Underplayed Gems

Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

Rocco and His Brothers poster
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
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like thisWatch the trailer

or watch the trailer on YouTube

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)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.