Rocco and His Brothers (1960)A timely homage to Milan – my home city – Rocco and His Brothers is a powerful operatic drama about a mother and her five sons (“like the five fingers of her hand”) migrating from the rural south to the corrupting industrial city in the north to seek a better life during the Italian economic boom of the 1960s.
A perfect late neo-realistic blend of melodrama and tragedy, with boxing a central theme, Luchino Visconti’s film can now finally be seen at its best in the newly restored edition available on BFI Player, which includes 15 minutes originally cut by the censors. The international cast includes an impossibly handsome Alain Delon as Rocco, Renato Salvatori as the hopeless Simone, an unforgettable Annie Girardot, and Visconti’s regulars Paolo Stoppa and Claudia Cardinale (father and daughter in The Leopard, three years later).
Milan is striking in Giuseppe Rotunno’s gritty black-and-white photography: not just Central Station, the foggy canals and gothic cathedral spires, but also the sordid working-class tenements and boxing rings – painting an intense picture of a crucial period in recent Italian history.
Elena Marcarini
Documentation Editor (Programme Notes)