Pasquale Squiteri's "I Guappi" reveals the inauspicious entanglement of the Mafia with everyday life in nineteenth century Italy during a pivotal scene. Newcomer in town Nicola (Franco Nero), after quarreling with local Don Guatano (Fabio Testi), soon earns his trust and becomes inducted into the Cosa Nostra with a familiar ceremony that includes the pricking of fingers and solemn words. What makes the event especially unique is that it's done in a cavernous after-hours church with a priest chanting and praying as the hollow-eyed men go about their ancient methods of recruitment. The line of the sacred and the profane is blurred and "I Guappi" highlights something that's been known in history books for years- that the lifestyles of the religious and the violent are inextricably linked by generations of necessity. However, to see it so casually embraced on-screen is one of the many wonderful passages of Squiteri's subtle mafia drama.
Featuring a murderer's row of acting greats (Testi, Nero, and Claudia Cardinale as the woman caught between both men), "I Guappi" feels tailor made for each actor. Nero, as the man trying to escape a life of crime, only to be embroiled back into the most absorbent style of violence imaginable, is perfect as Nicola. Menacing and towering as the local black hand, Testi scowls and carries himself with dark presence, never afraid to back down from a fight... often deployed by simple knives, hard fists, or whips. There's nary a handgun in sight, which further belies the film's focus on the earthly means of an organization holding rule over a population by attitude and respect. Cardinale, portraying the girlfriend of Testi, (unfortunately) spends a good portion of the film cowering from the same violent hands of Testi that subjugates the people of his town. In addition to that, she suffers the wrath of the local police who see her as the weak link in a chain towards ending Don Guatano's reign. But "I Guappi" shifts its worldview in the second half to a more empowering fable where she doesn't endure pain and suffering for nothing, and with the help of newly converted Nicols to the side of the law-abiding, the film reckons with the mafia's violence.
Being the first Squiteri film I've seen, I can't say whether "I Guappi" is a forensic miracle about the minor machinations of Cosa Nostra or a steppingstone in a more obvious career. It reminded me of the films of auteur Francesco Rosi, especially "Salvatore Guiliano" (1962) and "Lucky Luciano" (1973)- films that utilize iconic figures of the mafia to tell a microscopic story of the political and practical ways in which they impacted each. In "Salvatore Giuliana", the man is only glimpsed as a corpse, and the next 2 hours are spent as his specter is refracted around the country in numerous perspectives. "Lucky Luciano" takes place after the popular mob boss has been deported back to Italy and concerns itself with the conversations, muckraking, and subterfuge involved as he helped the US Government during World War II. While "I Guappi" tackles these ideals many years before, it's no less concerned with the mundane snapshot of a lifestyle that's just as normal as that of the local grocer. It's a film that soars even more by its lack of action and popular mythmaking of a certain Cosa Nostra lifestyle.
But even more soaring is the film's denouement that I won't completely spoil. Needless to say, it's a bravura long take that reveals the timelessness of the film's milieu while remaining firmly entrenched in that bleak 70's style that no good deed ever goes unpunished in an Italy whose violence is always bubbling just below the seams of decency.
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