Rocco and His Brothers ( Rocco e i suoi fratelli ) ( Rocco & His Brothers )

Rocco and His Brothers (DVD) (*)

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Original Title: Rocco e i suoi fratelli
Alternate Title: Rocco & His Brothers
Screened, competed or awarded at:
BAFTA Awards
David Donatello Awards
Venice Film Festival
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
Italian ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )

Product Origin/Format:
Australia ( PAL/Region 0 )

Running Time:
117 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Photo Gallery
Scene Access
Trailer(s)
Black & White

Movie filmed in 1960 and produced in:
France ( France, Benelux )
Italy ( Italy, Greece )

Directed By:
Luchino Visconti

Written By:
Luchino Visconti (scenario) &
Suso Cecchi d'Amico (scenario) ...

Actors:
Alain Delon ..... Rocco Parondi
Renato Salvatori ..... Simone Parondi
Annie Girardot ..... Nadia
Katina Paxinou ..... Rosaria Parondi
Alessandra Panaro ..... Ciro's Fiancee
Spiros Focás ..... Vincenzo Parondi (as Spiros Focas)
Max Cartier ..... Ciro Parondi
Corrado Pani ..... Ivo
Rocco Vidolazzi ..... Luca Parondi
Claudia Mori ..... Laundrey Worker
Adriana Asti ..... Laundrey Worker
Enzo Fiermonte ..... Boxer
Nino Castelnuovo ..... Nino Rossi
Rosario Borelli ..... Un biscazziere
Renato Terra ..... Alfredo, Ginetta's brother

Synopsis:

Luchino Visconti's neo-realist masterpiece is a dramatic chronicle of class war, personal downfall and family disintegration as a poor southern Italian family struggles to adjust to life in the bleak northern industrial city of Milan. One of five brothers, Simone finds success as a boxer but his career soon flounders when his lover Nadia, a beautiful prostitute, falls in love with his younger brother, Rocco. The lovers set in motion a shattering chain of events that destroy relations between the entire family, while the intransigent matriarch Rosaria continues to encourage her son's upward mobility. The working class epic is the most dramatic and spectacular film of Visconti's astonishing career, with its sweeping, operatic style and homoerotic subtext, inspiring the work of filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. Rocco and His Brothers won numerous international awards, including the Venice Film Festival International Film Critics Award (1960).

The Parondi family leave their home in southern Italy to try to make a better life in the northern town of Milan. The mother, Rosaria, is accompanied by her four sons, Rocco, Simone, Ciro and Luca, and hopes to stay with her eldest son, Vincenzo, who is already settled in Milan. The family's unexpected arrival coincides with Vincenzo's engagement to Ginetta, and does not please Vincenzo's prospective future in-laws. Once the family have found accommodation, the sons set about trying to find work. Luca does odd jobs, Ciro studies for a diploma which will get him a job in a car factory, Rocco works in a dry-cleaning shop and Simone begins to pursue a promising career as a boxer. Just when things appear to be going well, it all starts to go wrong. Once he realises that Rocco has stolen his girlfriend, Nadia (a former prostitute), Simone is consumed by jealousy and starts to rebel. In a heroic bid to keep the family together, Rocco surrenders Nadia to Simone, but by this stage the harm has been done. Simone's character has taken an irreversible turn for the worse...

Covering several years, the story of the southern Italian peasant Parondi family, and their traditions of a family first mentality at any cost as fostered by the family matriarch, is told. The story has five segments in chronological order with each segment focusing on a different Parondi brother in order of age. Vincenzo's segment begins when their just widowed mother, Rosaria, brings her four younger offspring to Milan - where oldest Vincenzo has been living - in order for her sons to eke out a more promising future than what their unproductive piece of farm land could. Their arrival disrupts Vincenzo's life, he, as the oldest, who is expected to figure out how they will survive without jobs or a place to live. Simone's segment describes how the change to big city life affects him the most of the brothers. He shows natural ability as a boxer, but despite some promising results, does not cultivate this promise perhaps due to self-doubt. He begins a relationship with a prostitute named Nadia, who entered the Parondi's life soon after their arrival in the city. Simone and Nadia's relationship ends without much fanfare and in part due to Nadia's circumstance. Rocco's segment begins during his two year stint in the military. He is the loyal, sensitive brother, who reconnects with Nadia by chance. They fall in love, which, for the first time ever makes Nadia truly care about what happens to her. The question becomes what Simone will think when he finds out about their relationship. In Ciro's segment, Ciro, having gained an education and now working in the Alfa Romeo factory, is proving to be the practical brother. As their family unit is disintegrating, Ciro, through his words, tries to figure out how to hold the family together in its most promising collective. Regardless, Rocco, using the bottled up emotions inside him, is now the family breadwinner, he who will go to any length to keep the family together, even in its current dysfunctional form. And in a now teenaged Luca's segment, the questions of whether their lives would have been any different than how it has turned out if they stayed on the family farm, and what the future holds for them as a family in light of or despite what has happened to them since their arrival in Milan are raised.

This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 28 June, 2007.

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