The Worst Film Ever

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Directed by and starring TV personality Pierfrancesco Diliberto (Pif), the mix of comedy, childhood reminiscence and documentary reconstruction of Mafia killings in Palermo during the 1970s seems like an unusual mix, but The Mafia Kills Only In Summer would go on to win several film awards and be developed subsequently into a TV series.There are two halves to the film, the first half dealing with the early childhood of Arturo (Alex Bisconti), his love for a new girl Flora, and his growing awareness as a child of the influence that the Mafia have over the everyday lives of the citizens of Palermo in Sicily. The second half, stars the director Pif as Arturo, now a grown man aspiring to be a journalist, still dreaming of his true love Flora as she reappears in his life, and with the events that would eventually lead to the decline of the Mafia's stranglehold over the city.Both parts of the film have their own attractions. The first half has some moments of childhood whimsy and comic overplaying, a bit like the cinema fixation of Cinema Paradiso, only for Arturo the fascination is an unusually strange devotion to the Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. The second half mixes romantic comedy with Arturo and Flora's involvement in politics and journalism, which presents some unlikely contrasts alongside the increase in violence and assassination by mafiosi under pressure from the authorities.In the end it's those connections to what is happening in the real-world that succeed and validate the films approach. It not only gives a real sense of what it means to have grown up in Sicily during those times, the strangeness of the times contributing to a strange view of the world for a young child, but it also manages to pay tribute to those who fought against the Mafia and paid for it with their lives. The style might seem incongruous and exaggerated, but it seems a genuine response to the times and the people who lived through them, and - just as importantly - it has an easy approach that ensures that its message is able to reach out to a wide mainstream audience.

I beg to disagree with almost everyone on this one. There is nothing overtly 'artistic' about this movie. It treats real, tragic events with total superficiality and no feelings. The mafia bosses are pathetic caricatures, not bloodthirsty killers and cutthroat businessmen. It all looks like a 'see no evil, hear no evil do-good- er' cartoon...I was there in those years, and I can assure everyone, there was nothing even remotely funny or entertaining in the affairs pictured in the movie. In this film everything is pictured as if it was all a joke, as if the dead weren't really dead, as if the mafia was a bunch of unruly kids, and nothing 'really' ever happened. Well, it all might be good in today's politically correct environment where all is forgotten and forgiven, but as I said at the beginning of this review, I beg to disagree...

This is a surprisingly refreshing movie, which actually feels more like a documentary than a fictional movie. This is the story of Arturo, who was born and bred in Palermo in the 1970s and who lived through the Mafia assassinations of judges, policemen and politicians. Pif has managed to direct a very original film and found a funny way of telling a tragic story in a way that turns a documentary about Mafia killings into a heartwarming love story. Turning Alberto into a child journalist is funny and original way of telling the history of the struggle between the Mafia and the authorities in the bloody period, and the idea of turning tragic events into comedy was perhaps borrowed from "Life is Beautiful". Although not as good as the latter, I found this happy ending movie to be very entertaining and strongly recommend it.

Pierfranceso di Liberto (in arte Pif) has pulled off a remarkable achievement with this film. It centers on Arturo, a middle-class boy living in Palermo in the 1970s-1980s who gradually comes to awareness of the murderous evil of La Cosa Nostra. His dawning awareness, and his moral awakening, parallel that of his city, whose residents would have preferred to have ignored the cancerous presence of the Mafia, but the brazen murders of so many of the Mafia's opponents -- honest politicians, magistrates, journalists -- forced them to confront it. That, and the amazing victories of the magistrates Falcone and Borsellino in prosecuting these monsters; tragically, they were both murdered shortly after the obtained convictions of some 300 criminals. Diliberto's protagonist Arturo initially is fascinated both by the mobbed-up premier Giulio Andreotti, and believes Andreotti's -- and his parents' lies about the mafia not existing in Sicily. (Andreotti, the protector of mafiosi, liked to say that the problem of organized crime existed only in Campania and Calabria.) The film's tonal balance is remarkable; at times it is hilariously funny; at others, heartbreaking. As the mafia crimes escalate, one feels despair, but at the film's marvelous conclusion, hope is restored. La mafia uccide solo in estate is without doubt one of the best films ever made about the scourge of Cosa Nostra.