Ferrara's The Funeral feels like a riposte to Coppola's Godfather. Socialist mafia battles with capital. Socialist mafia goes anti-catholic in speakeasies and whorehouses. But mafia is mafia and no matter your politics or your licentiousness, family is going to family and the villains are going to do the dirty. In truth, at a hundred minutes, it feels as though Ferrara needed at least twice the running time to tease out all the angles his story opens up. Three brothers all have their stories to be told, the narrative has to skip backwards and forwards in time, and the female characters, played by Sciorra, Rosselini and Mol are given greater protagonism than any, apart from Keaton, in Coppola's version. This is all great, and Gallo shows what a star he might have been, but ultimately the film is always chasing the narrative's tail. Nevertheless, it's an absorbing piece of filmmaking, a worthy and undervalued addendum to the Italo-American lexicon of mafia movie making.
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