34th Hall of Fame

Rocco and his Brothers (1960, Visconti)

Similar to our previous entry in it's exploration of the family unit this was also pretty solid. Visconti is a sort of blind spot for me, I believe I seen The Leopard years ago but can't remember much about it outside of how nice it looked. This movie takes the time to examine the sons of the mother in multiple distinct sections. It brings the typical raw energy this era of filmmaking was known for, it kind of reminded me of Magnificent Ambersons a little bit,

Especially Italian film makers around that time had tons of energy and life happening in their films. Even if the story itself is downtrodden there's this life's vitality present in Italian film makers movies.

Very well said.

Rocco and His Brothers



This is a really well made film, even if it is a tad overdrawn. The acting is really good, particularly it should be no surprise that Delon is very good in his role. The film is shot real well and it looks very good. There was a lot of thought put into the shots and locations used in the film. It's a well directed film, the issue with me is that the story doesn't seem to really latch me in to caring for the fate of the characters. There's never really any rooting interest for me. Also the boxing scenes seem to take me out of enjoying the film for whatever reason. That being said, it's a film that I feel I appreciate more versus actually enjoying, which seems to be on me more as a film watcher than on the actual quality of the film itself. I can't disagree with anybody who really enjoys it, it just seems like it isn't fully catered to my tastes however. You can certainly see the influence that the film had in future directors as well.

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Rocco and his Brothers -

This is another definitive entry in the subgenre of not so smooth transitions from country to city life. This also applies to the subgenre within this one of industrialization's impact on a country's identity; see Playtime, Cinema Paradiso, etc. I namedrop these movies, but after watching this one, a quote came to mind from a very different source, The Simpsons: "money doesn’t change people, it just helps them be who they really are." This movie succeeds in showing how this also applies to opportunities, i.e. the ones in Milan as opposed to those in the Parondis' hometown. Could gambler, palooka and all-around bully Simone be labeled as the villain? Sure, but if the Parondis did not have to relocate, he might have never met a woman like Nadia, a means to squander his earnings or had a reason to attack Rocco. As for him, could he achieve success as a boxing champion back home? Not likely, but he would not have had to. As the brother who most sincerely loves his family and their past life, each of his knockouts made me feel genuinely sorry for him. His fame and fortune may mend fractures the big move opened, but they also bring him farther away from his true self. Not every opportunity in the big city leads to a life like Simone's or Rocco's, which this movie is smart enough to point out. Ciro, for example, finds honest work and true love, even though it's an opportunity that will make his rural hometown less rural in the long run. It even goes so far to point out an exception to this rule. While a boxer can box in small and large towns, I doubt that the mother could sway many residents of her new larger and more complicated city with her old time religion. Watching her rationalize what transpires during the tragic climax made it all the more tragic, not to mention sad.

There are times when it is necessary to close up shop and migrate to a larger and/or completely different location. While the Parondis' experience is exceptionally tragic, the movie proves that regardless of the outcome, little, if anything, remains the same ever again. Whether due to a combination of the original cut being even longer or some footage being lost, there are times when it's as if the relationships between some characters are deeper than what the movie shows or implies. Even if the latter is the main explanation, I still had to rely on headcanon more than I would have liked. It remains an example of why the 1960's were such a great time for Italian cinema and as good a place as any to start as any with Visconti. Oh, and it also provides many opportunities to geek out over what influenced his biggest fans like Coppola and Scorsese.

That's interesting because I can't imagine disliking him that much. I see Rocco as sweet, innocent and the heart of the family. He is likely a mama's boy as well. It's an apt choice to make him take up boxing since violence seems to totally go against his nature.

If I didn't like anything about him, it's that he is perhaps too sweet and innocent, like in a contrived way. Sorry if this offends anyone, but it would be interesting to know if the book the movie is based on describes him as mentally deficient because he sort of reminds me of Forrest Gump.

You never know what you're gonna get.

