When The Godfather dropped in 1972, it completely re-shaped the way the Italian mafia was presented and perceived. Francis Ford Coppola saw himself and his family reflected in the Corleone family and ‘family’, and so the Mob became another immigrant-led family business struggling for purchase in America, the morally upstanding older generation ceding ground to a younger crew that tore apart organizations in their drive to control them. The Godfather became the definitive depiction of organized crime.
And clearly this pissed some people off.
Ralph Bakshi, for example, took extreme umbrage with what he saw as Coppola’s romanticizing of professional murderers and thugs. Coonskin, Bakshi’s animated racial/cultural satire (which remains every bit as confrontational and shocking in 2017 as you would imagine from a film called fucking Coonskin), confronted this directly. Bakshi painted in grotesque caricature, and much of that material continues to carry an ugly charge.
If John Huston’s contempt for this particular subset of criminals didn’t burn as white hot as Bakshi, he still retained a palpable disgust for this world, a disgust that manifested in a poison pill of a love story, Prizzi’s Honor, new to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.
At the center of this maelstrom is Jack Nicholson as Charley Partanna, a professional killer for the Prizzi family. Charley was quite literally born into this life, with the Don himself (William Hickey) presiding over his birth. Over the years, the Prizzi family and ‘family’ have been constants in Charley’s life, a hand constantly on his shoulder guiding him towards a destiny as a blunt instrument for their agenda. One of the things that enabled Nicholson’s rise as a movie star is how riveting it is to simply watch him think, the synaptic firings clear in his eyes as he puzzles or schemes or rages. That light is dimmed out in Prizzi’s Honor. Charley’s a bit of a dipshit, with Nicholson’s half-lidded eyes and ample belly conveying a man who has opted for a hollow existence, figuring that life is easier with someone else’s hand on the steering wheel.
But there’s a girl. Of course there is. There’s always a girl. Her name is Irene, she’s played by Kathleen Turner, and from the moment Charley sets eyes on her while at a wedding, that’s ballgame. He must have this woman, and he’s the kind of guy with the resources to make that happen. He tracks her down and right away their connection is a tangible, physical need.
A few things quickly begin to go wrong though: For one, it turns out that Irene is not a tax consultant like she first claimed. Nope, turns out she’s in the same line of work as Charley, an “outside contractor” with very few scruples about who she will or won’t kill. And as if that wasn’t enough, Irene’s already mixed up in Prizzi business a few different ways, and her pathological lies to Charley and everyone else around her only confuse the issues even more, and things begin to escalate very quickly.
Even with all these sharks circling for blood, there might still have been a chance for things to work, but for one fly-in-the-ointment. That would be Angelica Huston in her Oscar-winning performance as Maerose Prizzi. Maerose was in a relationship with Charley for years, but when things went south she ran off with another man. The shame of it resulted in her exile from the family, her own father calling her a whore when she approaches him at a family gathering. With the romance between Charley and Irene, Maerose sees a way back into the family, and she starts making moves. If there’s one major flaw to Prizzi’s Honor, it’s that Maerose is too fascinating a creation to be relegated to a supporting role. Huston stalks the edges of the movie like an angry ghost, searching for the crack that she can use. Out of all the people in this world, Maerose, from her perch on the outside looking in, is the only one who can see clearly that all the talk of honor and loyalty is a shoddy covering over rotten foundations, and the knowledge gives her a power unlike anyone else, especially poor, dumb Charley.
Prizzi’s Honor is generally classified as a comedy, and there are indeed a pretty steady string of zingers and double-takes. It’s a funny movie. But it’s also a mean movie, a cruel movie, and, at heart, a deeply angry movie. For all the talk in the Prizzi family of honor and loyalty, once the cash-flow comes under siege it turns into open season. The film’s final punchline is a sick parody of romantic destiny, a subdued phone call that packs a colossal wallop.
Prizzi’s Honor has had kind of a weird history. Initially dumped by its studio, it became a surprising sleeper success and awards contender. The film, as well as John Huston and Jack Nicholson, picked up Oscar nominations, and Angelica Huston won for Best Supporting Actress. The film also hit big at the Golden Globes. And then…it just sort of disappeared. It happens, sure, but it’s odd that a film that brought this talent-pool together and was as successful would vanish. For a long time, it was apparently only available via a cruddy DVD transfer.
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray is probably about as good as this film could ever really look. There’s an unfortunate muddy quality to a lot of it that cannot be what cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak or Huston were aiming for. Bartkowiak (who went on to direct Romeo Must Die, Doom, and Cradle 2 the Grave) normally has a strong, sleek aesthetic, evident in films like The Verdict or Speed, but that’s necessarily evident on this film/disc.
I would say that is a minor hindrance to what’s otherwise a low-key charmer of a movie. If you’re a fan of Nicholson or gangster movies, Prizzi’s Honor is damn near a must-see. But be warned: this movie may wear a grin, but it’s got the knife just behind its back, ready to plunge at any moment.