Il camorrista

Camorra is the Italian word for Mafia. Only Americans call the mafia, the mafia. The origins are in Sicily, and affects every major city in Italy. They are apolitical; they align with whomever gives them the best deal. And it does not usually pay for you to oppose them openly.

This is a poor man's Scarface, with some eye-opening content as to why Italy struggled so much in post WW2 Europe. Italy had a large socialist segment at that time (in retaliation for the fascists of Mussolini). The unions, politicians, revolutionary groups, and the Camorra all vied for power in Italy after WW2. This chaos led to Italy falling behind other major powers like Germany, France, and several other countries, economically. The film highlights these problems under Tornatore, a very able director, who, a year later, made the classic, Cinema Paradiso.

Tornatore (who probably came to the same conclusion) did not excel in violence and sex; he was much better at romanticism, for which he eventually became the best in the world at portraying on the screen. He personally revived the Italian film tradition of great films. Unfortunately, this is not one of them, despite the best efforts of Ben Gazzara, is only slightly above average. The film is uneven, due mostly to production values, which are very low.

Some of the settings are quite impressive, but several others are very amateurish. The story about the rise of an intelligent gangster is interesting. At the halfway point, the Professor makes a grave error, as you will see in the film. From there he goes downhill. There really is no one in the film to root for as a protagonist; one of the weaknesses in the film; but then again, some films have no protagonists. Worth viewing as a retrospective of Tornatore's career.

Whenever I watch Ben Gazzara, he always commands my interest. There's this sort of ambiguous charisma, this late great actor had, even when first seeing him do the nasty in Roadhouse. Here, in this mafioso, mostly fictive tale, drawn from real accounts (this movie which surprisingly made in 86, in contrast to the wonderful olden settings) Gazzara plays a really manipulative mafioso character, where the real true colors of his character, surface, halfway through the film (which has the exact same running time as Goodfellas) and they're ugly. Gazzara of course, stands out too, as this is a Italian production, where save for him, all the other actors are Italian. The Professor is not your average mafioso boss, he's a planner, who uses his noggen, while of course paying some hard prison time, for a domestic involving his sister, being felt up, that went inexplicably wrong. The movie really gets juicy in it's second half, as well as bloody, with Gazzara escaping from the mental sector of the prison, where freedom and fresh air, do him the world of good. He becomes head of the camorra, running protection rackets, you name it, in a shocking display of greed and power, where he becomes responsible for 100 deaths, due to late over payments, or people going up against him, where it's not a smart move. One scene has him looking into a widow and her sons eyes, then waving at the son, where the widow, then spits at him, returning a much understandable malice, a back window of bus, separating them. The film's almost like Scarface and King Of New York revisited, but this much lesser known vehicle, must be seem, by lovers of mafia type/Scorsese films, etc, especially with Gazzara. The final scene, with Gazzara back in the hole, strangely unforgettable. There are moments that are very compacted with stuff, montages, etc. much like Goodfellas and Casino, but that really doesn't count as a fault, this very well made film, hardly having any.

The Italian mafia is the world's best known one but yet it always had been the Americans who made the best mafia movies, involving Italians. This movie however shows that also Italians themselves are capable of making a good mafia movie.

The director Giuseppe Tornatore made his debut with this movie. He would go on to make world wide well known Italian movies such as "Giuseppe Tornatore" and "La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano". He's actually one of the best directors at the moment that Italy has. For a debut movie this one is also certainly a great one.

I think that it's really foremost due to its professional directing approach that makes this movie such a great one. It's not really done typically European style and it has a way more professional look and feel over it than most other genre attempts, made in Italy itself.

The story is quite good and loosely based on some true events and characters. You could say that the movie is being a bit overlong at times but this was probably also due to the fact that this movie was initially intended to be an 5 hour TV-movie, which no doubt would had aired in different one hour parts or so. Luckily the movie is not being that long now to watch but still it's almost three hours long and not always being good enough to hold your interest throughout.

Ben Gazzara is a good actor and is perhaps best known for his Hollywood work but I'm still not too sure if he best the best choice for this movie. Perhaps he just appeared too friendly to me to look at him as this big though mafia boss who is building his empire and pulling the strings on all sides. Still his acting qualities compensate a lot.

A pretty good unknown mafia movie, from one of Italy's best directors.

8/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

The "camorra" is the Neapolitan equivalent to the Sicilian Mafia and this is a pretty good biopic, loosely based on the life of prominent "camorrista" Raffaele Cutolo.

The film deals extensively with the strong links between organized crime and politics and makes some very badly veiled allusions to modern Italian politicians and events.

From a film point of view, there's not much in the way of character development. The main character studies medicine (?) in an attempt to escape the criminal milieu he is meant for, but after being sent to jail over a crime of passion he turns into a cold, pitiless man who ruins and corrupts everyone around him. He is nothing like Brando's delicately nuanced Vito Corleone. This guy is ugly, evil and completely unredeemable.

On the plus side, the film was shot by Tornatore who was responsible for the magic Cinema Paradiso. This works as a sort of "flip side" to that films rather elegiac vision of Southern Italy.

Well worth watching, if only to see an "alternative" mafia film, where a nation's problems are most definitely NOT solved by a quickie car chase.

This was a good plot for the entire movie. It was all about Mafia, what you have to do climb the crime world ladder and reach the top where you are alone, because you cannot trust no one. The cast was amazing, a lot of italian actors that did a great job, a good Ben Gazzara (who did not talk in italian, he was dubbed). I found him a little bit melodramatic here in there, but none the less, the performance was good. The music was great, mesmerizing here in there, adding mistery and a lot of tension to a movie that goes wild in the second half of it. A great movie, great plot, great actors, music and cinematography.