I didn't dislike him as a person, I just didn't care for him as a character because he didn't add much to the film for me. That is of course until he decided to make a bad situation worse which bothered me quite a bit. I do think the message was that he put his family/brothers above anything else, but I don't think it was justifiable.

This makes sense to me.

Leila's Brothers

Well that stressed me the f*ck out. Great film with fantastic performances by all the major players. The brothers were archetypes of different types of losers, but they didn't really feel one dimensional, except for the meathead, but I like my meatheads one-dimensional. I think this film would probably hit even a little harder if I was more familiar with Iranian customs. I like that this film also lets its "good guys" do things that can be challenging to my own sensibilities. I would never double-cross my dad like that on purpose, but I can only imagine that being my own father, not the father in this film. There is a very strong argument that Leila's scheme was immoral, but it comes down to a philosophical question of whether or not it's okay to do that if it benefits the family more than that benefited the father. But whether or not you agree with her actions, that doesn't diminish her character or the story. I don't need my good guys in white hats only doing the noblest of deeds. I don't know if I would want to spend a minute longer with this family, but I think I would miss them every time I was away from them.

Ha I died with that first sentence Citizen. Well done!

I'm really behind everyone, sorry! (Still working my way through Leila's Brothers!).

Here is what I wrote about Rocco and His Brothers when I first watched it a few years ago. I plan to rewatch it since it has been more than a year, and I'll write up another (shorter!) reflection afterwards.

A move from the country to the city has long stood for a loss of innocence in literature and film - urban decay, ruthless industrialization and rootless anonymity immediately come to mind when we see visions of cold, grey concrete and artless tenements. In Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers it's the Parondi family who are making the journey from their rural home to the city of Milan - the father of Rocco (Alain Delon), Simone (Renato Salvatori), Ciro (Max Cartier), Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi) and Vincenzo (Spiros Focás) having died, leaving their mother, Rosaria Parondi (Katina Paxinou) a widow. Vincenzo is already there, engaged to be married to Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale - in one of her early film roles), but the Parondi's are spurned by his fiance's family and have to take up residence in a squalid basement. The outgoing tearaway of the group, Simone, takes up boxing and falls in love with prostitute Nadia (Annie Girardot), and in the process begins to steal, drink and otherwise cause trouble for himself. When Rocco follows suit, both in profession and later, during his military service, choice of lover, it creates a rift that has flow-on effects which threaten to tear the very fabric of the close-knit family apart, and it's this most generous and magnanimous of the Parondi brothers who decides he must give his all to save Simone and the bond his brothers share.

Rocco and his Brothers is a heavy, serious film - never miserable, and never really joyous and full of wonder, but measured and thorough in it's examination of familial bonds and how they can be slowly fractured and worn down by both the failures and the successes of a family's individual members. To do this it separates itself into individual segments labeled with each brother's name, giving us a chance to see the whole situation from each different point of view. Rocco and Simone fight - quite literally, as they both take up a career in boxing with differing degrees of success. They are the yin and yang of this family, and really dominate the film as a whole - so much so that I wouldn't have thought twice if the movie had of been called Rocco, and his Brother Simone, although Nadia does have a major role to play in the drama, and if anything is a tragic victim of the dynamics at play here. From what I've seen of his work so far, Luchino Visconti is one for a particularly serious and searching drama without any messing around or idle play. He doesn't soak the screen in melodrama or excess, but studies his way through and helps us to see a bigger picture that has more wisdom behind it than grandiosity or the heartrending magic of neorealism.

Most films that had Alain Delon featuring in them benefited from his presence, and this one is no exception. I don't know what kind of lightweight division he was boxing in - I could never quite see him as such a fighter (that handsome face!) - but he does have the aura of success about him that his character needed, not to mention a sense of misguided nobility and sense of purpose in protecting his brother. He reflects pain quite well, but is even surpassed in this respect by Renato Salvatori, whose anguish and torment burns up the screen and creates all kinds of angst for the audience whenever his character is doing something terrible (to every single person who has the misfortune to know him.) I thought Annie Girardot was also quite good as Nadia - the street-smart, experienced one when the boys first arrive in town who can't, however, avoid becoming a victim of circumstance after meeting Rocco after a stint in jail and actually falling for him. I hate to use the phrase "collateral damage" when talking about a person, but she does seem to take the brunt of what turns out to be the worst kind of sibling rivalry. Both Girardot and Katina Paxinou get a chance to show the audience their character's intense emotional pain.

