The Valachi papers
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Valachi papers |
| Original title | Carteggio Valachi |
| Country of production | Italy , France |
| original language | English , Italian |
| Publishing year | 1972 |
| length | 125 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Terence Young |
| script |
Stephen Geller Massimo De Rita Arduino Maiuri |
| production | Dino De Laurentiis |
| music |
Riz Ortolani Vito Pallavicini Armando Trovaioli |
| camera | Aldo Tonti |
| cut |
Johnny Dwyre Monica Finzi |
| occupation | |
| |
The Valachi Papers (original title: Carteggio Valachi ) is a mafia film from 1972 by Terence Young with Charles Bronson and Lino Ventura in the leading roles.
The film is based on the book The Valachi Papers by Peter Maas , which takes up the documentary story of Joseph Valachi , who testified in the 1960s as the first key witness in the trial against the Genovese family of New York's La Cosa Nostra and the public for the first time in the Inaugurated the inner workings of the Mafia. Valachi kills an inmate he mistakenly believes to be a hit man who should get rid of him. Federal agents clear him up of his mistake and force him to divulge information about the New York Mafia.
action
In Atlanta Federal Prison, aged inmate Joe Valachi is serving his sentence for smuggling heroin. The boss of his “ family ”, Vito Genovese, is also in the same prison. Genovese is certain that Valachi has betrayed him and gives him the "kiss of death" as a signal for the inmates to kill him. Valachi accepts the challenge and kisses him back.
His story is told in flashbacks. Valachi starts out as a petty thief before joining Salvatore Maranzano's organization . In the course of events, Valachi gets caught between the front lines in the war of Castellammare between Salvatore Maranzano and his adversary Joe Masseria , who vied for Mafia supremacy in New York. He is a driver, an errand boy for "Lucky Luciano" and also involved in several murders. At a funeral of a shot gangster, Maranzano told a mourner, “ I can't bring the dead back. I can only kill the living . ”At the height of the gang war, Joe Masseria was murdered in“ Scarpato's Restaurant ”in 1931. A few months later, his former vassals kill his rival Salvatore Maranzano when he became too powerful for them. During this time, Valachi has to go into hiding in the attic of the widow of the murdered gangster whose driver he was. He gets to know and love their daughter, Maria Reina, (played by Bronson's actual wife Jill Ireland). He later married her, with Don Vito Genovese playing the advocate for the mother of the bride and his best man.
Valachi's rise in the Genovese family is hampered by his bad relationship with his Capo regime, Tony Bender . Joe Valachi gets into trouble after it is discovered that he has covered a relationship between his friend "Gap" and the lover Genoveses. After fleeing to Sicily after the Second World War, Vito Genovese returned to the United States and, in his opinion, handled the business neglected by his deputy Albert Anastasia. He has "Gap" neutered by Bender's people in Valachi's restaurant . Valachi then gives the seriously injured man the coup de grace. The fact that he has killed a friend and the certainty that the old values of their organization are no longer valid make Valachi increasingly turn away from his gangster family, especially since the fear that they might harm his wife or son. The police arrested Valachi and a court sentenced him to fifteen years' imprisonment.
Valachi decides to cooperate with the FBI and testify before the United States Congress on organized crime . This makes it the first Pentito in the history of the American Cosa Nostra . After seeing his testimony on TV, Valachi tries to strangle himself with an electrical cord. At the last moment, he can be rescued by a federal official who developed a friendly relationship with him during the interrogation. Valachi tells the officer that he only wants to go on living out of sheer malice, as he will not allow anyone the $ 100,000 bounty offered by Vito Genovese . The credits tell that Valachi died of natural causes several years later in captivity, a few months after Genovese.
Historical inaccuracies
The film was criticized for showing a number of historical inaccuracies. This is how the car chase scene takes place in 1930, but car brands from the 1960s are recognizable . In another chase scene, Valachi drives straight into the East River , the two towers of the World Trade Center are visible. The castration scene and the quote from Maranzano at Reina's funeral do not correspond to historical facts.
background
The background of the film is the history of the New York Mafia from the 1930s to the arrest of Valachis in the 1950s. He plays in prisons like Sing Sing and shows details of the Castellamares war , as well as the rise and fall of various mafia bosses. The film is based on the authentic interrogation minutes (Valachi papers) of the case before the Congress Committee of Senator John L. McClellan in 1963. Dino De Laurentiis acquired the film rights to these minutes .
production
The film was released on February 1, 1973 and grossed $ 17 million, eight million through rental. It was created in the studios of De Laurentiis Intermarco SpA and Euro-France Films. Distribution companies are Columbia Pictures (USA), Cinema International Corporation (worldwide) and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
criticism
“Thriller about the gangster Joseph Valachi, who uncovered the machinations of the Mafia in 1963. [...] Conclusion: Mafia thriller, based on authentic material. "
“An authentic documentation of statements by a mafia gangster about the organization and influence of organized crime in the USA during the 1930s becomes the subject of a sensationally perfect thriller. Although he targets the mafia as a social phenomenon, he fails to provide a more detailed explanation of its social foundations in favor of a superficial wealth of action. "
"Although much harder and more direct than Coppola's often romanticized epic, the 'Valachi Papers' also advanced to a box office hit."
Web links
- The Valachi Papers in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Valachi Papers at rotten tomatoes (English)
- The Valachi papers in the online film database
- The Valachi papers in the German synchronous file
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ital. Il bacio della morte
- ^ The Valachi Papers
- ↑ THE PAPERS Valachi In: Cinema . Retrieved February 18, 2018.
- ↑ The Valachi Papers. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed May 3, 2017 .
- ^ The Valachi Papers ( Memento from June 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Dirk Jasper Filmlexikon . Retrieved February 18, 2018.