Mafioso

Mafioso (1962) — watch online on iFILM — is an Italian black comedy directed by Alberto Lattuada, starring Alberto Sordi as a Milanese factory supervisor who thought he'd left Sicily behind.

Antonio Badalamenti is efficient, cheerful, thoroughly modern — the plant floor runs on his schedule. He brings his northern wife and two daughters south for a holiday, eager to show them where he grew up. Sicily receives him warmly: the village, the food, the summer heat, the old faces. And Don Vincenzo, a man of considerable local standing, who has been saving a favor to ask of Antonio for a very long time.

Sordi was Italy's definitive postwar comic actor, and this is one of his most precise performances — a man who genuinely believes in his own respectability right up until the moment the plot won't let him. The film pivots hard in its final act, and the laughter drains out. Watch Mafioso (1962) on iFILM.