Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

There’s an old saying that every Italian director starts out like Rossellini and ends up like Visconti. After all, even Rossellini and Visconti did! What’s really fascinating is that you can reverse the order of the names in the first of those two lines and it works just as well. For those of you not already rolling on the floor with laughter, I’ll explain the point of the joke (with due apologies to those who already get it). Both Rossellini and Visconti started out doing low-budget, art films in the style of Italian Neo-realism (which was all the rage in the years immediately following World War II) but gradually transitioned, later in their careers, to making massive, melodramatic epics. Actually, I mentioned a similar kind of progression (regression ?) in a recent review of a film from China (The Emperor and the Assassin) for Chinese director Chen Kaige, so the notion is not really unique to Italy. I suppose that another way of looking at the phenomenon is that ambitious young directors often must initially make a name for themselves doing low-budget art films and only later get the opportunity to “sell out” for a shot at the limelight doing big-budget films with potential mass appeal.

Historical Background: Prior to working in films, Visconti had some experience directing theater and opera productions, and the latter in particular had given him a taste for grandiose spectacle and flagrant melodrama. When he turned to cinema, however, Visconti initially set aside such leanings. His debut film, Obsessione (1942), based on the James Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, had somewhat the flavor of film noir, but is also often cited as a harbinger of Neo-realism. After the war, Visconti allied himself with the Neo-realism movement, directing such films as La Terra Trema (1947) and Senso (1954). Despite his Marxist affiliation, Visconti was not by birth a man of the proletariat. He was born into an aristocratic family of Milan and his natural affinity for high culture was not to be long suppressed. For Visconti, Rocco and His Brothers (1960) is the film on the cusp, where he had yet to fully leave behind his cinematic roots in Neo-realism but had begun to succumb to his yearnings for grandeur and embellished melodrama. Rocco and His Brothers is, in effect, Neo-realism meeting up with Grand Opera! The film Rocco and His Brothers is a clash of opposing traditions just as Visconti himself was awash in paradoxes: Fascist turned Marxist, womanizer turned homosexual, and Neo-realist turned epic melodramaticist.

The Story: When Rosaria Parondi is widowed by the death of her husband, she moves her family from rural southern Italy to the bustling city of Milan, where her eldest boy, Vincenzo (Spiros Focás), resides. She is accompanied by her four younger sons, three of whom are young adults and the last still a boy. Vincenzo is engaged to Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale). Rosaria comes into immediate conflict with Ginetta’s mother since Rosaria expects Vincenzo to assume responsibility for her family, now that his father has died. The engagement between Vincenzo and Ginetta is disrupted accordingly.

The second eldest son, Simone (Renato Salvatori), quickly succumbs to the city’s temptations. He meets and falls in love with a young prostitute, Nadia (Annie Girardot). He is soon into petty thievery, stealing a shirt in order to look sporty for Nadia and, later, a brooch (from a woman he seduces) to give to Nadia. He takes up boxing for a local trainer in order to make quick money, but neglects his training in preference for smoking, drinking, and womanizing. After a few successes, he encounters a better boxer and throws in the towel, literally, to end the bout and, more generally, his career. Nadia leaves town delivering the kiss-off message to Simone through his brother Rocco.

Third son Rocco, the title character, is naïve and idealistic. He longs for the purity of the life left behind in southern Italy. He takes a job in a dry cleaners where the girls poke fun at his spacey innocence. Later, he is drafted into the army and near the end of his tour, he runs into Nadia, fresh from a stint in prison, in another city. Even Nadia’s deep melancholy and jaded cynicism is no match for Rocco’s youthful faith and optimism. The two fall in love and Nadia begins to reform, giving up prostitution and taking a job. When Nadia and Rocco continue seeing each other back in Milan, Simone gets wind of the relationship, setting the stage for disaster.

Fourth son Ciro (Max Cartier) is level-headed and practical. He attends night classes in order to get licensed as a mechanic and is soon working in the Alfa Romero plant, providing his mother with the family’s steadiest income. The youngest son of the family, Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi), is mostly an observer of his family’s travails. He hopes someday to return with brother Rocco to their old hometown.

The main conflict of the story emerges between the jealous and abusive Simone and the idealistic, kindly, and selfless Rocco. Simone and a bunch of his thuggish pals find Rocco with Nadia. It’s been two years since Simone was involved with Nadia, but Italian culture is sometimes extreme in matters of honor and jealousy. Simone rapes Nadia while Rocco is restrained by Simone’s buddies. Simone then forces Rocco into a fight, which Rocco refuses to engage in fully out of brotherly love. Rocco moves out of the family’s apartment and moves in with Vincenzo, who is now living with Ginetta. Rocco feels guilty for Simone’s downward spiral, imagining that he underestimated Simone’s love for Nadia. He instructs Nadia to go back to Simone, which she does only briefly, before being rousted by mama Rosaria in a dramatic scene for the two lead women. Later, Rocco pays off Simone’s large debt to a boxing impresario even though it means that he must sign a ten-year contract as a boxer himself. Rocco falsely believes that he can help Simone turn his life around by sacrificing himself, but Simone’s behavior simply becomes increasingly loutish. Simone tracks down Nadia once again for a final confrontation. Rocco becomes the toast of the town as he wins one bout after another. Simone shows up at a celebration of Rocco’s success – not to wish him well but hoping to be bailed out one more time.

