Rocco and His Brothers [Rocco e i suoi fratelli] ***** (1960, Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, Katina Paxinou) – Classic Movie Review 1588

The magnificent 1960 Italian classic Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli) is a triumph for director Luchino Visconti’s brand of operatic, heightened poetic realism. Visconti clearly relishes telling the trials, tribulation and tragedy of an immigrant rural Italian family from the poor Italian South and its disintegration in the alien environment of the industrial North. Organised in five separate sections, the film unspools the story of five Parondi brothers – Vincenzo, Simone, Rocco, Ciro and Luca – as they struggle to adapt to life in a vast, impersonal city.

The Italian master director weaves a panoramic bird’s-eye view of the lives of a widowed mother (Katina Paxinou) and her four poor Southern Italian sons, who leave the historic district of Lucania and settle in what they soon discover to feel is the hostile northern city of Milan, where a fifth brother, Vincenzo, already lives. Though it’s the era of La Dolce Vita, there’s still much poverty, hardship and deprivation in Italy.

This glorious neo-realist portrait of Italian life, sprung to vibrant life in the form of a socio-sexual melodrama, is riveting for three full hours (it’s 177 minutes to be exact), thanks to the passion of the director, intensity of the feelings conveyed in the film, the unique yet universal characters, and all the myriad details in the convincing portrait of the Italian lives and backdrops on show here. It ends in the spirit of unresolved doom expected Italian neo-realism.

The acting is electrifying. At its apex, there are powerful, vital, charismatic performances from Alain Delon as the self-effacing Rocco Parondi, who takes work in a dry cleaner’s, and Renato Salvatori as his brother Simone, who takes up boxing, but is bought by the gay boxing promoter Morini (Roger Hanin).

Simone fatefully meets the prostitute Nadia (Annie Girardot) and they enjoy a stormy affair. But then Rocco, after finishing his compulsory military service, pursues and desire her too, and eventually makes her his girlfriend.

[Spoiler alert] At the film’s central climax, Simone rapes Nadia in front of Rocco and gives her up to his brother. But soon, a tragic war breaks out between Rocco and Simone, which goes as far as murder. During shooting, the film was seized and Visconti forced to delete the scenes showing the rape and murder from the movie. A court judgement of 1966 finally vindicated Visconti and these scenes are now restored.

Max Cartier plays Ciro Parondi, Spiros Focás is Vincenzo Parondi and Rocco Vidolazzi is Luca Parondi, the other brothers. Paxinou is also superb as the brothers’ mother, Rosaria. Claudia Cardinale also appears as Ginetta, Vincenzo’s fiancée, in one of her early roles before she became internationally famous. As a star, she memorably re-teams with Delon for Visconti’s The Leopard. Paola Stoppa (as Cecchi), Nino Castelnuovo (as Nino Rossi) and Suzy Delair (as Luisa) also appear.

Visconti won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1960. The director and the producer both refused to accept the Special Jury Prize award. Visconti was one of six hands creating the vital new screen story, screenplay and dialogue, inspired by an episode in the novel Il Ponte della Ghisolfa by Giovanni Testori. The film’s fine score is composed by Nino Rota.

With life imitating art, Salvatori and Girardot became lovers in real life.

Lucania is an ancient district of southern Italy, extending from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Gulf of Taranto.

Rocco and His Brothers is a combination of Thomas Mann’s book Joseph and his Brothers and the name of Italian poet Rocco Scotellaro, whose work describes the feelings of Southern Italian peasants.

Rocco and His Brothers is restored by the Cineteca di Bologna, with two censored scenes finally reinstated, and screened at the London Film Festival in 2015.

Suzy Delair (1917–2020).

Suzy Delair (born 31 December 1917) was one of the most famous movie stars of the French cinema and one of the last movie legends. She died on 15 March 2020, aged 102, in Paris. She is remembered for The Last One of the Six (1941), The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942), Quai des Orfèvres (1947) Pattes blanches (1949), Gervaise (1956) and Rocco and His Brothers (1960).