Rocco e i suoi fratelli

Plot synopsis:
After the death of his father, Rocco Parondi (Alain Delon), one of the five sons of a poor rural Italian family travels north from Lucania to join his older brother Vincenzo in Milan, led by the matriarch Rosaria (Katina Paxinou). She is the "hand to which the five fingers belong" as she states in the film and she has a powerful influence on her sons. Presented in five distinct sections, the film weaves the story of the five brothers Vincenzo, Simone, Rocco, Ciro and Luca Parondi as each of them adapts to his new life in the city.
Vincenzo, the eldest brother, is already living in Milan when his mother and brothers come to join him expecting to move in with him. An initial scene ensues between the Parondi family and Vincenzo's fiancée Ginetta's family, and the whole Parondi family moves in together. Despite early friction between Rosaria and Ginetta, he soon gets married and starts a family of his own. After settling down, Vincenzo doesn't interact much with the Parondi brothers. Simone struggles to adapt to urban life, and the arrival of Nadia (Annie Girardot), a prostitute from Cremona will lead to his tragic downfall. She incites him to pursue a career in boxing as a fast way to reach fame and wealth, which his mother also encourages. After initially pursuing Vincenzo only to find him happy in his new family life, Nadia turns her interest to Simone. Simone falls in love with Nadia and demands for more than a casual relationship, but she rejects him.
Rocco, who left to complete military service in Turin, meets Nadia who has just been released from jail for prostitution charges. His innocence and purity of heart ignites her to give up her old life style and enter an exclusive relationship with him. Upon becoming aware of this, Simone attacks Nadia and Rocco with a gang of friends, culminating in the rape of Nadia by Simone. Rocco subsequently, in an act of sheer sacrifice, tells Nadia to go back to Simone realizing how much he had hurt his brother and how much he loved her, and she reluctantly complies. Somewhat in the manner of Dostoyevsky's Prince Myshkin character; Rocco often acts to preserve the well-being of family members at some cost to his own happiness. He saves Simone from a variety of disasters, such as when Rocco recovers and returns an expensive brooch that Simone had stolen from his boss in a dry cleaning shop. Ultimately, Simone loses the ability to compete as a boxer because of his obsession with Nadia, his alcoholism, and dissolute lifestyle. He kills her in a jealous fit of rage when she returns to prostitution.
Near the end of the film, Rocco shares an anecdote about stonemasons, who at the start of any building project, throw a stone into the shadow of a passerby in order to symbolize the sacrifice that is needed to erect a structure. Rocco's own habit of sacrificing his money and well-being can be likewise analogized as attempts to preserve his family after their upheaval from country life. Ciro is the second-youngest brother, and perhaps by observing the trials of his elder brothers, decides to learn from their mistakes and mimic his brother Vincenzo. To that end, Ciro becomes engaged to a local woman from a good family and finds steady work in the city at an automobile factory. However, unlike Vincenzo, Ciro participates in family matters, and at the end of the movie, he turns in Simone to the police for murdering Nadia. The youngest brother Luca does little but watch quietly in the background during much of the movie. Despite the fact that Luca had spent the least time in Southern Italy when the family moved to Milan, by the end of the film he is the only brother who wants to return to the country life. In one of the last scenes, Luca speaks to Ciro near a factory and tells him that he will return to the south even if none of the other brothers join him. He is represented as the hope for a more balanced idealised future in which the two worlds will merge in spite of their discrepancies.

Tags: romantic, violence, murder, storytelling, melodrama

Review:
The acting, design, music, cinematography, and especially direction are superb.This epic, grand, personal, and highly dramatic tale of five brothers and their mother who move from Southern Italy to Milan to change their station in life is filled with wonderful vignettes and powerful set pieces.The fight between two of the brothers in the slums of the city is one of the most harrowing and touching scenes ever in cinema history.
When they hit each other you feel it down to the core of your being, not just watching mindless brutality like you would in some brainless movie.The cast is uniformly good with standouts from Katina Paxinou as the long suffering mother, Annie Girardot as the doomed prostitute who is the catalyst of the story, and especially Alain Delon who is blessed with a cinematic beauty which adds poetry to everyone of his close-ups.
