The Valachi Papers

This is an unfairly underrated crime film directed by Terence Young for whom it is also one of his best, a movie where he put all his "guts", if I may say. Charles Bronson and Lino Ventura, two heavies of the US and French cinema playing together, only missed Marcel Bozzuffi and Leo Gordon....yes, it is an accurate and detailed document about actual events, without excessive useless, gratuitous violence as we often saw in Italian polizziotescos of this period, the seventies. But it remains brutal, bloody in a factual violence, factual and not gratuitous. No clichés nor good guys vs evil ones scheme either. I am sure that many French Lino Ventura buffs don't know this film. Such a shame.

The following year Charles Bronson would team up with director Michael Winner as a cop on the trail of the mafia, but the year before in "The Valachi Papers" he would find himself smack in the middle of it all as former mobster Joe Valachi serving 15 years in prison with a target on his head of twenty thousand dollars by mafia capo Vito Genovese. When he learns of it with there being no way of getting out of it when receives the kiss of death. Joe decides to spill his guts on the inner workings (extortion, vengeance and murder) of LaCosa Nostra for some sort of protection for him and his family. This would be the third European film of the trot between Charles Bronson and director Terence Young with the gritty crime flick "Cold Sweat (1970)" and buddy western "Red Sun (1971)" being the two before it. Coming out the same year as the similar in vein, but masterful classic "The Godfather". "The Valachi Papers" probably came and went with little notice. While not as stylish, it managed to have scope in its tough, trim and grippingly told narration splitting between past recounting and present situations. The plot was adapted off Peter Maas' novel of the same name that covers this true account of the mafia underworld and organised crime. A steadfast Bronson perfectly nailed down the lead with excellently respectable support by the likes of Lino Ventura, Joseph Wiseman, Walter Chiari, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, Angelo Infanti and Amedeo Nazzari. Director Young does a steadily routine job, but it's well done for such a minimal and straight looking production. For a running time of just over two hours, never does it feel it or seem to drag. The workmanlike execution gives the air a brutal (one raw act of violence would have any male squirming) and hardboiled touch, crafting well etched period (through the 1930s) location details and a having profound power in its escalating dramatics. A violent, tough-talking gangster feature with fine cast associated.

The gangster Joseph "Joe" Valachi (Charles Bronson) has worked for the Mafia for more than thirty years in New York. When he has been imprisoned for fifteen years, he learns that the mobster Don Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura) is offering a reward for his life. Without any alternative other than stay in the solitaire, he accepts the DA offer of protection. In return, he has to disclose the secrets of the Cosa Nostra.

"The Valachi Papers" is based on a true story and tells the rise and fall of a gangster from the Mafia. The role of Joseph Valachi is tailored for Charles Bronson and fans of gangster movie will certainly enjoy this film. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Segredo da Cosanostra" ("The Secret of the Cosanostra")

America has always been a land of opportunity. For the Italians, none more so than giving rise to an American icon, the Gangster. For many years, the U.S. government denied the existence of Organized crime. Even the top U.S. law enforcement officer and head of the famed Federal Bureau of Investigation, J.Edgar Hoover, denied such an organization existed. His apathy was due in part to his own shadowy complicity with the Giancana crime family. That's pretty much how it stayed until the advent of the McClellen commission. The movie " The Valachi Papers " is the direct result of that investigation and brought to the forefront of public awareness the vast network of the underworld's crime bosses and their families. The wellspring of that knowledge was none other than the most famous gangster since Al Capone, one, Joseph Valachi. His testimony, created a healthy respect and awe for the Mafia or as Valachi termed it, La Cosa Nostra. (Our thing) This movie is a compilation of his criminal life, dastardly deeds and the revelation of some of the nation's most notable names. Men like Vito Genovese, Anastasia, 'Lucky Luciano' Don Masseria and Marazano. The film is honest when it deals with its legendary brutality and bodies are left throughout the story including its most graphic moments. The end result is perhaps the best Mafia movie since the Godfather. ****

I give this a 7 stars because it was made the same year as Godfather I, so it didn't benefit from all the film-industry wisdom that followed that production. Rather, this is a character study of one mafioso, which is a separate issue from the operatic, all-systems-GO no-holds-barred approach Coppola was able to employ in The Godfather. it's a smaller film, and should be compared to, say, Mobsters (1991), which deals with the same period and some of the same characters as V.P. Charles Bronson's Valachi is adequate. He's a workaday, uneducated, down- home mob guy, and Bronson plays him as if he were Polish, with a job that he goes to every day, where everyone talks Italian. Because it is through his eyes that we see his world, some of the other characters become more vivid, e.g., Joseph Wiseman as Salvatore Maranzano. When I compare the casting of the incomparable Joseph Wiseman in this role as opposed to, say, Michael Gambon in the same role in Mobsters, or Anthony Quinn as an equally old-school rival in the same film, I wonder: None of these actors are Italian -American or even simply Italian; why do some of them work, and the others don't? Granted that Wiseman, Quinn and Gambon are all consummate professionals and true craftsmen as actors, if anyone mentions Salvatore Maranzano and the Castellammarese gang war of 1929, the face that will come to my mind is that of Joseph Wiseman. He and Charles Bronson make this film worth seeing.