filmalamosa I don't see how you could categorize this film as other than a comedy for adults. That is what it is... tragedy as other reviewers suggest now that is funny...The first part has fun at the expense of Sicilian stereotypes: peasant women with mustaches... toothless old men fighting with knives and food and more food. The part in New York is even more hilarious with the mafioso speaking Italian with an American accent... All the stereotypes present and subtle humor every where.This film is meticulous hangs together well. Best of Italian comedy.A "dark" comedy for adults. Where did they run down all the Sicilian non actors?

bookphile1 Contains Spoiler I just saw this movie which was certainly as wonderful as most of the other reviewers are saying.But one thing several of the other reviewers seemed to miss (to me, at least) was that the entire culture of his hometown was invested in his doing his little errand for the Don. The societal structure is based on doing "favors" for each other. The Don does a favor for his parents, his parents in turn, turn on a dime in their treatment of their Northern Italian daughter-in-law in order to get her to be willing to stay for a few extra days. His father presumably has some idea of the kind of errand he's actually going to be going on.Everything operates from a complex web of familial and social obligations, guilt and fear and he's completely trapped. Not just his wife and children but his parents and sister could all be forfeit if he doesn't do what they want him to do.He only has one skill they care about; his marksmanship. His humanity, his pride, his love for his family; none of that means anything to them.This is a scathing indictment of what brutality, not just Mafia brutality, can do to the human spirit and the acting is wonderful.

John Peters Mafioso was made in 1962 and reflects a "pre-color" film aesthetic that includes both vivid dialog and precise black-and-white renditions of light and shade. One result of the superb craftsmanship in Mafioso is to pull the viewer, consciously or unconsciously, into the lives of characters. The strongest pull is from the Alberto Sordi character, Antonio Badalamenti, a Sicilian who migrated to Northern Italy as a young man and made good, with a job as factory foreman and a blond wife and daughters. On a vacation, he takes the family, for the first time, to Sicily, giving both Northern and Southern relatives a chance to decide what to make of one another.Mafioso's director, Alberto Lattuada, handles all of this is with a naturalness that immediately makes us accept and believe in his characters. It's a wonderful achievement. That it was possible with 1962 black-and-white technology is cause not only to appreciate Lattuada and his team's accomplishment but to reconsider assumptions on how characters in movies can be brought to life. Approach to film-making may, in the end, matter more than technology. For example, the material poverty of the Sicilian settings is calmly obvious in Mafioso in a way that is not evident in the far grander movies of the well-known Italian-American auteurs.Once in Sicily, things start to happen. Both families prove adaptable and find ways to get along but, for Antonio, there are unexpected implications. Seems he owes the local don (played by Ugo Attanasio in another wonderful, low-keyed performance) a favor. Antonio pretends to his wife and daughters that he's on a hunting trip but is packed into a shipping crate so that he can be sent to America, kill a rival gangster, and be shipped back to Sicily. Everything works. Antonio's upset about killing the stranger but is quite willing to keep the secret (and his acceptance by both Southern and Northern cultures) for the rest of his well-ordered life.

kristen Skullerud The actor Alberto Sordi plays the part of an honest sicilian, just married with a woman from the more 'liberated' Northern Italy, who returns to Sicily to introduce his wife to his very traditional family ! Creating not few cultural conflicts, however she is in the end well accepted , even the local Sicilians look at her with more curiosity than suspicion ! Alberto Sordi plays the part of a meleodramatic Sicilian very well, and the first hour of the film is very funny, but afterwards becomes too serious as he is smuggled into the States to be a mafioso killer !Anyway just for the acting excellence of Alberto Sordi this film gets a 8 vote from me !