Rocco and His Brothers (2018)

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

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.

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). Basically the film is seeing into the lives of a rural Italian family, the Parondi family, led by matriarch Rosaria Parondi (Katina Paxinou), who are heading north to Milan, and we see the individual five stories weaved together as each family member struggle to adapt to life in the large city. 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. We see prostitute Nadia (BAFTA nominated Annie Girardot) having both Simone and Rocco pursuing and desiring her, the pivotal moment sees her raped by Simone with Rocco watching, he starts military service, and he gives her up in order to somehow keep the family whole. There are a few bad things going on, but essentially building Italian neorealism the film does not end with a substantial resolution, much more with doom and gloom hanging over the family, with a family feud and a murder. Also starring Roger Hanin as Morini, Paolo Stoppa as Cerri, Suzy Delair as Luisa and Claudia Cardinale as Ginetta. I will admit that I found it hard to concentrate on most of the stuff going on because of having to read the subtitles and knowing that the film was pretty long, but it was a good soap-like melodrama, filmed with good black and white photography to create the feel of the grim urban environment, but for the hard hitting material it is worth it, an interesting enough drama. It was nominated the BAFTA for Best Film from any Source. Worth watching!

Aside from its great portrayal of family life (and, via Rocco, all the hypocrisies and evils therein), the film is also great study in the effects of World War Two on rejiggering the Italian lifestyle, especially with expanded urbanization. In the end, the three older brothers cannot deal with the move from the pastoral life of their youth. 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. This is heightened by the fact that we are not shown any images, within the film, of the family's rural roots- not domestic nor geographic. It, as the past always is, is another country. But, many poor critics have mistakenly called the film a 'tragedy,' when it clearly is not, for a tragedy demands a sense of grandeur or greatness, and there are no such people in this film. Instead, Rocco And His Brothers shows us dirt poor 'real' people scraping to survive (in stark contrast to Visconti's campier melodramas on the rich and powerful), and one of the consequences of survival is that only the fittest make it. Thus, Nadia, Simone, and one suspects Rocco, are doomed. But this fact is far more related to the film's Neo-Realist roots than its melodramatic faux 'tragedy.' And that all this is done so deftly, with an economy of narrative setup, is a testament to both the writing and acting in selling what could be a really bad cliché.Rocco And His Brothers is a great film, which only deepens upon successive viewings (in meaning and complexity) just as its nominal successor (Hannah And Her Sisters) was a quarter century later, but for the same reason, achieved by different means: it takes one into another (past) time and era seamlessly- making any inquiry into what mis-en-scene is seem silly; and in doing so proves it is timeless. And that is usually never too far from greatness.

A poor Italian woman moves with her sons from the country to Milan. Although a segment is devoted to each of the five brothers, the focus is on Delon (the saint) and Salvatori (the brute). Delon is so sensitive that he gets teary-eyed if the wind blows too hard. There's a ridiculous scene where the two fight over a prostitute. The film covers several years, and it seems initially that Visconti is going to present every mundane event in excruciating detail. It's a chore to sit through three hours of random episodes, dull boxing scenes, and embarrassing melodramatics. Pretty much everyone overacts. At least the cinematography is decent and Rota contributes a nice score.