Mob Movies Through the Years
It's not hard to understand Hollywood's love affair with Mafia mythology. The underworld offers all the trappings of a blockbuster movie: dangerous men with an insatiable appetite for power cavorting with glamorous girls, on the wrong side of the law.
The Sicilian Girl, released in 2010, is based on the life of Rita Atria, a Sicilian girl who left home at age 17 and joined the witness-protection program while testifying against the local mafiosi who killed her brother and father. She didn’t survive to trial, but her journals and pretrial testimony led to the arrests of dozens of gangsters. With a rose in her hand, the real Rita Atria jumped to her death a week after her protector, anti-mafia magistrate Paolo Borsellino, was murdered. Although many Sicilians consider her a hero, her mother regarded her as a traitor and smashed up her gravestone.
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