Themes: The principal theme of Rocco and His Brothers is not essentially different than that of most films from the period in Italy when Neo-realism flourished. Tough economic times rip at the fabric of families. The strains of poverty and translocation have devastating effects on human dignity and cause people, in their desperation, to resort to crime, prostitution, or professions that pose a distinct risk to health, such as boxing or coal-mining. The drive for survival and the dream of rising out of poverty into the middle class can lead people into desperate choices.

Production Values: Rocco and His Brothers is a very high quality film with many strengths, but one substantial weakness that deprives it of masterpiece status. One of its great strengths is the rich tableau of black-and-white images of postwar Italy. The settings and cinematography are each fully characteristic of Neo-realism. The poignant photography was the work of Giuseppe Rotunno, who was also responsible for such films as Amarcord (1947) and Il Gattopardo. Viewers are treated to slow pans of crowded tenements, gymnasiums, and the rowdy streets of Milan’s poor neighborhoods. Sexuality and crime are treated with a characteristic Euro-frankness. The musical score by Nino Rota is highly evocative and sublime. Rota later provided the musical score for the Godfather films.

Structurally, Rocco and His Brothers provides one chapter per brother, starting with the oldest one and working down to the youngest. In reality, the two central characters are Rocco and Simone, while the other brothers are really only supporting cast. The one major problem with the film, unfortunately, lies at its very core – in the central Goofus versus Gallant conflict between the unprincipled and opportunistic Simone and the saintly, selfless Rocco. Both are presented as virtually one-trait characters (or one-trick ponies) whose actions are predicated entirely on the basis of their role in the script. It is all too simplistic and viewers are left wanting to shake both out of their narrowly predictable behaviors. It is obvious that Rocco’s self-sacrificial choices will not save his brother, as Rocco intends. It is equally obvious that Simone’s choices put him on a course for self-annihilation. It is difficult to feel true empathy for characters whose every behavior is idiotically motivated by a single disposition. We can only passively watch as the two flagellate themselves seemingly without mercy. The three more peripheral brothers (as well as the various females) are actually more credible characters because they are drawn with more varied shadings.

The performances are of a high quality throughout. Alain Delon, who played Rocco, was an exceptionally handsome French actor. His voice had to be dubbed in but I didn’t notice it while viewing the film. Delon had later roles in The Leopard (1963), Is Paris Buring? (1966), and Le Samourai (1967). Renato Salvatori was highly convincing as the apish Simone. His other works included Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958), Two Women (1960), The Organizer (1964), Z (1969), and State of Siege (1972). Ebullient Greek actress Katina Paxinou was simply brilliant as the matriarch of the family. Her resume includes For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and Prince of Foxes (1949). Annie Girardot had perhaps the most complex character, as Nadia, and provided a highly nuanced performance. She later appeared in The Organizers (1964). Claudia Cardinale had the relatively small part of Ginetta, but went on to have a long career, appearing in such films as The Leopard (1963), 8 ½ (1963), The Pink Panther (1964), Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and A Man in Love (1987). Spiros Focás, who played Vincenzo, later appeared in The Jewel of the Nile (1985).

Bottom-Line: This atmospheric Italian tale served as something of an inspiration for many later films, such as The Godfather and Raging Bull. Coppola even hired the same composer, Nino Rota, for the musical score for the Godfather series of films. At the core of Rocco and his Brothers is a melodrama of fraternal envy and jealousy, complete with fist fights, rape, murder, cat fights, heartbreak, and tragedy. Near perfect in all of its incidental features (settings, imagery, performances, and dialog), it falls short only in its core conflict, offering little more than an archetypal conflict between uni-dimensional characters in overblown emotional terms.

The DVD version of Rocco and His Brothers restores scenes that were previously cut by Italian and American censors, resulting in a length of 174 minutes. Even at almost three hours, there’s not a dull moment. The restored scenes include the two most violent ones, which, as it happens, are integral to the full significance of the film. It is ironic that one of the issues cited by Italian censors was “an inopportune resemblance to reality” – virtually a definitional quality of Neo-realism. The digital transfer was made from a high quality print, resulting in a presentation largely free of debris or defects. Rocco and His Brothers is in Italian with English subtitles. I highly recommend it. It’s not as great as The Godfather (is any other film?), but at least it’s cut from the same cloth.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Italy:

Amarcord
L’Avventura
The Bicycle Thief
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Cinema Paradiso
The Conformist
Death in Venice
Divorce Italian Style
The Dreamers
Eclipse
8 ½
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
General della Rovere
The Last Emperor
The Leopard
Life is Beautiful
Malèna
Mamma Roma
Miracle in Milan
The Night of the Shooting Stars
Nights of Cabiria
La Notte
Padre Padrone
Il Postino
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Shoeshine
The Son’s Room
The Spider's Stratagem
Star Maker
Swept Away
Teorema
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Umberto D.

Recommended: Yes

Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age