...panned it as being a "wee bit theatrical."
If he were alive today, I'd remind him: "Truth, sir, is stranger (and, quite often, _more_ theatrical) than fiction."
The Mafia--and other crime syndicates, regardless of ethnicity--might be leery of murdering incorruptible public servants. But, that doesn't mean they're completely averse to it. For example: roughly sixty years before this film came out, a certain Irish-American police captain was murdered along the New Orleans waterfront while investigating certain crimes attributed to the Sicilian immigrants working there. The local citizenry were so enraged, they actually stormed the jail house where the arrested suspects were being held and lynched them there (almost leading to war between America and Italy)!
Much more recently, the Old School Mafia in Sicily, itself, has taken to murdering police officers and judges, who won't kowtow to them, more often than they used to.
Gene Kelly is surprisingly adept at playing just such a public servant. It's the finest non-song-and-dance role he ever had since 1948's THE THREE MUSKETEERS! So as a one-quarter Italian-American, I have nothing but shamelessly high praise for the gritty realism (for its time) depicted in this criminally under-rated classic. Because, that's the way things were back then, where organized crime is concerned.
And, in some respects, they still are...if not worse.
If he were alive today, I'd remind him: "Truth, sir, is stranger (and, quite often, _more_ theatrical) than fiction."
The Mafia--and other crime syndicates, regardless of ethnicity--might be leery of murdering incorruptible public servants. But, that doesn't mean they're completely averse to it. For example: roughly sixty years before this film came out, a certain Irish-American police captain was murdered along the New Orleans waterfront while investigating certain crimes attributed to the Sicilian immigrants working there. The local citizenry were so enraged, they actually stormed the jail house where the arrested suspects were being held and lynched them there (almost leading to war between America and Italy)!
Much more recently, the Old School Mafia in Sicily, itself, has taken to murdering police officers and judges, who won't kowtow to them, more often than they used to.
Gene Kelly is surprisingly adept at playing just such a public servant. It's the finest non-song-and-dance role he ever had since 1948's THE THREE MUSKETEERS! So as a one-quarter Italian-American, I have nothing but shamelessly high praise for the gritty realism (for its time) depicted in this criminally under-rated classic. Because, that's the way things were back then, where organized crime is concerned.
And, in some respects, they still are...if not worse.