Crime and Punishment

Might I recommend, for those looking for ocular entertainment, Mafioso, which is now showing at a number of Laemmle's Theatres in the Southland. I don't know what the occasion is, but the chain is showing a number of old films on the big screen, including Becket (which would be a good watch as well).

I hadn't seen Mafioso before and it wasn't what I expected, but a fair amount of it certainly rang true. A brief synopsis: Sicilian fellow who moved to Milan and become a successful factory manager visits his old hometown, and his family, after an absence of a decade or so, new wife and kids in tow. Northern Italy meets Southern Italy and hilarity ensues. Until the local mafia don has a favor to ask.

More than that, and you've gotta watch the movie, as far as plot goes. But there were a number of key points that I could relate to. Most significantly had to be the omnipresence of food. As the long-missing family arrives, a veritable feast is thrown for them, with the new wife mistaking the appetizers for the whole meal. Everywhere they go in town, someone else forces more food upon them. You can't turn a corner without a canoli or a calzone getting stuffed down your throat.

Visiting the best beloved's family in Cleveland, I felt exactly the same way. Warm, effusive, welcoming...but they put more food in me than an In 'N Out after a twelve year famine. The night of my arrival, even though we got to the house around eleven, I ended up having two sandwiches and I wasn't even hungry. The next morning, Thanksgiving, I had barely slogged through breakfast when they were pulling the pizza out of the oven for lunch. And by the time I got done with lunch it was time to head over to an aunt's, where the first thing she did, after giving me a hug, was cram a piece of some kind of cheesy bread in my mouth. I felt like I was training to be a beach ball.

The best part about it, though, was that the food was unbelievably good. So, too with the food in this movie. Even when they're chowing down on what is supposedly "lamb guts," it looked so savory, I think I might have given it a try.

Mafioso, though, has more than me going for it. It's well shot and I found the score entertaining, if a bit manic at times. I certainly regret not visiting Sicily two years ago when I had the chance, and this movie was in black and white, so you see how convincing it was. Great film, though the endings more serious than one might expect given the light-hearted happenings through most of the film.