It’s the summer of ‘51, in New York, and it’s the time of a famous trial against a large group of Italian Americans, are accused of being gangsters. The court decides to send them back to Italy, branding them as “undesirables”: 120 of them were put on a boat which reaches the port of Genoa after 2 weeks. Waiting for them on the pier, along with the other journalists, photographers and curious bystanders, is the reporter from the publication “Secolo XIX”, Giancarlo Fusco.
He’s been asked to write a short article for the paper about the undesirables. He interviews them and he recognises that amongst them is his old university friend, the anarchist Ezio Taddei.
He becomes curious about these strange characters and so Fusco decides to start his own investigation. He meets one of them in Palermo: Lily Valentino who starts to tell his story after a brief moment of hesitation, from how he became a gangster to the life he led in New York. Then it’s the turn of Lu Grisafi: he was a ruthless gangster but who's now reduced to dark misery, in contrast to Saver Li Fonzi who lives in a deluxe hotel in Naples along with his wife, who’s a deaf-mute.
In the end it will be his old friend Taddei who explains the reason why he found himself in the middle of those small-time, third rate gangsters.
From the book of the same name by Giancarlo Fusco.