howardeisman Epic! Operatic! Dramatic black and white photographs! Compelling! There is wizardry in this cinematic effort. But…overlong, too histrionic for American audiences, slow moving, and predictable. This film purports to be the story of naïve and innocent country folk who come to the big city and face difficult life choices. This is expressed by characters in two long, sociologically tinged speeches. Minus these speeches, this sociological realism is just a back story. The main theme of the story line is biblical; the secondary theme, prosaic. I had to read the English subtitles to follow the story, so I may have missed a lot. While reading, the visuals and the actors' expressions sometimes get lost. Ann Girardot does fine job as a prostitute who has a heart of gold-sometimes. Salvatori is great as is Paxinou but all these roles often strain credibility. Delon looks saintly and lost. Everything is a nanosecond removed from an uproar. A gym manager tears up his office, Citizen Kane style, because he doesn't like the quality of boxers in his gym-and his character is inconsequential.I waited four decades before I could see this movie. I was not disappointed because I no longer expect epiphanies. I simply want to be brought into the story and be interested in its outcome. No more. Thus, I recommend this movie. The story is compelling. It was well done and has great cinema historic value, even with its flaws.,

lasttimeisaw 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. Their unexpected arrival instantly en-kindles a wrangle with the family of Ginetta (Cardinale), Vincenzo's fiancée. In the opening gambit, Visconti manifests how he is well-versed in orchestrating a huge cast simultaneously and effectively expediting the scenes from a festive get-together to a classic Italian verbal battle with utter precision. Milan, in the eyes of the poor folks from hinterland, is a city beckons with opportunities, but initially the Parondis can only rent a crammed basement with all four grown-up sons sleeping in the same room, snowfall is their blessing as they can all earn some dough by shoveling snow. Being sturdy youngsters, Vincenzo, Simone and Ricco all subsequently partake in boxing, an opportunistic venture and each is much abler than his elder brothers. 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. Every family has a black sheep, Simone is the second son, robustly built but with the rawness of a simpleton, and when the prostitute Nadia (Girardot) comes on the scene, he falls head over heels for her and get corrupted by the allure of the cityscape and its dangerous trappings. But Nadia does not simply represent all the adverse sides of the booming city, she is also granted a chance of redemption, when she meets Rocco, she realises she has found her guiding light, but again, there is no good arising from coming between two brothers, Visconti's misogynous proclivity let her bear the stigma of a victim in the game when clearly audience has been invested too much in Nadia's awakening and the heartrending abandoning herself to despair where Simone's benighted jealousy is the original sin here. Annie Girardot is the MVP among a multi-national cast (Italian, French and Greek, with most of the dialogs dubbed in production), who excels in reining a transcendent shift from a flighty coquette to a pathos-arousing tragedy past any hope, her final struggle is one of the most appalling sequences ever, Visconti doesn't intend it as a twist, instead, he stages the scenes with imminent maliciousness, and Nadia is embracing it in hope for a final settlement, until the basic instinct of survival overtakes her in the futile struggle during her last breath. 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.

Boba_Fett1138 This movie is not an epic drama due to its large scale but simple because of its story! 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 definitely not being melodramatic or over-the-top in any other way imaginable and stuff and characters are being all kept as realistic as possible, which helps to let the emotions and drama come across more realistically.The movie also feels modern with its storytelling and especially its pacing. The movie is quite long, as you could expect from a family drama but it really doesn't feel like a long movie at all and there just aren't any slower, more boring or uninteresting moments in it. A true accomplishment from Luchino Visconti, who directed quite a few movies that I really liked, such as "Ossessione" "Senso" and "Il gattopardo", that also all definitely show some similarities to this movie with some of its themes. But I also must say that this movie probably still remains the best Luchino Visconti that I have yet seen.Love plays a key role in this movie but it's not the happy kind of love. It's the kind of love that can drive people and even entire families apart, as all happens in this movie. 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. Boxing becomes an important element in this movie, which even almost becomes an entirely different movie of its own. And I don't know, I always like boxing in movies, so I was quite pleased to watch it all.It's a very well shot and told movie, that also get beautiful acted out by its actors. It all provides the movie with some very powerful and effective moments, including a great ending!9/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

A. Meyer Unlike others, including Roger Ebert, I see "Rocco and His Brothers" as a devastating condemnation of traditional Italian peasant family values. In the U.S. only slavery compares to what the old peasant classes of Europe experienced --legally free but entrenched in centuries of oppression, rural poverty and ignorance. In Italy, the film tells us, these conditions gave rise to the kind of loyalty that values family ties above everything, including the law, moral principles, even individual human life.These are the "family values" that when extended to the neighborhood produce the mafia (then at its apex in 1960). And when extended nationally produce Fascism. Individuals in Rocco's family are enslaved and held down by these values. The film isn't about good and bad people, or about idyllic countryside versus evil city. Ciro, the everyman hero of the story, albeit a small role, reflects at the end that Rocco will not survive in the country either. The film is a reflection on tragedy awaiting both good and bad who cling to old, destructive values. If you're by nature not so good, these values will make you worse. If you're a good person, they'll lead you to destroy yourself and others.When the family first moves to Milan, two passsers-by comment on them: "old country." Viewers at the time most likely understood old and new as pre- and post WWII. From the beginning the film sets up a dichotomy between old and new: Rocco's family's values amid the unending new construction projects in the film.Look at Mama, bless her heart, that unsentimental image of what poverty and ignorance hath wrought. She brings her five sons to Milano –why? As she says, so they can get rich, and she can walk down a big city street hearing herself called "Signora." She doesn't care how they get rich --killed or maimed in the boxing ring (Simone may have been brain damaged there –- Mama still wants him to go back and wants Rocco to box also), theft, whatever. Then there's her rejection of Vincenzo, the eldest, ostensibly because of his accidental baby, but actually because he's now got a wife and baby to support instead of her, so obsessed is she with financial security (which self-centeredness she justifies as "keeping the family together"). No one gets a life of his own in Mama's view. She won't even go to the christening of her first grandchild, of whom she's jealous. Rocco's in the army. Does Mama care about his life there? Her letter asks for more money, although he's living on a practically non existent stipend. Children exist for the support and care of their parents, or they don't exist at all.Simone and Rocco, yin and yang in this destructive universe, are photographed together in close physical contact more often than not: Simone, self centered emblem of old machismo, and Rocco, sacrificing himself and others in the name of family, in his mental and spiritual superiority more destructive than Simone. They're two sides of the same coin, like all opposites. (A wonderful symbol of Marx's dialectic). It's "Rocco and His Brothers" because Rocco is the guiding light leading his brothers down the wrong path for the right reasons. Ciro, rejecting these old values, striving to better himself, and Luca, too young to be completely imbued with them, are the positive lights to a possibly better future.