting to note the following about Alcamo:

• The town of Alcamo, in the province of Trapani, is, according to police, a major center for Mafia activity. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/02/24/Police-today-announced-the-arrest-of-22-Mafia-suspects/5591383374800/
• Alcamo is next to Castellamare del Golfo, the birthplace of several well-known Mafia bosses who emigrated to America. The Castellammarese War was a power struggle between factions of organized crime in New York 1930-1931. Albert Anastasia played a prominent role.
• The Sicilian Mafia in Trapani, including Alcamo and Castellammare del Golfo, has maintained significant ties with the American Cosa Nostra, particularly the Bonanno family in New York.
• Vincenzo Milazzo was the Mafia boss of the Alcamo clan. He was assassinated (years after the film Mafioso was made) because he was planning a hit on Toto Riina, head of the Corleone clan and a sadistic power figure in Cosa Nostra history.
• Don Vincenzo is the Mafia boss in Calamo. Vincenzo Milazzo is the Mafia boss in Alcamo. Coincidence?
• Mafioso was not filmed in Alcamo, however, it was filmed in Belmonte-Mezzagno.

On location in Belmonte-Mezzagno

 

What is a “mafioso”?
The film Mafioso has an answer for us

A mafioso is a man who….

Grows up and is indoctrinated within a criminal system, participating as a young foot soldier- picciotto d’onore.  He learns to do what he is told.

He might believe that he is free and prosperous, leading the good life. But he is, in fact, controlled.

Dark omens dog his movements. The lady in black appears in the train station.

One of the first things Nino and his family come upon in Calamo is a funeral with the lady in black (a nun) in attendance.

The bejeweled heart, the gift Nino brings, ends up in the church entwined with a skull.

As Nino is on his way to the hunting trip, a black portal dominates the scene.

Suddenly a black cat crosses his path.

Nino is like a rat in a cage. Increasingly claustrophobic spaces close him in. His boyhood home is full of obstacles that he must climb over, that obscure his vision.

Whether the brass rails of a bed or the gates of an elevator, we are reminded of the metaphoric jail of his life.

He literally ends up inside a box.

In a car or a hallway the spaces are confined and suffocating.

He understands the coded language.

Nino weeps.

Through the story of Nino, Mafioso reveals the deadly price paid by those living within the Mafia environment and the personal tragedy of a man mixed up in it. It indicts Italian industry as a player within a transnational criminal enterprise. Mafioso becomes a word full of irony as the “protectors” turn out to be the predators and their conviviality masks ruthless control.

A Word of Warning

The film Mafioso is only the beginning of our awareness of the Mafia’s insidious presence. What we know decades later is the result of the moral courage of journalists and the justice system (those who haven’t been bought). That’s why journalists are the first targets of an unfettered evil regime.  Mafioso the film is an excellent example of art as a deep dive into the reality beneath the superficiality of every day life. Nino is a patsy because he believes the propaganda: that he is a free man who enjoys the economic benefits of the paternal state. Today the Mafia is alive and well internationally and especially in the United States. If you want to know more about organized crime, whether its history or its contemporary activity, I recommend the following:

• Anything by Italian journalist Roberto Saviano
• Mafia Kills Only in Summer, the Italian series
• Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb
• Mafioso by Colin McLaren

As I discover more great resources I will post in the comments.  Thank you for reading!

Notes

1. Robb, Peter. Midnight in Sicily. Duffy & Snellgrove, Australia, 1997. pg. 46
2. Robb, pg. 46
3. Robb, pg. 48
4. Garibaldi and his troops entered Sicily via the port of Marsala in Sicily. Note that Marsala is 80 miles away from Africa (Tunisia) and this is one of the major entry points of heroin into Italy.
5. Schiavo, Giovanni. The Truth About the Mafia and Organized Crime in America. Virgo Press, NY, 1962. pg. 28
6. Renato Guttuso was a famous Sicilian artist whose estate was stolen after his death by the Cosa Nostra.
7. New York Post. Dec. 23, 2022, “Revealed: How the Navy made a secret deal with the mob to win WWII” quoting Matthew Black, author of Operation Underworld: How the Mafia and U.S. Government Teamed Up to Win World War II. Citadel Press Books, NY, 2022.
8. https://nypost.com/2022/12/23/how-the-navy-made-a-secret-deal-with-the-mafia-to-win-wwii/
9. Schiavo, pg. 53 quoting Crawford, Francis Marion. The Rulers of the South; Sicily, Calabria, Malta. Macmillan, NY, 1900. https://archive.org/details/rulersofsouthsc02crawiala
10. Sabetti, Filippo. Village Politics and the Mafia in Sicily. McGill-Queen’s University Press, Quebec, 2002. (quoted in Wikiwand https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Calogero_Vizzini)
11. Schiavo, pg. 52
12. “The Mafia Restored: Fighters for Democracy in World War II”. Archived from the original on 17 April 2011. Retrieved 20 December 2006., The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred W. McCoy. (quoted in Wikiwand https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Calogero_Vizzini)
13. “Luciano Organizes the Postwar Heroin Trade”. Archived from the original on 17 April 2011. Retrieved 20 December 2006., The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred W. McCoy (quoted in Wikiwand https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Calogero_Vizzini)
14. Servadio, Gaia. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day. Secker & Warburg, London, 1976. (quoted in Wikiwand https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Calogero_Vizzini)
15. Sicilian mobster Buscetta moved between Palermo, Brazil and Argentina as a smuggler. He turned informant in 1984.
    https://themobmuseum.org/blog/sicilian-mafioso-tommaso-buscetta-broke-the-sacred-oath-of-omerta-40-years-ago/
16. Robb, pg. 23
17. Kahn, Milka. Women of Honor. Hurst & Company, London, 2017. Pg. 11 (quoting Charbot and Veron, Corleone, la guerre des parrains, TV documentary, 2014)
18. McLaren, Colin. Mafioso. Hachette Australia, Sydney, 2022. Pg. 180
19. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/554-mafioso-the-octopus-s-tentacles