08/21/2002 Entry:
"Rocco And His Brothers - Luchino Visconti (1960)"

I had never heard of this film by Italian director Luchino Visconti and somehow didn't notice it in the Film Center's calendar for this month when I went through it. After reading a blurb in The Onion's Picks section I decided to check it out.

Martin Scorcese sponsored the restoration of Rocco And His Brothers, and its easy to see why. You can feel this movie flowing through many of his films, most notably Mean Streets and Raging Bull. Shot in gritty b&w, the film covers the lives of five brothers growing up on the streets of Milan. They don't live on the streets, but they do grow up there. The sense of streetwise young punks with the bond of family is what really carries through from this film to Mean Streets. I have read that Scorcese wanted to make the film of what it was like growing up, but there was obviously some inspiration here in terms of mood mostly. Stylistically, I think they are fairly different (although I've only seen Mean Streets once and it was a while ago.) But the whole mood, the poor cigarette-smoking Italian toughs getting into trouble, comes through in spades.

At three hours, the film clocked in a little long. Its divided up into five chapters - one for each of the brothers - but at least half the film is taken up covering the interactions between Rocco and Simone. These sections also seemed the longest becuse of their focus on Simone and his treatment of his girlfriend Nadia, a former prostitute who herself does nothing wrong but ends up suffering horribly at Simone's hands. The rape scene in particular was difficult to take, more for the circumstances and motivations behind it than the act itself, whih takes place offscreen fairly quietly by today's standards. Her downward slide follows Simone's, and by the time he kills her you almost feel like its the best thing that could have happened (which is the point I'm sure.) So much misery was pretty hard to take though, and this is from a guy who loves Magnolia. By the time Cipro steps up and does the right thing, you feel like they should all be locked up. Rocco tries to come off as a backwards George Bailey-type always putting his own needs aside to try and help his brother, but at some point I just felt like the best thing that could be done is for him to tell his Simone to fuck off and beat the shit out of him. The rest of the brother's stories are really ancillary to this central thread of Simone and Rocco, used either to setup or conclude that story.

Stylistically I didn't really notice much. The b&w photography was quite nice, and a lot of the shots enhanced the mood of the film quite well. This is paritcularly true during the nighttime sequence involving Rocco, Simone and Nadia, as well as the sequence with Rocco and Nadia on the roof of a church. That was really the showpiece section for me. A lot of great editing and performances. The overhead shot as she runs away leaving Rocco in the middle of that roof all alone was really great. This definitely left me interested to see more Visconti films, although I can only hope that the rest aren't quite as heavy.