The Brotherhood (1968 film)

The Brotherhood

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Martin Ritt
Written by Lewis John Carlino
Starring Kirk Douglas
Alex Cord
Irene Papas
Luther Adler
Music by Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography Frank Bracht
Edited by Boris Kaufman
Production
company
The Brotherhood Company
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release dates
  • December 1968 (1968-12)
Running time
 96 minutes
Country United States
Language English

The Brotherhood is a 1968 Technicolor crime drama film, directed by Martin Ritt. It stars, veteran of Film noir, Kirk Douglas, Irene Papas, Alex Cord, and Luther Adler. The script was by Lewis John Carlino. Released by Paramount Pictures, the film bombed at the box office, with Paramount deciding not to do another gangster film until it made The Godfather four years later.

Plot

A young American man arrives in Palermo by plane. A taxi driver at the airport immediately gets word to Frank Ginetta (Kirk Douglas), who hides, armed with a gun, until he realizes that the visitor he's been warned about is actually his kid brother, Vinnie (Alex Cord).

Frank happily welcomes his brother and takes him home, catching up on old times. But his wife, Ida (Irene Papas), reminds him that "they're going to send someone," suggesting that perhaps Vinnie is the one.

In a flashback, Frank recalls better times in New York, beginning with Vinnie's homecoming from military service and subsequent marriage to Emma Bertolo. The father of the bride, (Susan Strasberg), Dominic Bertolo is a Mafia don, as is the groom's brother, Frank. And among those paying their respects as guests at the wedding are mob leaders like Egan (Murray Hamilton), Rotherman (Val Avery) and Levin (Alan Hewitt), who are the equals of Frank and Dominick (Luther Adler) in the New York region's organized crime.

These capos within the Organization take coordinated actions at a personal meeting called in a business manner, "The board", and in which the majority becomes increasingly unhappy with Frank's position, as he seems opposed to every new idea but also making him aware that his observations on the weak points of those schemes are not responded. Frank also dispenses justice on his own in the old Sicilian fashion, without seeking approval from the others who not being of Sicilian origin are trying to distance themselves of the old traditional methods, as when two of his hit-men kill a stool pigeon in the marshes, tying him to a chair with a canary stuffed in his mouth -as a warning to others about those who talk too much.

Frank still fondly remembers his father, who also was a Mafioso before someone placed a hit on him ordering his death. Vinnie is more of a businessman and takes sides with the other board members in ventures they intend to pursue without his brother. Frank resents this, striking Vinnie for defying him and insisting to the board that Vinnie will have no part in what they have planned.

Older, no longer consulted members of the organization make it clear to Frank that it was Dom Bertolo who made it possible for outsiders to spot and find members of their Mafia family, and as results of his informing 41 of their Italian brethren were killed, Frank's father included. Bertolo had taken sides outside of The family 35 years earlier with Irish and Jewish outsiders, who wanted to get in the Mafia and by doing so secure his own power in the larger expanded Outfit against the old timer Mustache Pete's like Frank's father. Demanded by the older capos and their families of those dead, and the Mafia Code of Honor to each other by which they came to exist and always operated, to satisfy an unpaid Vendetta he is deeply conflicted in what he must do as it involves his brother too, who has been taken under Dom Bertolo's wing as son in law, although it was his own older brother who became the Pater familias years before. When it becomes clear to him that the board has been using his own unaware brother all along, planning to replace him and run a similar fate for him, Frank takes an irreversible last action. He pretends to reconcile with Dominick for past differences and offers to submit his family to the new deal, when in reality he is taking him to a deserted warehouse in the Upper West side along the Hudson river to be executed and making him aware of why and from whom before doing it, but his father's old mate collapses out of fear and heart failure when he realizes who are the old names read to him coming to confront him for his Past cowardice and betrayal.

Frank hides out in Sicily, but knows his days are numbered and a hit placed on him from all sides within the Board. Realizing that it is Vinnie himself who has been forced cowardly and under threats by Egan to do the job of killing his feared own brother, Frank bitterly accepts such insulting fate in the hope that it will save his brother's life and family back in America. Although he could have dispatched within Sicily and surrounded by loyal family any enemy sent to him included his own brother, Vinnie realizes at last that he had been played like a puppet all along against his well meaning brother who in order to protect him lays his life for his, handling Vinnie their father's shotgun with which to shoot him. The only undoing of The Family could never come from outside, but from within by treason.

Cast

See also

References

    External links

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