His gradual and completely believable change from sweet young man to violent brute is incredible to watch.This film satisfies every true movie lovers dream.
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.
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.
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.
Rocco, played by Alain Delon, is an innocent, looking at his brothers and life in general with saintly patience.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Let me consider some of its strongest points that I noticed while seeing the film.The most important thing that drew my attention in ROCCO E I SUOI FRATELLI was the wide range of life situations, themes and feelings which one can enumerate endlessly.
By analyzing the content and trying to identify with the characters (note that it is not "observing" the characters but "identifying" with them like in classic Greek tragedies), the viewers dive into life situations which, at the same time, can be present in their own experiences: family ties, unemployment, social status, honor, social pressure, plotting, crimes...are they not all up to date now as they were in 1960?
The first one is Rocco and Nadia on the top of Milanese cathedral where she opens her psyche to him and, at the same time, his reaction is like a great blow of individual reality affecting the mutual one: "We'll never meet again" The second moment is the scene when all the family except for Simone celebrate Rocco's championship in boxing.
A mention should be made of a minor role of Claudia Cardinale who plays Ginetta, Vincenzo's wife.ROCCO E I SUOI FRATELLI is a must see, a movie that everyone should watch profoundly addressing three levels of attention: first, a sole interest in Visconti being one of Neorealist directors aside DeSica, Rossellini and others; second, the artistic side including cinematography, direction, charm, performances; third, insight into both content and characters, their realistic complexity, humanity of life.
But at the same time Visconti through his caracters criticizes the poverty of Italian country, deconstructs the dream of a better life in the big city, and finally closes the film with a touch of optimism..
Often lauded as a landmark film of Italian neorealism with great influence on filmmakers to come, 'Rocco and His Brothers' tells the tale of four brothers who move with their widowed mother to Milan, joining their eldest brother who is already there, and now getting engaged.
Lastly, the film is misogynistic and therefore tough to watch, particularly in the second half.I hated not just the character of Simone (Renato Salvatori), but how director Luchino Visconti shows women succumbing to him after he forces himself on them - the old 'no means yes' - and not just with the prostitute/girlfriend (Annie Girardot), but with the laundress before her.
I see that the most astonishing feature of the film is his "charming", difficult to describe, something like excellent "taste" perhaps, so in the cinematography as in the acting.If there wasn't this "heavenly" element in Delon and Girardot, some over-dramatized moments like the rape scene would be a problem, because they create an opera-like atmosphere and put in danger the realistic movement of the film.
It was the only thing about it that didn't feel romantically embellished.Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori and Annie Girardot comprise a very strong cast in this melodrama about the gap between family and society.
Having recently been uprooted to Milan, Rocco (Alain Delon) and his four brothers each look for a new way in life when a prostitute (Annie Girardot) comes between Rocco and his brother Simone (Renato Salvatori).Censors demanded that four scenes be cut or the film would be confiscated and the producer prosecuted; however, after negotiations, producer Goffredo Lombardo agreed to darken the critical scenes within the film with filters; two of these darkened scenes were omitted entirely.This attempt at censorship may be the most interesting part of the film.
It's a family drama and truly honestly one of the best that I have ever seen.The story all sounds so very simple and standard on paper but simple fact is that it's all being executed very well, by director Luchino Visconti, who also helped to write the story (along with 6 others!).What I like about it and the overall movie, is that it feels quite modern all for normal 1960 standards.
It's really a powerful drama about love and family, in which two brothers and a girl play a big role.Also surprising that this is quite a good sports movie.
ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is a crime drama about the struggle of a poor Italian family from the South with an unknown and "modern" city life.
The big city is full of good opportunities, but some of them may be a great challenge for an inexperienced young man.Their support are Katina Paxinou (Rosaria Parondi) as a hysterical and helpless mother, Max Cartier (Ciro Parondi) is a kind of voice of reason, Spiros Focás (Vincenzo Parondi) is a quiet and calm oldest brother and Claudia Cardinale (Ginetta) is his emotional wife.This is a dynamic story about members of Parondi family which is falling apart under an influence of crime, mutual misunderstanding and superstition..
Eventually the problems of the new life start to culminate and tear the family apart.Rocco e i suoi fratelli is a complex film - very complex indeed.
But the film most certainly not is just an epic melodrama and the other side brings it above the finest melodramas in the history of cinema.When the family moves from the small town to the big city they at the same time are forced to leave behind fraternity and old core values.
It tells the tale of a big rural family from Italy and their adaptation to city life; it has boxing scenes (not properly something I wished to see); it has the story of a prostitute with whom the brothers Rocco and Simone share a passion; there are certain scenes of brutal violence (physical aggression, rape and even a cold-blooded homicide).In my opinion, this film doesn't have that much to justify such a long runtime.
Same about Renato Salvatori as Simone, Annie Girardot as Nadia (the prostitute), Katina Paxinou as Rosaria, Spiros Focás as Vincenzo, Max Cartier as Ciro and Rocco Vidolazzi as Luca..
Although the beginning has that "boring-black-and-white" feel that we have come to expect from old cinema, the middle and the end of the film sandwich have me convinced that this movie has one of the most abruptly dramatic story lines that I have experienced.
The plot is simple, a poor family headed by the mother moves to the big city to try to make a better life for her and her sons.
The film is divided into sections with each one devoted to one of the  brothers, but the thrust (and heart) of the narrative concerns two of the brothers, Rocco played by a never better nor more beautiful Alain Delon & his intense love-hate relationship with his brother played by Renato Salvatori who also gives a superb performance.
The triple threat Visconti (producer, co-screenwriter, director) pours all his passion in this epic tale of widowed Katina Paxinou leaving her poverty filled life in Southern Italy with family in tow for the big city life of Milan, hoping to better the life of her five sons, Rocco (Alan Delon), Simone (Renato Salvatori), Ciro (Max Cartier), Moroni (RogerHanin) and her youngest boy of 7.
She brings her four sons, Rocco and Simone (in their early 20s), Ciro, a teenager, and Luca (about eight), to visit Vincenzo, the older brother who is engaged to Ginetta (played by Claudia Cardinale before she became famous).
While he has a small part in the film, Vincenzo serves two important purposes: 1) He is held up as less stable than the the younger and more together domestic pillar, Ciro, in that he is never able to facilitate a reconciliation between his mother and in-laws and ends up marrying Ginetta, more out of obligation than complete love, after she accidentally becomes pregnant; and 2) He ends up bumping into Nadia, the prostitute, in the hallway of the family's apartment building, introducing her to his other brothers.The next segment focuses on Simone who is the film's evil antagonist.
Sure there are plenty of people like Rocco who would bail their brothers out financially even with the knowledge they had done something wrong; but to order their true love back into a destructive relationship with their brother after he just raped her, that's something I couldn't believe.One sad addendum: Annie Giardot (Nadia) who was married to Renato Salvatori (Simone) in real life, is still alive but has Alzheimers and has no memory of her former life..
It struck me that by far the most sympathetic character in the film was Annie Girardot as the prostitute who has the extreme bad luck to become involved with both of the brothers played by Alain Delon and Renato Salvatore.
Alain Delon is heartbreaking and overwhelmed by love, life, all that is demanded of him by family, everything.A great movie carries all before it.
Rocco and His Brothers, one of the greatest emotional experiences of all time, is a film of overwhelming ferocity and love.
The Parondi family comes from a southern Italian village, after its patriarch passes away, the mother Rosaria (Paxinou) decides to bring her other four sons Simone (Salvatori), Rocco (Delon), Ciro (Cartier) and the underage Luca (Vidolazzi) to seek refuge with her eldest son Vincenzo (Focás) in Milan.
And each brother symbolises a different situation during their (dis)integration of the city: Vincenzo eventually manages to marry Ginetta and he is the lucky ones who is able to lead a normal life and can get out of mamma's grip; Rocco is nostalgic but saintly, keeps faith in family and blood-lines, to the extent of foolish blindness; Ciro is the upstanding youngster chooses justice before fraternity and Luca is the youngest, one day he might bring the glory back to their hometown.
It is possibly Alain Delon's finest performance, at the peak of his youth when his noted charming but glacial on-screen image hasn't fully come into shape, his Rocco is timorous at first, a mamma's boy who can do no harm to anyone, until his talent in boxing surfaces, he supplants Simone as the family's pillar, a national hero, yet his ostensible noble sacrifice in fact reveals that he is the most tragic character in the story, sometimes a saintly heart can not always outdo latent selfishness.
Renato Salvatori courageously takes on this unwelcome role of Simone and exudes great on-screen chemistry and tension with Girardot, which turns out not just an act, they became a couple in real life too, additionally, he is also the stimulus of a well-suggested homo-erotic vignette.An Oscar-winner (FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS 1943), the veteran Greek stage thespian Katina Paxinou cannot be overlooked without mentioning, as we all know, parenting is a crucial factor influences children's character building, being the mother of these five boys, her presence is the most morally ambiguous part of the film, she knows perfectly (maybe unconsciously) how to blackmail her sons with the overriding family value which is the keystone of her parochial beliefs, Paxinou makes for a flawless Italian mamma in spite of the language barrier.
Structurally ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS anticipates Visconti's another three-hour epic tale THE LEOPARD (1963, 8/10) and from any respect, it is a masterpiece well deserving all the fame and admiration, even though the storyline is overtly scheming on the notion "nothing is more compelling like a Greek tragedy", to say the least, it genuinely concerns about important social issues of mass migration and a textbook paradigm of expounding on family values, the Italian style..
THIS beautiful 'opera' is in five 'acts,' each named for one of the five Parondi brothers: (Act 1) Vincenzo, (Act 2) Simone, (Act 3) Rocco, (Act 4) Ciro, and (Act 5) Luca.
However, the film sections (named after the brothers) tend to give the audience some structural clues about how the characters evolve, with each taking on more prominent roles at different times in the story.Greek actress Katina Paxinou, who had won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1943 as a Spanish freedom fighter in For Whom the Bell Tolls and played in several Greek tragedies, seems equally at home here as the quintessentially volatile Italian mother, Rosaria Parondi.
In the Ciro section of the film, we learn that Simone's life continues on a downward spiral as he moves into his mother's house with his 'whore,' Nadia.
Ciro, who is easily the most ethically grounded brother (despite Rocco's constantly being called saintly), can do so, and the film ends with the jury out on young Luca.
I assumed as I watched "Rocco and His Brothers" that Luchino Visconti intended this as a film illustrating about the dehumanizing aspects of living in the big city.
This is the first indication that this family has an illness in their soul--much more is to come later.The rest of the film mostly centers on Rocco and Simone.
Plus, at nearly three hours, there is much, much more to "Rocco and His Brothers".An odd thing about this movie and many other Italian films of the era is that the film has a multinational cast.
I hate obvious and easy to understand--and "Rocco and His Brothers" is a very complex movie.So is the film worth seeing?
This Italian film was featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so naturally, without knowing the story, plot or really any other details, apart from the near three hour length, I was going to watch it regardless, from director Luchino Visconti (Ossessione, Senso, Death in Venice).
The family include Vincenzo (Spiros Focás), Simone (Renato Salvatori), Rocco (L'Eclisse's Alain Delon), Ciro (Max Cartier) and Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi), and one by one we see their stories unfold as they have problems, but they each manage to find something to do.
If I had seen this back then, I wonder if I would have liked better.This tale of a family, who in the search for a better life in the big city (Milan Italy), come to eventual grief & tragedy.because of lust & jealousy between 2 brothers over the love of a loose young lady.This plot device is not the least bit logical & that is just one of the reasons why this long 177 minute tale is unpleasant & almost laughable in spots.
Nominally Alain Delon was the star but at twenty five he was still more pretty boy than serious actor and it is left to the great Annie Girardot to divide acting honours with Renato Salvatori whose Simone is by far the most colourful and interesting of the largely bland brothers.