Mafioso

Mafioso is a 1962 Italian black comedy directed by Alberto Lattuada, from a screenplay by Rafael Azcona, Marco Ferreri and Agenore Incrocci, adapted from a story by Bruno Caruso. Alberto Sordi plays Nino, a Sicilian who has settled in Milan, where he works as a factory manager and has started a family. Travelling back to his native village in Sicily for a holiday with his wife, he finds himself caught between his modern life and the traditional world of his relatives. The local Mafia, which truly runs the town, seizes the opportunity of his visit and orders him to carry out a killing. What begins as a warmly comic portrait of a homecoming gradually turns darker as Nino is pulled into a trap he cannot refuse. The film mixes sharp satire with genuine menace in its depiction of Sicilian society. It won Best Film at the San Sebastián Film Festival and, in 2008, was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's list of 100 Italian films that changed the country's collective memory between 1942 and 1978.