Maestro of Italian cinema, Marco Bellocchio, writing and directing since 1965*, celebrated his 80th year by sweeping the Italian Film Awards with this excellent, straight-forward docu-drama on Tommaso Buscetta. A Sicilian mob boss (living in Brazil as the film starts in the early 1980s), his clan under attack in Italy by rival gangs and by special police forces, while he faces crimes of his own, agrees to work with Prosecuting Judge Giovanni Falcone, Patron Saint of Mafia busters. Il Cosa Nostra, as Buscetta insists on calling what had long been, in his warped view, an honorable association now falling into chaos. Backed into becoming the first inside informer to testify against the organization after losing so much manpower and territory. He and his family are given witness protection in America, yet he’s drawn back to Italy so he can settle scores after Falcone is assassinated. Superbly done, note details like how Pierfrancesco Favino, as Buscetta, wears facial prosthetics before he has face altering plastic surgery so he can play the final act without the props. Good as it is, there’s a built-in structural weakness in that all the more juicy rub-outs (so damn cinematic a cow could shoot them effectively) come cheek by jowl in what amounts to the prologue, leaving the rest of the film largely without easy kinetic excitement. The interrogations/interviews between Falcone & Buscetta and, of course, the trial & testimonies have plenty of drama, but can’t really compete with graphic killings.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Bellocchio (whose name translates as ‘beautiful eye’) will always be shadowed by his debut, the revolutionary masterpiece FISTS IN THE POCKET/’65. There are worse curses to carry around your neck. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/fists-in-pocket-1965.html
