LTIT 370 2nd Short Essay PDF

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The Mafia Kills Only In Summer: Palermo A City Of Crime The Mafia Kills Only In Summer is an Italian comedy-drama released in 2013 that takes place in Palermo, Sicily during the 1970s and 80s when Totò Riina carried out a bloody war in the city for mafia control assassinating many rival mafia members and people who opposed the mafia. The film was directed by Pierfrancesco Diliberto, better known as Pif, who also plays the role of Arturo the protagonist. Arturo is a schoolboy in Palermo who falls in love with a girl in his class Flora and also becomes slightly obsessed with former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti. While his love for Flora develops throughout the film, Arturo witnesses the history of Sicily between 1969 and 1980 between the mafia crimes and acting as a journalist honoring the judges and policemen who fought the criminals. This is a very interesting film because it tells the story of the mafia through the eyes of a young boy and also through a romance story. I am going to talk about the importance of the city of Palermo for this film and also look at the use of archival footage throughout the film. Palermo was one of the most active mafia cities in Italy throughout the second half of the 20th century. Andreotti naively says, as we see in the film, that the emerging criminal activity is in Campania and Calabria. From the second the film starts Palermo is put at the forefront, almost like it could be considered a main character in the film. Millicent Marcus describes in Mafia Movies that “Diliberto uses broad humor and hybrid visual techniques to link physiology of Arturo’s own conception with the rise to power of Totò Riina.” (Marcus, 302) An example of this is in the beginning of the film when the viewer sees Arturo’s conception which coincides with the hit Riina ordered on his rival Michele Cavataiok, one of the many ‘Excellent cadavers’ shown in the film. Arturo also describes how he never could profess his love to Flora because

they were in Palermo and that the mafia influenced everyones lives and as he says, “particularly mine” (Marcus, 301). Marcus explains that this opening frame shows the theme and forecasts “the generic mechanisms that will govern the film as a whole.” (Marcus, 301). The archival footage is a stylistic choice by Pif which switches front the television like filming style to a more documentary one which reiterates that these are all true stories of mafia assassinations. It is very interesting how Pif creates these scenes. In the scene of Dalla Chiesa’s funeral we see real news footage from the day while also seeing Arturo in the middle of these scenes. This combination of fiction and reality “triggers a metalinguistic awareness on the part of the viewers” (Marcus, 303). This choice of archival footage also plays another important role according to Marcus. These documentary-like sequences help the viewers get a sense for how Italians really experienced the events that happened during the time of the film while things were being reported whether they were home watching TV or out at a bar or restaurant. This technique of placing Arturo into the documentary footage is called ‘compositing’. I had never seen this done in any films that I had watched before so I really enjoyed watching it. The Mafia Kills Only In Summer is a film that really captures the essence of what living and growing up in Palermo was like during the 1970s and 80s. Diliberto effortlessly commemorated the martyrs of all the people who lost their lives due to the mafia crime in Palermo.

Bibliography Marcus , Millicent. “From Comedy to Commemoration: Pierfrancesco Diliberto's La Mafia Uccide Solo D'estate .” Mafia Movies: a Reader, Second Edition, by Dana Renga, University of Toronto Press, 2019, pp. 300–305....