Visually we get to experience a lot of real texture by being on location and seeing so much happen in the streets and on the sidewalks of Milan - with scenes on bridges, in parks and on the move as the entire Parondi family moves house in a manner that directly reminds us of refugees on the move during wartime. They carry their belongings on a cart and trundle as a tightknit lot along their way as regular city dwellers sigh and basically look upon them as foreigners. I love a film that makes good use of locations and doesn't stick to moribund studios - no matter how detailed set decorators try to lull us into a sense of reality. The film's score is one to seriously listen to at high volume while reclining with your eyes closed - sans movie. It's something exceptional from Nino Rota, and very worthy of the term "operatic", with it's range and vibrant, melodic delightfulness. Yes, there are moments or two where I think it's just about to segue into the Godfather theme - it very nearly gets there at times - but I thought it was one of the finest technical aspects to the film and a big winner for me personally. It gives the movie a grand, larger than life atmosphere to soak in and a sense of how operatic and tragic the story will become.

In the screenplay, much is made of the Parondi's move from their rustic country home in Italy's south to Milan, and the brothers often find themselves talking wistfully of going back one day - it's almost as if they're talking about their already lost youth - and desire to have that back. In fact the film ends with such a conversation - in the family's desperate attempts to escape poverty and build a more fruitful kind of existence during Italy's "economic miracle" - the boom of 1958 to 1963 - they've left something behind that all the brothers yearn for. It's as if a Faustian bargain has been struck, with the search for the financial benefits of their new location being paid for with the disintegration of the family. I thought it was interesting that Ciro both holds out hope that the youngest of the clan, Luca, will both be able to go back home one day and live a better life, but also tells him that by that time thier home town itself will have changed - transformed by a changing world that will benefit the next generation. I must admit I was surprised by that note of optimism, but it was interesting to see this tragedy as not indicative of a general degradation of society but instead a kind of by-product of a evolving, advancing world - even if it's changing for the better. There are casualties when migration occurs - winners and losers always.

One last point of interest before I finish - I was also fascinated by being presented with a saintly character - Rocco - who does a great disservice to his brother Simone and his family by trying to martyr himself for his benefit. If Simone accrues ridiculously-sized debts, Rocco will put aside 10 years of his life to pay them off. If Simone loves Nadia, Rocco will insist Simone have her - despite how Nadia and Rocco feel about each other, or even Nadia's own wellbeing. If Simone is in big trouble with the law, Rocco will hide him and won't judge him. Of course, all this does is encourage and allow Simone to fall deeper and deeper into the dark pit he's already lost in. It doesn't matter if Simone spits on Rocco or even hates him. It's what we popularly refer to nowadays as "enabling", and it's what a lot of parents do for their kids - despite the fact that it's a recipe for much worse trouble down the road. Rocco's sense of brotherhood and family becomes a tightly-defined principle that knows no bounds and can withstand any personal injury. Rocco and Simone are mirror images of each other - a success and a failure who both seem completely cut adrift from what we feel regarding the other brothers - wellness and contentment with their new lot in life. There's no going back home for them.

