Rocco und seine Brüder

This is perhaps Visconti's most powerful work, though today it may seem a little overwrought and dated.

"Rocco e sui fratelli" from 1960 is about a rural family (Katina Paxinou as Rosaria, Alain Delon as Rocco, Renato Salvatori as Simone, Spiros Focás as Vincenzo, Max Cartier as Ciro and Rocco Vidolazzi as Luca) who move from southern Italy to Milano, hoping to make a better life for themselves.

The brothers are all different, and therein lies the story, with the focus particularly on Rocco (Delon), a gentle soul who cares about his family and his family's honor, and Simone (Salvatori), a man with an addictive personality who only cares about himself.

Both Rocco and Simone fall for the same woman, a hooker (Anne Girardot) and come to blows - physically, since both Simone and Rocco train as boxers.

This isn't always an easy film to watch as it contains violence, rape, and murder. It also is extremely melodramatic by today's standards, with Paxinou's strong performance as the mother perhaps being viewed today as over the top. Acting styles have changed.

It's also a rather misogynistic film - well, it is Italy, it is another time period, and I'm not one who believes in cancel culture. It is also overly long - I saw the cut version, I believe, 168 minutes. I think certain scenes were cut due to censorship.

Though the film is in black and white, the look of Italy is amazing and expansive, as is the acting, particularly from Delon and Salvatori as they come up against one another in a biblical story. Claudia Cardinale pre-nosejob has a small role.

Delon, of course, is gorgeous. Hard to believe he'll be 85 this year.

Although the French Nouvelle Vague gets all the press, it is the Italian neorealist movement that has had the greatest impact on American cinema. Let's face it, aside from some of Godard's editing tricks in Breathless, what kind of influence did the Nouvelle Vague really have? Godard. Truffaut. Chabrol. Rohmer. Rivette. Resnais. Decent filmmakers all, but, when one looks closely, more interesting for their influences than for their influence. But the Italians, oh, the Italians. Bava. Fellini. Rossellini. De Sica. Bertolucci. Visconti. I think it is safe to say that, without the films of these incredible innovators, American movies would have rotted away into nothing. It was the post WWII Italian neorealist movement, and its heady brew of Marxism and melodrama, that inflamed the imaginations of filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, and led them, especially in Coppola's case, to use many of the same personnel on their own productions. Vittorio Storaro. Giuseppe Rotunno. Nino Rota. Ferdinando Scarfiotti. Danilo Donati. Where would the great American films of the seventies be without the contributions of these astoundingly talented artists and technicians?

Rocco and His Brothers is a jaw-dropping work, so ferociously brilliant that it takes your breath away. As a Visconti fan, I have been waiting to watch it for years. Yet, despite my eagerness, the DVD sat on top of the television for two weeks before I finally popped it in. Curiously, I had the same reaction to The Leopard, another Visconti masterwork, a couple of years ago. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to abandon myself to a work of art. Great works of art force one to give oneself over to them completely, suspend judgment, accept them unconditionally. When one is young and unformed, the process is easy; as one gets older, and the carapace of personality hardens, the process becomes more difficult. There is a good reason for this; the effort is often not worth while; one comes out of the experience diminished, drained, let down.

Rocco and His Brothers holds no such disappointment. It is a vast, capacious work, complex, generous, passionate, and intensely moving. The talent on display here defies analysis: Alain Delon is luminous as the saintly Rocco; Katina Paxinou achieves Shakespearean grandeur as the Parondi family matriarch; Giuseppe Rotunno's cinematography is starkly beautiful; and Nino Rota's music is heartbreaking. I do not want to give too much of this film away, but I must point out that, contrary to what some reviews on this site have to say, this film is not just about the corruption that big city life brings to a peasant family. Rocco may be a saint, but his all-forgiving nature drives much of the tragedy that unfolds. It is Ciro, the compassionate but just brother, and successful entrant into Milan's urban proletariat, who will lead the family into an uncertain but perhaps hopeful future.

Let me just finish by pointing out how wonderful it is to see a movie that ends with a meaningful and distinctive final shot. You don't see much of that anymore.

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 Viscont1... 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..

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 :-)

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.