Mafioso

Directed by Alberto Lattuada, starring Alberto Sordi, Norma Bengell, and Ugo Attanasio.  Originally made for 1962 release, now re-released by Rialto Pictures with English subtitles by Tommaso Cammarano and Bruce Goldstein (2006).

I saw Mafioso tonight at the Angelika Film Center and fell in love with the low-key lighting, the velvety black and white photography, and the multitude of finely-calibrated comic performances.  The sound at the theater was set a bit loud, which emphasized, for me, the narrow dynamic range and distorted timbre of the audio track.  But the elegance of the camera work and editing more than consoled me.  (Even with a couple of focus errors.)

The film tells the story of Antonio ("Nino") Badalamenti, a Sicilian boy who has made good in the big city of Milan.  We meet him in the factory where he apparently serves as a punctilious time-and-motion man.  But that's just the set-up, because Nino is about to take his wife Marta and their two daughters back to Sicily to meet the parents--for the first time, because until now, he's apparently been the best sort of company man, devoted to his wife but never taking a proper vacation.

Nino's a different guy back home, and therein lies a lot of the comedy.  But it was the film's dark tone throughout that delighted me the most, along with the sharp, human characterizations of the supporting cast.

And, by golly, Lattuada, along with cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi, set up some lovely shots, including the opening montage, the encounter with the black cat, and a split-second flash of Nino's wristwatch that's practically a throw-away.  Each one of these moments underlines Nino's psychology in a way that wasn't clear to me--and yes, perhaps I'm a bit slow--until I had a few minutes to process them.

In a sense, this is what delights me the most about a good story: everything's obvious, but only in retrospect.  While I'm watching, I'm utterly engaged, trying to figure out what just happened, what's happening now, and wondering, for the life of me, what will happen next.  When the story finishes, I smack my head and say: Well, obviously!

The plot of Mafioso isn't that complicated.  But Nino's reactions to his circumstances are.  And the visual world not only supports the script and the characters, it's lovely to look at.

For me, that's a good movie.