I liked Rocco and His Brothers - I didn't necessarily like the way many of the characters in it behaved, or the way Nadia managed to draw the short straw in a society and time more in favour of what a man might make a woman submit to. Simone was a particularly ugly, brutish man that I hated a great deal - he had just about every bad trait a human being can have, and it was by that route that I lost any and all favourable feelings I had for Rocco when he put family above all else - even common decency and morality. The film feels very weighty and heavy - anybody who watches any mainstream drama or popular, contemporary films would find a great deal of contrast when comparing them to Rocco and His Brothers, where every scene feels like it could be analysed and talked about - these people are short on small talk for the most part, and the emotional intensity of all their interactions added together gives the movie a depth that makes it as weighty as it is. You get your money's worth with a Visconti film - he made them with a great deal of careful forethought and an enormous amount of purpose. Fascinating to see how he'd evolved when it came time for Italy's newfound economic power and the way it was changing the world as he saw it.

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Leila's Brothers (2022)
Director/Writer: Saeed Roustayi
Cast: Taraneh Alidoosti, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Saeed Poursamimi





In the opening montage we’re introduced to the three opposing cultural conversations that underlie this intensely emotional drama of a modern-day Iranian family in crisis.

Alireza Jourablou (Navid Mohammadzadeh) is being chased out of the factory where he’s been working the past year. The laborers haven’t been paid but the corrupt owners say they will be “soon.” He scrambles desperately to escape the chaos as rioting breaks out around him.

Meanwhile, his father Esmail (Saeed Poursamimi) is attending a gathering of male members of the expansive Jourablou clan, where the naming of a new family patriarch is at stake. Though he professes to be unworthy, you can see he ardently wants it. But his advances are rebuffed, and he is shut out of the meeting.

And then there’s Leila Jourablou (Taraneh Alidoosti), who is undergoing medical treatment for what appears to be back pain. As the entire family gathers again at home, we see Leila is clearly the one who speaks forcefully during a confrontation with Esmail over the naming of a grandson. The family meeting is boisterous; the recriminations fly.

It is Leila’s income that supports the family. Like out-of-work Alireza, her other brothers have little to contribute: one with a large family works for tips at a restroom in a shopping mall, another dabbles in questionable business deals, and yet another appears to have little motivation to do anything besides body building.

But Leila proposes an idea to lift them out of poverty. They should take advantage of an opportunity to buy a shop space in that mall so her brothers can finally have meaningful jobs. All the siblings combined can’t begin to scrape together enough money for the purchase. Then they learn their father has 40 gold coins that he intends to provide as a gift at a Jourablou family wedding, which will be what it takes to thrust him into the role of clan patriarch. Or … it would be enough to secure the shop.

The ensuing family conflagration can be seen as three windows into current day Iran. Father Esmail is fully and deeply devoted to tradition and to taking his deserved role of respect atop the male-dominated hierarchy of his clan. Leila steadfastly pushes her brothers to break free and to take control of their future. And stuck in the middle is brother Alireza, who, though he is clearly the most responsible and even-headed of the brothers, would rather just let things ride, hoping that if they wait long enough things will somehow work out.

Writer/Director Saeed Roustayi does a masterful job of eavesdropping on this family in crisis. It has a documentary feel, with claustrophobic settings in the family home, offices, and meeting places. The camera is always perfectly positioned to catch each character’s expression, revealing – indeed betraying – the emotions that are writhing inside them. As the family’s plight spins ever more out of control, the pacing is nearly flawless, except for a final reveal that feels as if it comes out of nowhere.

The acting is uniformly authentic and calibrated to the individual roles. In particular, Poursamimi is remarkable as the father who cares more for status within his clan than he does for his children’s future, willing to ignore signs he’s being taken advantage of to gain broader respect. His stares of rejection, his tone of contempt, make us feel like the documentarian’s camera is fixed on a real person rather than an actor. Likewise, Mohammadzadeh is completely convincing as the facilitating son who tries futilely to balance respect and love for his father with some sense of duty to his sister and brothers.

But it is Alidoosti as Leila who is the beating heart of both the family and the movie. In her first meeting with Alireza, as she pleads with him to step up and help convince the family to buy the shop, the desperation in her voice tears at you. She is 40, unmarried, in pain, and has nothing to look forward to in life if she can’t convince him to spur his unambitious brothers to step up. As events unravel around her, you viscerally feel her growing sense of weariness and outrage.

