Having recently been uprooted to Milan, Rocco (Alain Delon) and his four brothers each look for a new way in life when a prostitute (Annie Girardot) comes between Rocco and his brother Simone (Renato Salvatori).Censors demanded that four scenes be cut or the film would be confiscated and the producer prosecuted; however, after negotiations, producer Goffredo Lombardo agreed to darken the critical scenes within the film with filters; two of these darkened scenes were omitted entirely.This attempt at censorship may be the most interesting part of the film. Yes, it is celebrated. Yes, Roger Ebert loved it. And it is certainly worthy of praise. But it does run long and is not overly interesting. A great film from a technical standpoint, but not particularly entertaining.

Perhaps the greatest (or just only) neo-realistic soap opera? Neopra! Actually, it's operatic quality is what is great for it, and you can either dig into it or you can't. I did, but it takes some adjusting from those earlier neo-realistic scenes in the movie. It's like a fusion of Visconti's more grounded, Earthy material in his 1947 film La Terra Trema and the intense passion of his other more "actual" operatic movies like The Leopard and Senso, and the tragic dimensions (if not the restraint) of The White Nights.It has it all, though it's not a perfect film. It's messy and is so into its Italian-dramatic states that you can almost feel the theater shake with the vibrations of the Brothers' Mother crying and screaming. But it's got intense passion and is true to its high-stakes emotional nature. Only a few scenes really stand out as dated. Its violence is also quite vivid for a movie 50 years old; it got censored pretty much everywhere on original release, and the print I saw by chance at a revival house was "Presented" by Martin Scorsese. So it goes. Oh, and Alain Delon is wonderful, in case you were wondering.

Unlike others, including Roger Ebert, I see "Rocco and His Brothers" as a devastating condemnation of traditional Italian peasant family values. In the U.S. only slavery compares to what the old peasant classes of Europe experienced --legally free but entrenched in centuries of oppression, rural poverty and ignorance. In Italy, the film tells us, these conditions gave rise to the kind of loyalty that values family ties above everything, including the law, moral principles, even individual human life.These are the "family values" that when extended to the neighborhood produce the mafia (then at its apex in 1960). And when extended nationally produce Fascism. Individuals in Rocco's family are enslaved and held down by these values. The film isn't about good and bad people, or about idyllic countryside versus evil city. Ciro, the everyman hero of the story, albeit a small role, reflects at the end that Rocco will not survive in the country either. The film is a reflection on tragedy awaiting both good and bad who cling to old, destructive values. If you're by nature not so good, these values will make you worse. If you're a good person, they'll lead you to destroy yourself and others.When the family first moves to Milan, two passsers-by comment on them: "old country." Viewers at the time most likely understood old and new as pre- and post WWII. From the beginning the film sets up a dichotomy between old and new: Rocco's family's values amid the unending new construction projects in the film.Look at Mama, bless her heart, that unsentimental image of what poverty and ignorance hath wrought. She brings her five sons to Milano –why? As she says, so they can get rich, and she can walk down a big city street hearing herself called "Signora." She doesn't care how they get rich --killed or maimed in the boxing ring (Simone may have been brain damaged there –- Mama still wants him to go back and wants Rocco to box also), theft, whatever. Then there's her rejection of Vincenzo, the eldest, ostensibly because of his accidental baby, but actually because he's now got a wife and baby to support instead of her, so obsessed is she with financial security (which self-centeredness she justifies as "keeping the family together"). No one gets a life of his own in Mama's view. She won't even go to the christening of her first grandchild, of whom she's jealous. Rocco's in the army. Does Mama care about his life there? Her letter asks for more money, although he's living on a practically non existent stipend. Children exist for the support and care of their parents, or they don't exist at all.Simone and Rocco, yin and yang in this destructive universe, are photographed together in close physical contact more often than not: Simone, self centered emblem of old machismo, and Rocco, sacrificing himself and others in the name of family, in his mental and spiritual superiority more destructive than Simone. They're two sides of the same coin, like all opposites. (A wonderful symbol of Marx's dialectic). It's "Rocco and His Brothers" because Rocco is the guiding light leading his brothers down the wrong path for the right reasons. Ciro, rejecting these old values, striving to better himself, and Luca, too young to be completely imbued with them, are the positive lights to a possibly better future.

"Rocco e Il Suoi Fratelli" is an Italian language film created in the 70's. It tells the story of a southern Italian family of four brothers and their widowed mother. Although the beginning has that "boring-black-and-white" feel that we have come to expect from old cinema, the middle and the end of the film sandwich have me convinced that this movie has one of the most abruptly dramatic story lines that I have experienced. If it hadn't been a class assignment, I would have probably turned it off within the first thirty minutes. However, seeing as I had to watch the whole film, I was able to witness the sudden change in boring factor. Quickly spiraling into heavy yet "classically" Italian dramatic-ism, the family betrayal, self-destructive characters, drunken brawling, and sexual escapades of the various characters seem to redeem the general "watch-ability." Although I do admit the film is more than decent, it seems native Italian language speakers appreciate the movie more than I did. Advice: resist initial urge to give up on the movie, it gets good!