Alberto Lattuada, 1914 - 2005.

Italian film director Alberto Lattuada, whose work spanned four decades, has died at the age of 90. Lattuada's neo-realist films explored racism, unemployment and strikes following World War II.

The BBC.

To the best of my knowledge, Il Mafioso is the first film to portray the mafia in such stark and uncompromising terms. I have little doubt that Francis Ford Coppola studied this film before making his Godfather films. The film is filled throughout with scenes, moments, and images that can be easily traced to the Godfather trilogy: a character returning to a seemingly sleepy Sicilian town; shots of criminals seated at a café terrace that render an edge of terror to the town's everyday reality; family head Don Vicenzo seated in the garden of his well fortressed estate, socializing with family and friends; the link between the church and the mafia; attention to such detail as clothing and dialect, including the poor Italian spoken by the Italian-Americans of New York; Sordi's assassination of a rival gang leader at a New York city barbershop.

[...]

After sampling Lattuada's work one thing is quite evident. Unlike some Italian directors who feel most comfortable in one particular social milieu (Michelangelo Antonioni for example) Lattuada moves convincingly from poor to middle-class with the same attention to detail that reveals character, class and culture.

Donato Totaro in Offscreen, 1999.

Posted by dwhudson at July 4, 2005 8:10 AM