Word: mafia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Square are as routine as the traffic, but one recent stickup had a certain piquancy. Two gunmen knocked over a movie theater, shot the manager in the arm and made off with $13,000. The theater happened to be showing The Godfather. A mad publicity stunt? Retribution by the Mafia? More likely it was ironic coincidence-and ill-planned as well. At the rate The Godfather is packing them in, the $13,000 loot would just about account for the weekend popcorn sales...
...Godfather, Marlon Brando in the film that doesn't mention "Mafia" once. Savoy...
...same time, the film doesn't go to the historical roots of the Mafia. It does, in fact, try to justify the group's existence by condemning corrupt national enterprise in general. Though this isn't crucial to the film's success as dramatic narrative or slice-of-life, it leaves a gaping rent in the generally tough fabric, through which we can see the soft heart of the financiers or the heavy thumbs of Mafia carabinieri who helped supervise the shooting of some scenes...
...betweens for nobles and peasants. From the start of their history, they were directed to use every means of torture to extract fealties to their lords. When feudalism died, they did the job for themselves, maintaining an iron grip on the land they once just supervised. The Mafia has always been reactionary; it was no surprise that it helped kill Italian Communism...
...MAFIA grew quickly in America, absorbing the operations of such unpaid Sicilian scouts as Al Capone or the Black Handers. There was in this country, perhaps, more impetus for violent crime than ever, given the slum conditions most recruits lived in and the sweat they would have had to muster getting out of them via normal routes. But the nationalist image they projected was merely a good business front and organizing factor. Mafia means were ugly, its ties to home Mafiosi still insoluble, and its responsibility for widespread corruption--first through cathouses and clipjoints, then through drugs--unavoidable...