The swan song of neorealism
Author: stalker vogler from Xanadu
2 September 2007
The year 1960 was one of the most impressive in cinema history, at least for Europe. It is the year of The Virgin Spring, L'Aventura and the Godard debut A Bout de Soufflé. The latter movie signals the emergence of the French Nouvelle Vague, maybe more so than Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour or 400 Coupes released a year earlier. All these movies are different approaches to cinema, different in their intentions and outlook but similar in quality. (g laissé les tites fotes d'aurtaugraf...c trop mimi)
We are not dealing here with art-house movies. Pejorativelly used this term refers to movies nobody really likes because they're too odd to be understood. This art-house fever was especially contagious in European cinema. But, for at least two decades, that is the 50's and 60's, Europe came up with amazing movies, with interesting plots, great direction and cinematography and a great number of landmark actors.
Rocco e i suoi fratelli stars Alain Delon and Renato Salvatori in a story that combines drama, romance, and action surrounding a family that moves from the countryside in southern Italy to Milano where life is hard and challenging even for the toughest. The story will keep you glued to the screen in spite of its length of almost three hours. However I graded the movie only with an eight because I found some of the acting, and especially the title roles to be somewhat exaggerated. Maybe Visconti couldn't get the feeling of neorealism the same way as De Sica and he couldn't push from within it to a different direction as Fellini or Pasolini did.
At the beginning of the 60's the heydays of neorealism were gone. De Sica's La Ciociara was already beginning to show signs of fatigue. But the best of this movie lies in the direction and photography. It is here that Rocco manages to stand among that year's greatest. L'Aventura received a prize at Venezzia for cinematography, Nykvist created a truly magic scenery for Bergman's The Virgin Spring and A Bout de Soufflé was stunning in it's intelligent mockery of the 40's American noir movies.
With Visconti and more generally Italian cinema you are always in good hands, so there will always be something in these movies even though the whole may have some problems with the proportion between elements. The artistic eye of Visconti transforms the dull environment of the industrialized city into something that it almost becomes odd the characters don't stop whatever they're doing and enjoy the landscape.The movie also features a great score from Nino Rota, used very effectively by the director
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9 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Natural and accessible characterstudy: beautiful, not pretentious
Author: rogierr from Amsterdam, Netherlands
10 July 2001
I feel that this is just as much about his brothers as it is about Rocco. I don't even think Rocco is the key figure in the story. The film is constructed of five chapters in each of which the emphasis is more or less on one of the five brothers (Vincenzo Parondi, Simone, Rocco, Ciro, Luca). The chapter about the youngest brother contains remarks about about their attitude towards life and the philosophy for the future. But it never gets heavy-handed because everything is so natural and the whole is very accessible.
The story is about the struggle of a family from the south of Italy that moves to the city (in the first minute) and struggles with jealousy, wrath, regrets, confusion and citylife. But the most important element throughout the film are the bonds between the members of the family, which you guessed from the title ofcourse.
Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno (Amarcord, Regarding Henry, Il Gattopardo -> all three not comparable BTW) and the other makers of this film where not ambitious or pretentious while making this masterpiece: that would really have been besides the point they were making and unnecessary too, because the story and the pace don't need it and the cast is brilliant.
Some more references. The score was done by Nino Rota (Godfather, Amarcord, Il Gattopardo): the tune that helped making Godfather famous was already more or less completed here in 'Rocco'. The film might have been inspired by Ladri di biciclette (1948) and may in turn have been the inspiration for Raging Bull (1980), the Outsiders (Coppola, 1983) and even the Godfather, although 'Rocco' has nothing to do with neither mafia nor with America. In 1963 Delon, Cardinale (who has a very small role in 'Rocco') and Visconti would work together on Il Gattopardo. But 'Rocco' has to be Visconti's greatest! (besides Morte a Venezia, which is a TOTALLY different film BTW). Also see Hotel New Hampshire (1984).
10 points out of 10 :-)