It is gut-wrenching to see how distrust, deceit, manipulation, and betrayal – aggravated by external political and economic forces – tears the family apart as they grapple with their alternatives: to stick with tradition, break free, or do just enough to get by and hope for the best. Those of us fortunate enough to live in comfortable circumstances in a stable environment might be tempted to think it’s easy to decide which is “right.”

But we are not, as the Jourablou family is, laboring under the weight of poverty, of centuries-old cultural traditions, of endemic corruption, of bureaucratic ineptness, and of external forces that they’ve not been equipped to fully appreciate until they crash down upon them. When Alireza apologizes to Leila for his weakness, her response illuminates the predicament of an entire underclass: “You were taught what to think and not how to think.” Instead of wondering why everyone was not agreeing on the ”right” path, shouldn’t we instead be wondering: What have they done to deserve this fate, forced to choose in order to simply lead a decent life?

Do not look to Leila, or her brothers, for answers as to who is to blame – or whether indeed anyone is to blame. In the final and jarringly beautiful scene of simultaneous joy and sadness, the camera spins around from Alireza to Leila. Her expression … is it relief, wonder, comprehension, sorrow? Is it all those? Or nothing? It will linger with you long after the screen goes dark.

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Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain ... only straw. Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain? Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they? Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

Finally back from my trip and getting caught up. It's been very hard to resist the temptation the check everyone else's reviews before I post my own. Looking forward to getting caught up on my reading.

Welcome back! Hope you had a good trip. I also usually avoid reading the member's reviews until after I've seen the movie, then it's fun to compare notes and see what other's thought.

Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)

Holy moly this is a complicated film to discuss so I'll mention the easy stuff first to get it out of the way. Obviously it looks great, even when its not trying to be too stylish the camerawork is always so steady, assured and precise its honestly kind of a marvel and even deep in the city Italy always looks gorgeous on film. Acting is usually not something that really stands out to me (don't get me wrong everyone here gets the job done) but Annie Girardot is so charismatic and powerful as Nadia, I really really loved her in this, to the point it may have made the later events in the film a little too hard to swallow.

So yeah, this was a tough film to enjoy and like, I'm not a critic, I just go by how much I enjoyed what I was watching and this film got to be outright infuriating to me as it went on. Both Simone and Rocco are so unlikeable and the things they do in this movie are so heinous I couldn't believe it. But there's the rub, I'm supposed to be upset with them, the film even overtly condemns them with Ciro's monologue at the end but for me I don't know if its enough. To use some wrestling terminology, these characters are supposed to have heat obviously but for me they crossed the line into having X-Pac heat, where I just wanted to turn the tv off. I can't say it isn't an effective film, if anything it's too effective. Like, am I supposed to be mad when the film is over? Was that the intention? Is that a good thing? I honestly probably would have loved this to death if it was the same story but with Nadia as the central character, as devastating of a film that would be, but that would have also been the easy way. Even in acknowledging that I got worked there's still some things that leave a sour taste here though, like as much as Ciro's aforementioned monologue condemns Rocco and Simone, it also kind of lets them off the hook, trying to put blame in other places blaming the city life and access to vice for Simone's actions and the double-edged sword of Rocco's good nature and loyalty being blamed for his cowardice. It also seems to put equal or more weight on "gosh, isn't it a shame what happened to this family?" compared to the horrific series of events we just witnessed Nadia go through. These things feel bad, but I don't know if they actually are. Like realistically, of course Ciro is going to try to explain away what happened to his beloved brothers and of course the movie is going to centre Simone and Rocco's perspective, its about them.

Complicated film that I had a very bad time with, for better or for worse. I'm so glad I didn't put popcorn ratings on my previous reviews because I still have no idea what to do with this.

Good call, it reminded me of this too, as well as Cinema Paradiso. You could also sort of sum up Rocco with "if it weren't for industrialization, or better yet, the car, none of this would have happened."

