Rocco And His Brothers Details

Neorealism meets soap-style melodrama in this episodic family saga. A grimly naturalistic subject — peasant family from southern Italy moves to the corrupting urban jungle of Milan — gets the grand operatic treatment from Luchino Visconti whose initial restraint should have been maintained throughout. Instead, he goes for empty flourishes of over-the-top despair with which Alain Delon, as the self-sacrificing Rocco, seems somewhat uncomfortable. A long haul at nearly three hours, but worth seeing for Renato Salvatori as the brutish elder brother and the accomplished black-and-white photography of Giuseppe Rotunno.

The last gasp of the neo-realist spirit in Visconti's work, Rocco chronicles at length the misfortunes that befall an... read more on Time Out