Word: mafioso
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Life imitating art? Not exactly. More like art imitating art, or artist imitating artist. For Marlon Brando is, of course, the man in the mafioso mask in both instances. It might perhaps be said the makeup man was kinder in aging him for the earlier role than the past 18 years have been in bringing him to his present hefty appearance. On the other hand, The Freshman is a comedy, and his roly-poly form and cherubic countenance defuse his menace and suit his self-satirizing purposes...
Octopus opens with a slapstick scene in New York City's Palace restaurant. A Sicilian Mafioso is trying to pass off stolen "Tiepido" and "Van Go" paintings and "Stradinoff" violins to an undercover agent with a recorder sewn into the crotch of his shorts. It was 1977, and the detective didn't know that he was talking to a key player in a drug network newly launched by the Sicilians...
...read Kit Troyer's review of "Black Rain," I learned that this tradition continues. It was the height of irony to find that in the same review of a movie denounced for "reinforc[ing] some long-standing racial stereotypes," the author describes one character as a "Japanese mafioso." Does the Editorial Board (which offered no disclaimer) express the belief that criminals worldwide owe their existence to an illicit network originating on Sicily at the turn of this century? Or is your belief that Italians are in general archetypal criminals...
...word "mafioso" to describe a member of a criminal organization displays the very kind of bias your review purports to loathe. It perpetuates the insulting and degrading view of Italian-Americans as godfathers and hit-men. And while I do not deny that a small minority of Italians belonged to violent criminals organizations, I challenge Mr. Troyer to name one ethnic group which has not produced a criminal...
...movie's title suggests that its makers aspired to more than a good cop movie. The title comes from an exchange between Douglas and Tomisaburo Wakayama, who plays the mobster Sugai. When Douglas criticizes the mafioso's livelihood, Wakayama launches into a monologue on the horror of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings...