Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

Original title

Rocco e i suoi fratelli

Directed by

Luchino Visconti

Genre

drama film, boxing film, crime film

Country

France, Italy

Runtime

2h 57m

Rated

NR

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 665 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A poor family from southern Italy moves to Milan in the 1960s in search of a better life. One brother becomes a boxer, but their hopes for a new start slowly fall apart as they struggle with poverty and conflicts in the industrial city.

epicmelodramaticbleakemotionalslow-burnintensevisually lushtragicatmospheric

What happens

Rocco and His Brothers (Italian: Rocco e i suoi fratelli) is a 1960 epic melodrama film directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, Renato Salvatori, Katina Paxinou, Roger Hanin, Paolo Stoppa, and Claudia Cardinale in one of her early roles. Set in 1960 Milan, it tells the story of a migrant family from southern Italy and its disintegration in the society of the industrial north. The film's title is a combination of the title of Thomas Mann's novel Joseph and His Brothers and Rocco Scotellaro, an Italian poet who described the feelings of the peasants of southern Italy. The screenplay, co-written by Visconti, is inspired by an episode from the novel Il ponte della Ghisolfa by Giovanni Testori. A co-production between Italian studio Titanus and French production company Les Films Marceau, Rocco and His Brothers suffered from multiple controversies and setbacks in its pre-release period. It received a lukewarm response from Italian critics, but was more positively-received internationally, winning several accolades including the Special Jury Prize at the 21st Venice International Film Festival. Retrospective reviews were more positive, and the film is now highly regarded in the canon of Italian cinema. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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