Word: sicilianism
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Mario Puzo, author of the original best-selling hunk of heave and cheeseburger, states that he only wrote the book for money, and that he took the stories entirely from the memories of friends and family. His intentions and sources show. His Sicilian Don Tommasino is a type from Italian folklore, the local patrician who rules his regime with warm tongue and hard hand, and guards the locals from threatening outsiders...
...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...
...screenplay, probably felt the grudge of conscience more than Puzo. If he cuts a key line--"A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns"--he compresses most of Puzo's legends until their grain of truth is revealed. All that remains in his Sicilian scenes, for instance, is the animal vitality of the settings and natives, and the treachery which kills Mike's Sicilian bride in a sabotaged auto...
...theme is the corruption of once justifiable goals, their altering through histories of struggle and domination. What would be natural for the Family to desire would be a return to the Sicilian hills: to farm and fornicate and celebrate the sacraments. But they've got to be in business to stay alive in America. And this business requires them to kill. And when they start to kill, and to bear responsibility for men's lives, and then begin to enjoy that power--they start to think in terms of puppets and stringholders, and to hope that their sons will...
More troubles were to come for Puzo. He be came disgruntled because he had no final say on the picture. He was not allowed to view the finished cut when he wished to, and it was rumored that he had sworn - humorously, no doubt - a Sicilian vendetta against Paramount's Robert Evans...