The unwhackable appeal of mafia stories

Like the freemasons, or podcast fandoms, the mafia is an organisation rich in self-made myths. Oaths of silence, “made men”, consiglieri  – the rituals and traditions of the famous Italian crime syndicate have, through countless films and TV shows, become ingrained in our collective psyche. Some of the aesthetics may have changed a little since the days of pinstriped prohibition-era goons – the image of a narrow-eyed, sharply dressed racketeer has given way to the slovenly, tracksuit-wearing Tony Soprano type. The cliches, however, endure: the darkened rooms, the chomped cigars, horses’ heads, phrases like “getting whacked” and “sleeping with the fishes”.

The mobster movie had its roots in Old Hollywood, in films such as Howard Hawks’s Scarface (1932), Michael Curtiz’s Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), and later, Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953). Of course, none loom quite so large in the contemporary imagination as Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, based on the books by Mario Puzo; when laypeople discuss the Cosa Nostra, it is usually images from The Godfather (1972) and its sequels that lurk in the mind’s eye. Every mob movie that followed was, in some way, a response to The Godfather, either by tribute or opposition. Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) was a little of both, embracing some of the traditional mafia myths while dispelling others.  

Perhaps the third great milestone in modern mafia fiction arrived with The Sopranos. David Chase’s ground-breaking mob series, which ran for six seasons from 1999 to 2007, cut through the mystique of the mob, exposed their idiocies and weaknesses, made them human. In The Sopranos, the characters themselves have all seen The Godfather and Goodfellas – they share Pacino impressions, argue over the the film’s best sequence. This is bizarrely accurate: actual FBI wiretaps revealed that real-life mafiosos were avid viewers of the show, and would debate among themselves which characters seemed to be based on whom.

By the time Mafia was released, as a PC game in 2002, The Sopranos had already been airing for three seasons. A third-person action game set in the 1930s city of Lost Heaven (sort of a mish-mash of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles), Mafia was steeped up to its neck in cliche. Next to HBO’s boisterously subversive depiction of the American mob, Mafia seemed almost whimsically retrograde.  

But this hardly mattered. Its gameplay was solid, albeit largely unremarkable – mixing bursts of gun violence with long stretches in vehicles, Grand Theft Auto-style. Where Mafia really distinguished itself was its story, which focused on Tommy Angelo, a cab driver-turned-mob enforcer, who grafts his way into the Salieri crime family before eventually turning FBI snitch. Played today, a lot of the dialogue and characterisation seems a little ham-fisted, a crudeness only exacerbated by the ropey graphics and general turn-of-the-millennium technological feel. Still, Mafia was ahead of its time – maybe not a mob story for the ages, but perhaps the closest equivalent that gaming has seen.

Such was Mafia’s success that it was later followed by two sequels: 2010’s Mafia II, set after the Second World War and following an entirely different Italian-American hoodlum, and Mafia III, released in 2016. Mafia III deviated most from the traditional story format, centring its story on Vietnam war vet Lincoln Clay as he wreaks vengeance on the Italian-American mafia in New Orleans. Perhaps fittingly for a trilogy that began as an overt Godfather homage, the third entry was met with tepid disappointment.  

While the glory days of the mafia are now the better part of a century behind us, a certain fascination with their practices remains. Nearly 20 years on from the first game’s release, Mafia is being remade, as Mafia: Definitive Edition – a complete from-the-ground-up rebuild that updates the game’s graphics, gameplay and performances. Last year, Scorsese made his return to the subject matter with The Irishman – a three-and-a-half hour gangster epic that became one of the most-watched Netflix originals of all time (recent figures place it at 64 million views).

What is it that draws us to mob narratives? For one, it’s the violence, the sadistic, avaricious and often cunning ways in which man exercises his own inhumanity to man. This is an intrigue that The Sopranos understood well. Many’s the time New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano’s scholarly psychiatrist, Dr Melfi, found herself playing the role of armchair spectator, drawn into the twists and tensions of gang warfare from afar; many others, too, are seen living vicariously through other characters’ felonies. In a way, this was a writer’s critique of the show’s own audience, particularly of the subset of fans that became known as the “less yakking, more whacking” crowd.  

Sensationalistic mob violence is only part of the equation, however. In mafia narratives, we also find a probing discussion of family. The Sopranos fixates on this, but family is also at the core of The Godfather. Unlike Goodfellas’ Henry Hill, for whom the mafia presents a welcoming sense of camaraderie and escape from his biological family and abusive father, the Corleone crime family blurs all sorts of lines between blood and business. Jonathan Demme’s 1988 comedy Married to the Mob is one of a few works that exploit the comedy inherent in the contrast between these two types of family.

In many ways, the idea of the mafia is the perfect subject matter for a society that increasingly turns towards a nostalgic, semi-imagined past. “It's good to be in something from the ground floor,” laments James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano, in one of the show’s best-known lines. “I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” Of course, he’s right: the peak age of the mafia is long gone, diminished by FBI wiretaps and Rico indictments and rival crime organisations.

The sense of having arrived at the party too late, so to speak, is far from uniquely his, though. Goodfellas paints a picture of an organisation crumbling under FBI pressure and poisoned by the cocaine trade; it too is pining for a vague and unreachable heyday. It’s a mindset to which viewers today, facing a world imperilled by climate crisis and political despair, can surely relate.  

In 2020, some of the old mafia stereotypes seem laughably outdated. The image of well-dressed thugs wielding Tommy guns and switchblades seems strangely fantastical, like something out of an alternative reality. But some of the other cliches – about greed, and power, and fragile masculinity – remain as pertinent today as ever. The mob story isn’t ready for cement shoes just yet.

Mafia: Definitive Edition is out on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One now