Event

THE SICILIAN CONNECTION

(aka THE OPIUM CONNECTION, aka AFYON OPPIO)
Dir. Ferdinando Baldi, 1972
ITALY, 100 min.
English

Gazzara headed off to Italy (You go where they love you...) for a run of low budget B-movie productions in the 70s and 80s, sometimes speaking the Sicilian dialect he learned from his parents and other times being the only actor on set speaking English. THE SICILIAN CONNECTION is one of the best of these, released in the US just after Cassevetes' THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE. Gazzara's character "Joe" could be Cosmo Vittelli's Brooklyn cousin; both are small time dreamers with style, trying to make good in the American criminal underground. Joe's line is heroin, and lots of it, and he travels from Turkey to Sicily and back to New York again to try to make his big score. Plenty of fun is had along the way, and you get to see Gazzara in a wet suit.