So I went into Franco Maresco’s film La Mafia Non È Più Che Una Volta (The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used To Be) thinking it was going to be a documentary about the mafia photography of the legendary Letizia Battaglia…
…and quickly realized that it was instead, a documentary about her at an event to honor Giovane Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, 25 years after the murders of two judges.
But wait.
Halfway through the film I started to think, “Oh, I get it. This isn’t a DOCumentary, this is a MOCKumentary. This can’t be for real. These people are saying things that are way too outrageous. The event organizer Ciccio Mira would never be saying these things about Falcone, Borsellino, or the Mafia, if he wasn’t being sartirical, would he?
Unfortunately, he would, and he did. I had to ask Italian friends after the show if The Mafia Is No Longer What It Used To Be wasn’t some kind of Italian Waiting for Guffman, and they assured me that it was more reality TV than parody.
That’s not to say that it’s without satire or irony. Those things would come from the voice of the Maresco, never seen, but always in the background, taunting the citizens of Palermo who can’t or won’t bring themselves to honor the Mafia murdered judges or renounce the Mafia. The festival itself? It’s just a big, fat, mess of a carnival, one that features Mafia sponsored entertainers called Neomelodic singers. Neomelodic music is a musical style originating from the city of Naples. Many of the songs praise crime and criminals, and many of the singers are backed by Mafiosi. Making a sort of deal with the devil, the singers perform when and as much as their bosses say they will, and often sing songs that honor criminals.
Where is Letizia Battaglia in all this? She’s on the sideline, shaking her head and telling everyone to f*ck off.
The Palermitano actor/director Pierfrancesco Diliberto (Pif), in talking about his film The Mafia Only Kills In The Summer, told me that he wasn’t afraid of what the Mafia thought of his film because “the mafia isn’t what it used to be.” I used to believe him, but now I’m not so sure.
