Will They Be Able To Call Off Luca Brasi?

"Michael: You took Freddie in because the Corleone Family bankrolled your casino, and the Molinari Family on the Coast guaranteed his safety. Now we're talking business, let's talk business.

Moe Greene: Yeah, let's talk business, Mike. First of all, you're all done. The Corleone Family don't even have that kind of muscle anymore. The Godfather's sick, right? You're getting chased out of New York by Barzini and the other Families. What do you think is going on here? You think you can come to my hotel and take over? I talked to Barzini - I can make a deal with him, and still keep my hotel!"

From 'The Godfather'

It remains to be seen if cocktail waitresses are getting banged "two at a time", or anyone gets slapped around for it, in the budding "Mob Museum War" getting ready to erupt in Las Vegas.

Vegas Mob Museums, Set to Go to the Mattresses

LAS VEGAS — The people of Chicago debate the Cubs versus the White Sox. In Philadelphia, the cheese steak purveyors Pat’s and Geno’s have long divided the citizenry. Soon, the residents of Las Vegas — and the millions of people who visit — will be able to argue over which museum best depicts the moral turpitude of organized crime.

[snip]

The idea for the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement was seeded when the city bought the 1933 federal courthouse and post office from the federal government for $1 in 2002, with the strict understanding that the building — one of the oldest in Southern Nevada — be used for cultural purposes.

For much of the middle of the last century, organized crime ruled the Strip, developing and managing an array of casinos, skimming their way to success. Federal prosecutors put an end to their reign in the 1980s. The city determined its historical relationship to organized crime — and the role the courthouse played in it — made the site a perfect fit. “It came from the soil of this building,” said Nancy Deaner, the city’s cultural affairs manager.

[snip]

The museum will have three stories and nearly 17,000 square feet of exhibits, including an interactive courtroom in which visitors can get finger printed. It will also include the brick wall from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (it was removed brick by brick and put in storage but will be constructed, bullet marks and all, Ms. Deaner said), roughly 700 objects and extensive exhibits on law enforcement efforts against the Mafia.

[snip]

The Mob Experience would include theme park-style exhibits, including one called “Final Fate” in which a visitor “gets made or gets whacked,” according to the description.

Color this idiotic ...

There are a great many things, in the history of our nation, that a city, or area, is infamous for, or holds a dubious title.

Does this signal, say, for Detroit, a city if there is one that needs an economic transplant, should look to building a "Devil's Night" museum?

They can have their "theme park-style exhibits", include getting egged, shot, or, perhaps, having the visitors' house burned down.

Besides, doesn't the History Channel own everything that has to do with The Mob?

I don't know ...

"Even Sonny won't be able to call off Luca Brasi."

Rififi Director, Jules Dassin, Blacklisted, Dies at 96

I may have only paid glancing notice to this obit, based on the element of it being a blacklisted director.

But the name, "Jules Dassin" carried my full attention to it, for Dassin made, IMHO (and a a lot of others) the greatest crime caper film of all time.

Jules Dassin directed "Rififi".














Rififi is classic Film Noir, tense, pulsating and with an unbelievable nerve-shattering segment of the heist.

Jules Dassin, 96; blacklisted director was master of film noir

Mr. Dassin, considered one of the leading American filmmakers of the postwar era, directed his most influential film, "Rififi," while living in France after being blacklisted as a communist in the early 1950s. "Rififi" earned him a best director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955. Turan noted that "Rififi's" influence "is hard to overstate." The critic wrote that one section of the film is "a model of tension and precision." In the sequence, Mr. Dassin spends "a full 30 minutes on the actual robbery, a completely wordless half-hour (though it makes good use of sound effects) that racks the nerves and provides a master class in breaking and entering, as well as filmmaking."

From Wikipedia;

Rififi is based on a novel by Auguste le Breton; le Breton assisted in adapting it to film. However, Dassin expanded the safe-cracking job, which is negligible in the book, into a 32-minute sequence that occupies a fourth of the running time and is played entirely without dialogue or music, intensifying the suspense. So meticulous is the construction and so specific the detail of this scene that the Mexican interior ministry banned the movie because there were a series of robberies mimicking it.

From an essay, by James Hook;

And yet, even in a film of such generous superlatives, something does stand out, towering over it all. For Rififi is that most hallowed of films, a film that contains a monument within. Like the Grand Hall ball in The Magnificent Ambersons or the pickpocketing sequence in Pickpocket or the crop-duster chase in North by Northwest, the virtually silent, gleefully long heist scene at the center of Rififi is a tingling, ecstatic, sustained act of brilliance—a sacrament of the cinema. For an astounding 33 minutes, Dassin removes all dialogue, hushing the soundtrack to the mere sounds of breath—the accidental note from a piano is enough to stop your heart—as we observe the criminal team at work, breaking through the floor, silencing alarms, cracking safes, checking watches, and signaling each other. It is a scene you’ve seen before (shameless imitators have been cannibalizing it for decades), but you will never see it so purely, respectfully done as here.

Rififi (1954) Roger Ebert / September 1, 2002


I highly recommend, the next film rental you make, or purchase, check out Rififi, you will not, repeat, you will not be disappointed.