The Sicilian Connection (1972) - A review
The Sicilian Connection
Cashing in on the success of Friedkin’s 1971 film ‘The French Connection’ as well as Di Leo’s 1972 film ‘The Italian Connection’ (AKA ‘Manhunt in Milan’) comes ‘The Sicilian Connection’ from director Ferdinando Baldi.
A brutal and bleak opening shows us the depths to which the Sicilian mafia will go to in order to protect their business, and after burying a Carabinieri officer alive, against a backdrop of the Mediterranean sea, mafia boss Don Vincenzo turns to a gravedigger and asks him “What is all that water? The sea?” And how does the poor man reply? “Could be I guess. But then I could be wrong. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know nothing.” Omerta in action.
We cut to Turkey, where the always recognizable American Ben Gazzara plays the arrogant American-Italian Joseph Coppola. He goes about flashing money and setting up a major international drug deal. As a bit of trivia, the producers took the odd decision to overdub Gazzara with another actor in the English-language version.
Back to the film, and during his stint in Turkey, Coppola visits the opium fields and fends off bandits before securing a deal and heading off to Sicily, from where the goods would be shipped to the United States. However, the choice of using the Sicilians for the job irks The Marseilles, who wanted a piece of the action and seeks to punish those who didn’t offer it to him.
Once this is all resolved, we head to the States, where Coppola looks to move the goods on to a trafficker, but his freelance status and greed annoys those with power and the mob brings him in to question. But only after he has handed over the goods to someone.
With this film, Baldi shows some flashes of humour (the ice cream seduction; the drugs lab underneath a monastery, staffed by favourite Luciano Rossi), inventiveness (the way of packing and shipping drugs from loaves, to fish, to ‘pigs’ under the boats requiring a frogman to retrieve) and a strong balance between process and action. In fact, some scenes around the opium production were my favourite, even if the character of Coppola didn’t care how it was done.
However, for contemporary audiences it might not scratch that euro crime itch, as this is more about the process and execution of the deals than action, and thankfully, this focus is intentional, as a couple of action scenes (the opium production raid and a car chase) stood out as being weaker than the rest of the film, but kept to a minimum.
Overall, ‘The Sicilian Connection’ is much more than its derivative name implies. Well-written, well-acted (in part because of having a recognisable and seasoned cast) and still hitting all the tropes, you could do a lot worse than giving this a watch.
