(Review of Rocco and His Brothers)
As the BFI teams with Cinecittà to launch a season entitled, Luchino Visconti: Decadence & Decay, the Italian auteur's 1960 drama, Rocco and His Brothers, is reissued in cinemas. The Franco-Italian co-production, ran into difficulties when the Milanese authorities refused shooting permits for what were deemed contentious scenes, which so drew the ire of Cardinal Domenico Tardini, the Vatican Secretary of State, that he threatened to have prints confiscated unless cuts were made. Despite the conservative backlash, the Italian press failed to rally to Visconti's cause and it was only after the picture was feted abroad that it came to be regarded as a flipside classic to Federico Fellini's La dolce vita, which was released the same year.
Following the death of father, Rocco Parondi (Alain Delon) leaves the Sicilian town of Lucania to live with his brother, Vincenzo (Spiros Focás), in the Lambrate district of Milan. Travelling with him are siblings Simone (Renato Salvatori), Ciro (Max Cartier), and Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi), along with their mother, Rosaria (Katina Paxinou). Vincenzo is hoping to go up in the world and fiancée Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale) takes against the uncouth rustics and refuses to let them stay with her family.
Embarrassed at having to deposit his mother in an unheated basement, Vincenzo promises to help them settle in. But he becomes distracted when Ginette announces she's pregnant and a wedding is hastily arranged. While the brothers try to make the best of things, Simone struggles to cope with city life and takes solace in Nadia (Annie Girardot), a prostitute who thinks he has the makings of a boxer. Encouraged by his mother (who disapproves of Nadia's profession), Simone refuses to commit himself unless Nadia becomes steady girlfriend. Despite being disowned by her father, she refuses hecause she has no other means of making money and returns the jewellery that Simone had stolen from Luisa (Suzy Delair), the owner of the backstreet laundry where Rocco works with Raffaella (Claudia Mori) and Giannina (Adriana Asti).
The middle brother, Rocco is the breadwinner. However, Ciro is determined to make a success of the move. He enrols at night school and lands a job at the Alfa Romeo factory. Moreover, he meets Franca (Alessandra Panaro) and they become engaged. Meanwhile, Rocco is called up for military service and bumps into Nadia, who has just been released from prison for soliciting.
She finds his innocence and acceptingness appealing and readily agrees when he suggests they become a couple. However, Simone is furious when he hears about the romance and rapes Nadia in order to get back at Rocco. Rather than taking her side, Rocco regrets hurting his brother and breaks up with Nadia in the hope she will patch things up with his brother. But she only returns to Simone to exact her revenge.
Having exhausted the patience of his coach (Enzo Fiermonte) and boxing promoter Tonino Cerri (Paolo Stoppa), Simone falls in with bad lads Ivo (Corrado Pani) and Nino (Nino Castelnuovo). He also starts drinking too much and runs up debts at the gambling den whose manager (Rosario Borelli) is impatient for repayment. Simone also owes money to gym owner Duilio Morini (Roger Hanin), with whom he has a gay fling that he bitterly regrets. Despite Ciro urging his brother to cut his losses and let Simone fend for himself, Rocco signs a 10-year contract with Cerri. He confides in his mother that he would like to return south and Luca admits that he is finding it tough to acclimatise. But Rocco proves a natural in the ring and Cerri arranges a title fight.
During the bout, however, a drunken Simone stumbles across Nadia, who has returned to walking the streets around the Ponte della Ghisolfa. No longer afraid, she tells Simone that she hates him and he lashes out in fury, killing her. Simone staggers into Rocco's victory party and confesses to his crime. Ciro wants to tell the police, although Rocco thinks they should put family unity before anything else.
Luca calls on Ciro at the factory to let him know that Simone has been arrested. He invites him over for a family dinner and mentions the prospect of returning to Lucania. But Ciro urges him to stick it out, as things can only improve. Moreover, he warns his baby brother that Rocco is now a champion and the significance of his change of fortune strikes Luca when he sees Rocco on the front of a newspaper in a scoop about the upcoming fights that will take him far beyond Milan.
Hopefully, the good folk at Empire won't remind a little recycling at this juncture, as this old review hits several nails rather squarely.
`Such is the status of opulent works like Senso (1954), The Leopard (1963), and Death in Venice (1971) that it's easy to forget that Luchino Visconti was among the founding fathers of neo-realism. The sensitivity to a place and its people, acquired while making his earliest features, Ossessione (1942) and La terra trema (1948), was readily evident in this supremely evocative epic, as he made Milan seem both a city of elegance and despair.
`Indeed, Visconti always regarded this film as a sequel to the latter study of Sicilian fishermen - even though its roots lay in such novels as Fyodr Dostoevsky's The Idiot and Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Bretheren, as well as such Giovanni Testori stories as `Il Ponte della Ghisolfa' - and it's easy to see Milan as a convenient backdrop for a classic southern clan feud.
`However, Visconti was also keen to explore the stock responses of his varyingly macho characters to the problems of migration and he shrewdly contrasted traditional notions of honour and family loyalty with the individualism of modern urban life. Consequently, the city provided the same realist environment as the Sicilian fishing town of Aci Trezza.
`Indeed, Visconti's sense of authenticity was so heightened that the council withheld permission to stage Nadia's murder in a popular tourist spot and then banned the film, despite the excision of 45 minutes (from the 177-minute running time) by the state censor.
`Notwithstanding the factuality of the setting, Visconti's genius for operatic melodrama was also to the fore. Alain Delon was perhaps a touch too saintly as Rocco, whose every action atoned for the feckless wickedness of Renato Salvatori, the brother who botches a boxing career, murders his mistress, and takes up with a gay pimp. But Salvatori was superb, particularly in his dealings with the outstanding Annie Girardot, whom, ironically, he would marry in real life.
`The themes that preoccupied Visconti throughout his career, societal transition, familial disintegration and basic humanity were all present here. But the veniality, violence and simmering sexual tension, which were considered highly controversial back in 1960, gave this monochrome masterpiece a rawness that was decidedly at odds with Visconti's undeserved reputation for decadence.'
In closing, mention should be made of the way that Visconti and co-scenarists Suso Cecchi d'Amico and Vasco Pratolini organise the sprawling, yet intimate story into five chapters named after the Parondi brothers. Editor Mario Serandrei also helps in this regard, while the score by the magnificent Nino Rota reinforces the tonal shifts within and between the scenes. Lastly, Giuseppe Rotunno's monochrome photography contrasts the Sicilian farm with the Milanese suburbs without resorting to neo-realist cliché in showcasing Visconti's genius for creating images that further the story while making the audience pause and reflect.
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