The Sicilian (1987)¶

At a glance¶

Directed by: Michael Cimino
Based on: The Sicilian by Mario Puzo (1984)
Starring: Christopher Lambert, Terence Stamp, Joss Ackland, John Turturro
Released: October 23, 1987 (US)
Runtime: 115 min (theatrical) · 146 min (director's cut)
Godfather content: None — removed for rights reasons

The strangest artifact in the franchise: an adaptation of an official Godfather sequel novel from which every trace of The Godfather had to be legally removed before it could be released.

The problem¶

Puzo's 1984 novel The Sicilian is framed as an interlude inside The Godfather: Michael Corleone, in his second year of Sicilian exile in 1950, is given one last job before he can go home — escort the bandit Salvatore Giuliano to America. The Giuliano story is the book; Michael is the frame.

Puzo's novel rights and Paramount's film rights to the Godfather characters were separate properties. When producers took The Sicilian to screen without Paramount, Michael Corleone came off the table — along with Clemenza and every other Corleone-adjacent element.

So the adaptation keeps the bandit and throws away the frame. What's left is a Salvatore Giuliano film with no connection to the saga at all, released with a title that promises one.

Plot¶

Sicily, 1943–1950. Salvatore Giuliano (Christopher Lambert), a young man from Montelepre, kills a carabiniere who catches him smuggling grain and takes to the mountains. He becomes a bandit and then something larger — redistributing seized land and grain to the peasantry, commanding genuine popular loyalty, and demanding Sicilian independence.

He is courted and used by everyone: the Mafia boss Don Croce Malo (Joss Ackland), the separatist movement, the landowning aristocracy, and the Christian Democrats in Rome. His cousin and lieutenant Aspanu Pisciotta (John Turturro) is turned against him. In 1950 he is shot dead, and the state announces a version of events that satisfies no one.

The real Giuliano's story ended the same way, and it remains one of the great unresolved cases in modern Italian history. See Real-World Mafia.

Production and reception¶

Michael Cimino was, in 1987, seven years past Heaven's Gate and still radioactive. The Sicilian was a European co-production with a difficult shoot and a familiar Cimino ending: the producers cut roughly half an hour, releasing a 115-minute version, and Cimino disowned it. A 146-minute director's cut later appeared on home video and is the only version worth seeking out — it's a slower, more coherent, considerably better film, and still not a good one.

Christopher Lambert — French-American, a year past Highlander — as a Sicilian folk hero was the casting decision that most reviewers led with. Terence Stamp, as an aristocratic prince, and John Turturro, in an early role, come off best.

It was a commercial and critical failure. It also drew a lawsuit from Gore Vidal, who had written a draft of the screenplay and disputed the credited attribution to Steve Shagan; the Writers Guild arbitrated in Shagan's favor.

Is it canon?¶

No, in any useful sense. Without Michael it has no connection to the Corleones; with Michael restored, the novel it's based on still sits uneasily against the 1972 film, which accounts for those same two years very differently. See Continuity.

For the Giuliano story itself, Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962) is the film to watch — a formally radical Italian docudrama that Martin Scorsese has repeatedly named among his favorite films, and which is superior to Cimino's version in every respect.