Directed by Luchino Visconti • 1960 • Italy
Starring Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, Renato Salvatori
Looking for opportunity, five brothers move north with their mother to Milan. There, Simone and Rocco find fame, in the boxing ring, and love, in the same woman. Jealousy mounts, blood is shed, and a striving family faces self-destruction in this incisive, sensuous, emotionally bruising masterwork from director Luchino Visconti. With an operatic Nino Rota score and Giuseppe Rotunno’s glimmering, on-location cinematography, ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS “represents the artistic apotheosis of Italian neorealism,” says A.O. Scott of the “New York Times.” Drawing from Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann, Visconti arranges his signature themes—modernity, class tension, familial discord—across an epic canvas that directly influenced later Italian-American sagas by Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.
Up Next in Italian Neorealism
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Girl in the Window
Directed by Luciano Emmer • 1961 • Italy, France
Starring Lino Ventura, Magali Noël, Marina VladyLuciano Emmer, one of the unsung figures of the neorealist movement, directs this slice-of-life immigrant’s tale cowritten by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Beginning with a visceral look at the harsh working...
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Salvatore Giuliano
Directed by Francesco Rosi • 1962 • Italy
July 5, 1950--Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano's bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon the scene, hoping to crack open the true story behind ...
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Il posto
Directed by Ermanno Olmi • 1961 • Italy
Starring Sandro Panseri, Loredana DettoWhen young Domenico (Sandro Panseri) ventures from the small village of Meda to Milan in search of employment, he finds himself on the bottom rung of the bureaucratic ladder in a huge, faceless company. The prospects...
