The Valachi Papers
6.8 /10 1 Votes
Director Terence Young Adapted from The Valachi Papers Language Italian
English | 6.6/10 Genre Crime, Drama Duration | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Release date November 3, 1972 Based on The Valachi Papers
by Peter Maas Writer Stephen Geller (screenplay), Peter Maas (novel) Music director Riz Ortolani, Armando Trovajoli Cast Charles Bronson (Joe Valachi), Lino Ventura (Vito Genovese), Jill Ireland (Maria Reina Valachi), Walter Chiari (Gap), Joseph Wiseman (Salvatore Maranzano)Similar movies Mad Max: Fury Road , Jurassic World , Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials , The Maze Runner , The Shawshank Redemption , Barbed Wire Dolls |
The valachi papers 1972
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.
Contents
- The valachi papers 1972
- Riz ortolani only you love from the valachi papers
- Plot
- Cast
- Production and editing
- Fact versus fiction
- Box office
- DVD
- The valachi papers 1972 thememusic
- References

Riz ortolani only you love from the valachi papers
Plot

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," whereupon Valachi kisses him back.

Valachi mistakenly kills a fellow prisoner whom 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.
Valachi's rise in the Mafia is hampered by his poor relations with his capo, Tony Bender (Guido Leontini). Bender is portrayed castrating a mobster for having relations with another mobster's wife. Valachi shoots the victim to put him out of his misery.
The mayhem and murder continue to the present, with Valachi shown testifying before a Senate committee. He is upset with having to testify and attempts suicide, but in the end (according to information superimposed on the screen) outlives Genovese, who dies in prison.
Cast
Production and editing
Poorly supervised production and editing of the released version shows a 1930s night street scene, 27 minutes into the film, in which numerous 1960s model cars are parked and drive by. In another scene depicted as occurring in the early 1930s, Valachi, eluding police pursuit, drives a car into the East River just north of the Brooklyn Bridge, where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center are clearly visible against the dawn sky; the Towers were only recently completed when the film was released in 1972.
Producer Dino de Laurentiis had to convince Charles Bronson to take the role of Joe Valachi. He reportedly turned it down at least twice before accepting it when he found out the character got to age from his late teens to early 60s.
Comparisons were made to The Godfather and that the film was just trying to cash in on its success. Bronson's opinion of Francis Ford Coppola's gangster epic, although he admired Marlon Brando's performance, was "The Godfather? That was the shittiest movie I've ever seen in my entire life."
Fact versus fiction
The film departed from the true story of Joseph Valachi, as recounted in the Peter Maas book, in a number of ways. Though using real names and depicting real events, the movie also contained numerous events that were fictionalized. Among them was the castration scene and the "I can only kill the living" Maranzano comment, which was widely ridiculed by critics.
Box office
The film earned rentals of $9.3 million.
DVD
The Valachi Papers was released on DVD on 3 January 2006 by Sony Pictures Home Video.
The valachi papers 1972 thememusic
References
The Valachi Papers WikipediaThe Valachi Papers IMDb The Valachi Papers themoviedb.org