Rocco and His Brothers (1960)
Director: Luchino Visconti
Key Cast: Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot





The Parondi family arrives at the Milan train station late at night. It is chilly, and in the long shot of them walking away you notice their modest clothes, the scant belongings they have brought with them. They’re refugees, heading into the darkness, an uncertain future.

It’s Rocco (Alain Delon), his mother, and three brothers. They’d hoped to stay with Rocco’s fourth brother, Vincenzo (Spiros Focás), but they’re turned away by the family of his girlfriend Ginetta (a young Claudia Cardinale). This early, acrimonious encounter introduces the cultural milieu into which the Parondi family is cast. They’re poor farmers from the south. They’ve come north to the proverbial “big city” after the death of the father. It’s their mother’s dream to take advantage of the post-war opportunities for a better life. They find an unheated apartment and, in the morning, there’s work possibly to be had shoveling the newly fallen snow.

This is not the Milan of the Duomo, of warm coffee shops and art galleries. Director Luchino Visconti sets much of this gritty, post-war drama in dank, darkened apartments, crowded shops, boisterous bars, and boxing rings.

Each brother has a chapter in the family saga. As they try to find their path forward, each represents a differing viewpoint on the future of post-war Italian society. Vincenzo has already emotionally detached himself from the family, setting his sights on a comfortable life with Ginetta. Simone (Renato Salvatori) is the boozing, womanizing layabout. Ciro (Max Cartier) is the eager, hardworking one, determined to take part in the new economy. Young Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi) is the observer, trying to make sense of where his place will be. And Rocco is the center around which all that happens to the family will revolve.

It’s Simone and Rocco’s relationship that defines the story, proceeding from jealousy to tragedy. As the weight of the brothers’ predicament descends on the family, the various views of how to proceed into the future emerge.

Listen carefully in particular to the mother’s desires. She felt oppressed and worn down by their hardscrabble farming existence. But that’s her dream, not Rocco’s. He wants only to return to the land, away from city chaos, away from the change that is transforming the new Italy. He’ll sacrifice everything, even his own future, to cling to that ideal and keep his family, even the lost cause Simone, together. Ciro in contrast embraces change, going to school, getting a job at the burgeoning Alfa Romeo plant and making plans to marry.

As we leave the brothers behind, Luca hears out both Rocco and Ciro and he comes to understand them both. He walks off into the bright sunshine, perhaps embracing Ciro’s vision but reminded of Rocco’s burden.

Rocco and His Brothers is at times the proverbial hard watch. Especially for a scene of brutality and rape, but also for the agonizing split between the brothers. We despise Simone’s behavior, and cannot understand Rocco’s. But that’s the intention. Visconti has not set out to tell a pretty story destined for a definitive and happy ending. He’s using the travails of the Parondi family to give Italian viewers a vision of their future, a future where they can find success if only they can discard idealized visions of the past.

In Nino Rota’s musical score you can hear precursors of his masterful compositions for another epic about an Italian family a dozen years hence. But unfortunately that tempts comparisons that illuminate some failings. In the second Godfather film, think back to that scene where young Vito joins his friend for a play. Remember how stagey and exaggerated the acting was? Unfortunately, I often felt the same sense of distraction watching Salvatori’s Simone and Delon’s Rocco.

Salvatori in particular just doesn’t have the gravitas and chops needed to inhabit the thuglike Simone. And Delon, in this early starring role, shows only a hint of the iconic cool he’ll come to typify a few years later in Le Samourai. Their showy and overplayed flourishes often took me out of the moment and reminded me I was watching a movie. But then there was Annie Girardot as Nadia, who by turns is vivacious, then sympathetic, then sarcastically bitter; it is the standout performance of the film.

The themes of Rocco and His Brothers are very much a part of their time, and we can’t expect to sympathize with every character’s actions. But I feel it would have had a deep, emotional, and revelatory impact for Italian audiences of the early 1960s. Today, we can appreciate the thematic elements but are left wishing it could have been maybe just a bit more concise and just a bit more authentically acted.