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The Valachi Papers

The Valachi Papers
The Valachi Papers.jpg
Directed by Terence Young
Produced by Dino De Laurentiis
Screenplay by Stephen Geller
Massimo De Rita
Arduino Maiuri
Based on The Valachi Papers
by Peter Maas
Starring Charles Bronson
Lino Ventura
Jill Ireland
Walter Chiari
Joseph Wiseman
Music by Riz Ortolani
Cinematography Aldo Tonti
Edited by Johnny Dwyre
Monica Finzi
Production
company
Distributed by S.N. Prodis (France)
Columbia Pictures (USA)
Release date
6 January 1972 (France)
3 November 1972 (USA)
Running time
125 minutes
Language Italian
English
Box office

$17,106,087
$8,382,000 (rentals)


$17,106,087
$8,382,000 (rentals)

The Valachi Papers is a 1972 crime movie starring Charles Bronson and Lino Ventura and directed by Terence Young. Adapted from the book The Valachi Papers (1969) by Peter Maas, it tells the true story of Joseph Valachi, a Mafia informant in the early 1960s. The film was produced in Italy, with many scenes dubbed into English.

The movie begins in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where an aging prisoner named Joseph Valachi (Charles Bronson) is imprisoned for smuggling heroin. The boss of his crime family, Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura), is imprisoned there as well. Genovese is certain that Valachi is an informant, and gives him the "kiss of death." Valachi kisses him back.

Valachi mistakenly kills a fellow prisoner who he wrongly thinks is a mob assassin. Told of the mistake by federal agents, Valachi becomes an informant, mistakenly recognized as the first in the history of the American mafia. He tells his life story in flashbacks.

The movie traces Valachi from a young punk to a gangster associating with bosses like Salvatore Maranzano (Joseph Wiseman). Maranzano tells a mourner at a funeral, "I cannot bring back the dead. I can only kill the living." Valachi marries a boss's daughter, played by Bronson's real-life wife Jill Ireland.


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