Blu Ray Review: Lucky Luciano (1973)

Kino Lorber has released Francesco Rosi’s 1973 Italian film about the notorious gangster whose life was filled with contradiction and whose ideas were layered and versatile, and who received support from both Italy and the United States when his ideas were considered useful in positive areas. The movie caused quite a stir at the time because it included real life narcotics agent, Charles Siragusa, Luciano’s chief nemesis, appearing as himself.

When it was released to American theaters in the Spring of 1974, the massive popularity of Francis Ford Coppola’s screen version of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (1972) made Italian cinema, especially about a noted gangster from that same era, a likely box office shoo-in. This was at a time when even Alfio Caltabiano’s Italian mobster comedy Tutti figli di Mammasantissima (1973) was released to American theaters under the title Italian Graffiti, exploiting a lackluster Italian film for fans of The Godfather and George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973).

Unfortunately, period moviegoers in America expecting the same type of movie as The Godfather were disappointed. Lucky Luciano did not follow a linear structure, and the European use of editing, sound, and presentation was not conventional in comparison to American filmmaking. To those audiences, Lucky Luciano was a confused mess, and did not enjoy box office success in the states. But, in fact, it is a brutal, exciting, and compelling crime docudrama that investigates the crime-driven machine in which Luciano operates. Norman Mailer called the film, "the finest movie yet made about the Mafia, the most careful, the most thoughtful, the truest and most sensitive to the paradoxes of a society of crime.”

Kino Lorber’s blu ray is a 4K restoration from the original camera negative, so its image is sharp and clear. It is fun to see American actors like Edmund O’Brien, Vincent Gardenia, and Rod Steiger dotting the cast, while Gian Maria Volonte is magnificent in the title role, and director Rosi shows a real authenticity for the different periods the film covers.

The blu ray also provides a commentary track by the always reliable Simon Abrams, who provides us with background on the film, and on Luciano himself, and some discussion of the movie’s overall significance in the career of director Rosi. It is informative and interesting.

The blu ray can be ordered here: LUCIANO