MAFIOSO (1962)

Nino Badalamenti (Alberto Sordi) left his small hometown in Sicily for a job at the Fiat plant in Milan. Now he's a successful manager, with a blond Northern wife Marta and two blond little girls. He returns to Sicily after eight years to introduce them to his family. Director Alberto Lattuada brilliantly shows the cultural clashes between Marta and her Sicilian in-laws, in many howlingly funny scenes. Nino, carefree and happily reveling in his native habitat, gets a rude awakening when Don Vincenzo Ugo Attanasio), the local Mafia gabboletto to whom Nino is beholden, asks for a deadly favor in return. "Mafioso" is in the great tradition of postwar Italian cinema, mixing comedy and brutality while never losing humanity. Sordi, often called the Italian Peter Sellers, is never less than perfect. So is Attanasio and everyone else. Outstanding!