A GREAT FILM from ITALY (1960)

Author: olddiscs from Fords, NJ
23 February 2002
This is a great Italian film directed by Visconti, which somehow escaped me until tonite 2/22/02.. I had heard about it and the praise it received at that time, (1960) but just never got to see it. I was seeing Foreign films at that time, I remember seeing La Dolce Vita, The Virgin Spring, and Hiroshima Mon Amour at our local foreign movie theatre in Essex County , The Ormont in East Orange.. long gone.. but missed this. Well, thanks to TCM, Ive had another sleepless night & have just seen a truly great Italian movie/ or great movie,period!!..

What a saga ! what passion, what emotion !! The story of a southern Italian peasant family's journey and relocation to the big city... is just superb film making..The deterioration of the brothers relationship is almost pure GreeK Tragedy (there is a glimmer of hope with the youngest brother)...superbly acted especially by Renato Salvatori, as Simon, the most troubled of all the fratelli, and young, beautiful, Alain Delon as the younger brother Rocco who desperately tries to save his brother from destruction; and Annie Giradot, as Nadia the prostitute who adds to this families woes is just sensational in a role that should have won her all kinds of trophies.

It was no mistake that Visconti used Greek Oscar winning actress, Katina Paxinou, in the role of an Italian mother( instead of say, Anna Magnani ?), her performance brings to mind all the heroines of Sophocles & Aesculus... yes tragedy and emotion of epic proportions..played to the nth degree... beautiful cast excellently directed... by Visconti... thanks to TCM Im catching up on his great movies "SENSO" a few months back and now "Rocco" this is a treat.. also in cast a very young beautiful Claudia Cardinale as Ginetta.. This is film making at its best..dont miss it.. to be seen again and again..

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31 out of 38 people found the following review useful:

An astonishing work of almost religious intensity

Author: Frederick from London, England
22 April 2003
I was lucky enough to catch this extraordinary film late last night on a cable channel. It's about a widow from southern Italy who moves to Milan with her five sons. Gradually they become embroiled in the big city, some becoming corrupted by its ways, others profiting. Rocco, played by Alain Delon, is an innocent, looking at his brothers and life in general with saintly patience. When his beneficent attitude comes under pressure, he doesn't give in to self-interest, choosing to sacrifice his own happiness, and that of the woman he loves, for his family.

Family is really what 'Rocco and his Brothers' is all about. I've never got into Visconti, but seeing this film has made me want to see more of his work. Also, this move has one of the most powerful images I've ever seen, as the maddened Simone advances towards the doomed prostitute Nadia. It's an image so remarkable I actually shouted aloud when I saw it. I urge you to see this film. It's a remarkable, passionate, beautifully photographed drama that will stay with you for a long time.

Renato Salvatori shines in Visconti's masterpiece

Author: Audun Bråten (braugen@hotmail.com) from Oslo, Norway
2 April 2003
The Italian master Luchino Visconti's 1960 (melo)drama "Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli" is the best film I've seen in a long, long time, and it deserves to be up there among European cinema's finest achievements, along with Visconti's other masterpiece, "Il Gattopardo" (1963).

Aristocrat turned communist, Visconti draws a beautiful, but horrible picture of Milan in the 1960s, when the "immigration" from the South was at its peek, and the social problems in Northern Italy exploded. The differences between north and south in Italy are enormous, and were perhaps even greater back when Visconti and his scriptwriting crew decided to make a contemporary film about a family moving northwards. Visconti wanted to make a film about a mother and her five sons, like the five fingers on her hand, like the mother herself exclaimes at the end of the film. This is not an agitational film, though, just a superbly acted study of a society in disorder and a portrait of a family trying to make ends meet in a harsh world they do not know.

Like another Italian director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, noted, the South of Italy stayed an undeveloped land even after the North became industrialized, and that didn't happen before after WWII. This is the grim truth, and the person who thought this film was depressing should just stay on his or her pills and turn his or her eyes towards the real world, because the world IS a depressing place. You just cannot blame directors with a social conscience for trying to tell a story which lies close to their hearts, then you should stay away from film criticism and criticize the world instead. I am so tired of that.

Renato Salvatori makes a performance of a lifetime as the troubled brother Simone, while Alain Delon stays calm and controlled as Rocco, the protagonist, if there is one. Boxing is used as a metaphor for the anger the young men feel, but when Simone fails, Rocco succeeds by fueling his fighting with the contempt for his brother's actions. The two brothers are torn between the beautiful prostitute Nadia, whom they both love passionately, but she only loves Rocco- and that almost breaks the family.

The other brothers are more supporting characters, and even though the film is long it should have been even longer- the second youngest brother, Ciro, is an interesting and morally strong character that I would have loved to see developed further. The pride, ignorance, hatred, loyalty and love of these people are held together by a perfect script by Visconti and his four collaborators, and cinema's finest cinematographer, Guiseppe Rotunno, moves his camera magnificently through the streets, houses, and locales of a growing, but morally decaying Milan.This is cinematic perfection.

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19 out of 22 people found the following review useful:

stunning neorrealism

Author: Bocio from Buenos Aires, Argentina
6 June 2000
Visconti at his peak. We are in the fifties, when Italian economy experiences a post-war boom. A Sicilian family arrives to Milan running from south's poverty. They dream with a new life at the industrial pole of the north. But Milan is not precisely a land of opportunities. Exploitation and xenophobia is the common destiny for those who came from south of the country. This film is a perfect sequel to "La Terra Tembla", one of the earliest Visconti's looks on Marxism. The hopes and lives of this five brother's family sink onto a pit at the same time as they destroy themselves.

"Rocco and ..." is intensely played by the entire cast, including a young and delicate Alain Delon as the idealistic Rocco, an exquisite Annie Girardot as a prostitute trying to survive to her own hell and a terrific Renato Salvatori. But is the figure of the peasant mother, played superbly by Katina Paxinou, the most remarkable piece of this operatic story. Claudia Cardinale made some kind of Italian debut in this film. Nino Rota composes his most pitiful score and the black and white photography is stunning. The scene at the rooftop of Milan's Duomo is one of my all-time favorites. The American version is usually cut so try to find the original or some DVD restoration. A must see film.

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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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 :-)

*

Trivia
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-Most of the dialogue is overdubbed by other actors than the ones seen on screen. This is very apparent if you watch carefully at the lip sync, which can deviate wildly from the actual dialogue. The voice actors are all uncredited in the actual film.
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-Milan's council withdrew permission to stage a murder scene in a popular tourist spot. They subsequently banned the film despite even after 45 minutes of questionable material had been removed.
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-Renato Salvatori and Annie Girardot became lovers in real life.
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-Filming was highly problematic, as Luchino Visconti found himself continually denied promised permits, and was forced to shoot in unsuitable locations. To add insult to injury, he was forced to make some deep cuts to his finished film.
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-When it was first released in the US in 1961, about half an hour of footage was cut out as it was deemed to be too violent for American audiences.(? on croit rêver !!)
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-Frenchman Alain Delon was dubbed.
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-Francis Ford Coppola was such a big fan of this film that he hired its composer, Nino Rota, to score his 1972 masterwork, Le parrain.
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-Despite the censorship problems - or perhaps because of them - the film was a big commercial success in its native Italy.
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The 13 onscreen stabbings in the European cut of the film were whittled down to just 3 for the American version.