Director Renato De Maria’s series of “monologues conceived as interviews, interrogations and confessions” from the bad boys of the Italian underworld.
Nothing glamorous about these gangsters stories; portrayed by actors Andrea Di Casa, Paolo Mazzatelli, Luca Micheletti, Aldo Ottobrino, Sergio Romano and Francesco Sferrazza Papa,there’s nothing here that would make a young man drop out of school and sign up for.
Each actor begins his monologue as the men’s lives begin to weave together and take from vintage newsreels, Rai’s archive footage and footage from the Istituto Luce, using facts gleaned from news articles and interviews of the people concerned, films, and “home movies” from Italian Americans in the ’60s and ’70s.
Minus the obnoxious bravado and the specious celebrity status in many American Gangster stories, all that is left is a guy who entered a life of crime, for the most part without any real intent or plan to so. One man’s first crime happened when he ended up robbing a store when a clerk mistakenly believed he was being robbed. “Is that how easy it is?”
You “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, and these bad guys don’t blame anyone but themselves for their misfortunes. A fatalistic outlook leaves them from longing from a life they could, or should have had.
Italian Gangsters will disappoint those who get a kick out of gangsters; this is the melancholy side of crime, and a film well done by De Maria.
I Love Italian Everything 