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In his other famous opus released two years later, “The Leopard”, Visconti will describe the decline of the Sicilian nobility, replaced by an affairist and trivial bourgeoisie. Here, closer to Vittorio de Sica, he is interested in the misery of the people of the Mezzogiorno in the post-war period. Fundamentally rooted in Italian neo-realism, “Rocco and His Brothers” tells an extraordinary family tragedy – reminiscent in some aspects of Coppola’s “The Godfather” – against the backdrop of a rural exodus of a family from southern Italy to the lure of the Lombard capital. This long fresco tells us about the difficulties faced by the members of this family of immigrants from the interior who have fled Basilicata and the psychological changes this causes in them.
The starting point of the story is relatively simple: To escape poverty, a widow and four of her five sons move to Milan, where the fifth has just got engaged to Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale), a middle-class girl. They plan to be accommodated by the in-laws, who refuse for lack of space. They end up in a slum, in the basement of an ABR building.
All the brothers are looking for work: Simone (excellent Renato Salvatori), Rocco (Alain Delon, touched by grace), Ciro and Luca (both more discreet). Simone becomes a boxer at the local club and aims for a professional career. He falls in love with Nadia (bright Annie Girardot), a 25-year-old prostitute who will never love him. She will finally fall in love with his brother Rocco, the same one who will be much more skillful with gloves in hand on the ring, leading Simone, jealous, into a black rage. But Rocco refuses any confrontation with his brother. As such, a terrible scene censored and reintegrated into this new version is the turning point of the film.
However, to reduce “Rocco and his brothers” to this opposition between the two brothers would be to ignore Visconti’s cinematographic mastery. Thus, through the prism of this a priori Manichaean history, the director explores a plurality of social and political themes: the uprooting of a family from the south to the north of Italy, the living conditions of the industrial proletariat, the ambition, family honour and the hope of social elevation. A landscape of violence where the infinite tenderness of one and the bestial brutality of the other are opposed. Failed boxer, unhappy lover, Simone sinks into delinquency and crime: theft, rape, prostitution and murder.
Every time, Rocco covers him and pays for him. In the end, he’s as guilty as his brother. Doesn’t he shout it himself at the end?
Ciro sums up the essential theme of the film’s morality when he explains to Luca that Rocco is a saint, that he forgives everything, always, and that’s exactly what he shouldn’t have done with Simone. I totally share Ciro’s point of view: Rocco is as guilty as Simone, both are linked in the tragedy. Wherever and at all times, in the face of repeated and more and more brutal criminality, forgiveness and tolerance are not the answer; they only make things worse. A lesson that is still on today.
Sublimated by a masterful photography and a perfectly balanced and restored black and white, the film unfolds a succession of photographic frames of extraordinary beauty and complexity (The shots of Salvatori and Girardot in their embrace or Delon and Girardot on the roof of the Duomo of Milan are among the most beautiful of this long film). To make the picture complete, there is added the nostalgia for the abandoned land, the “land of olive trees”, where Rocco dreams of returning.
Only reservation: I remain a little doubtful about the overplaying of the Greek actress who plays the mamma, she comes on much too strong.
In fine, “Rocco and His Brothers” is a very Christian film: “If you get hit on the right cheek, turn the other one again. ” But Visconti shows us at the same time the damage caused by masochistic guilt and by angelism in the face of indiscriminate and bestial violence. Finally, it illustrates the weight of the chains imposed on us by our family origins.
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