Rocco and His Brothers

After the death of his father, Rocco Parondi, one of the five sons of a poor rural Italian family, travels north from Lucania to join his older brother Vincenzo in Milan, led by the matriarch Rosaria. She is the "hand to which the five fingers belong," and she has a powerful influence on her sons. Presented in five distinct sections, the film weaves the story of the five brothers Vincenzo, Simone, Rocco, Ciro and Luca Parondi as each of them adapts to his new life in the city.

Vincenzo, the eldest brother, is already living in Milan when his mother and brothers come to join him expecting to move in with him. An initial scene ensues between the Parondi family and Vincenzo's fiancée Ginetta's family, and the whole Parondi family moves in together. Despite early friction between Rosaria and Ginetta, he soon gets married and starts a family of his own. After settling down, Vincenzo doesn't interact much with the Parondi brothers.

Simone, the second brother, struggles to adapt to urban life. He becomes attracted to a prostitute named Nadia, who urges him to pursue a career in boxing, which his mother also encourages, as a fast way to reach fame and wealth. Nadia, after initially pursuing Vincenzo only to find him happy in his new family life, turns her interest to Simone. Simone falls in love with Nadia and demands far more than a casual relationship, but she rejects him.

Rocco, the third brother, leaves to complete military service in Turin and meets Nadia, who has just been released from prison for prostitution. His innocence and purity of heart ignites her to give up her way of life and enter an exclusive relationship with him. When Simone learns of this, he attacks Nadia and Rocco with a gang of friends and rapes Nadia to "teach Rocco a lesson". Rocco subsequently sacrifices his relationship with Nadia, telling her that he did not realize how much their relationship hurt his brother. Rocco insists that Nadia return to Simone, and she reluctantly complies.

Ciro, the second-youngest brother, perhaps by observing the trials of Simone and Rocco, decides to learn from their mistakes and mimic his brother Vincenzo. Unlike Vincenzo, Ciro still lives with his mother and participates in family matters. To that end, Ciro finds steady work in Milan at an automobile factory and becomes engaged to a local woman from a good family.

Rocco often acts to preserve the well-being of family members at some cost to his own happiness. He continues a boxing career without enjoying it to provide for his family and he covers for Simone in a myriad of ways, such as returning an expensive brooch that Simone stole from Rocco's boss. After Simone loses the ability to compete as a boxer, because of his obsession with Nadia, his alcoholism, and dissolute lifestyle, Rocco agrees to sign a long term boxing contract in order to pay back money that Simone squandered and cannot repay. While Rocco fights and wins a championship bout, Simone kills Nadia in a jealous rage when she returns to prostitution and refuses to return to him.

As the family celebrates Rocco's victory, he shares an anecdote about masons, who, at the start of erecting a building, sacrifice a brick by throwing it into the shadow of the first passerby to ensure the structure will be sound and endure. Rocco's own habit of sacrificing his money and well-being can be likewise analogized, as attempts to preserve his family after their upheaval from country life. Simone arrives at the apartment and confesses to Nadia's murder. Despite his anguish, Rocco tries to protect Simone, but Ciro refuses to go along and leaves to turn Simone in to the police.

The youngest brother, Luca, does little but watch quietly in the background most of the time. By the end of the film he wants to return with Rocco to the south, despite spending the least time in southern Italy before the family moved to Milan. In one of the last scenes Ciro speaks to Luca outside his factory and tells him that Rocco won't return there, though he might, but will not find the south the same under the pressure of inevitable progress, and, though many people fear a changing world, he does not and believes that Luca will benefit from the changes.

Sources:[1]

Rocco and His Brothers was filmed in Milan during the Spring of 1960. Locations included Piazza del Duomo, the Milan Cathedral, and the Milano Centrale railway station. Other scenes were shot in Rome, Bellagio, and Civitavecchia. Renato Salvatori (Simone) and Annie Girardot (Nadia) romantically eloped during filming, and married two years later.

The production was beset by multiple setbacks. Luchino Visconti was denied multiple filming permits to locations that had been previously approved, and production was shut down on the orders after provincial premier Adrio Casati learned that the climactic murder scene would be filmed in a large recreational area in Idroscalo.[5] Casati claimed it was due to an "inopportune resemblance to reality" of the scene to be shot to the recent murder of a young prostitute in the area. Visconti was forced to move shooting to Lazio, with the scene instead filmed at Lago di Fondi.

During post-production, Visconti re-dubbed and re-edited the film to change the characters' names from "Pafundi" to "Parondi." A local judge with the same name had threatened to sue the producers, under the mistaken belief that the film was about him.[5]

The German artist collective Rocco und seine Brüder[18] take their name from the film.

• Rocco and His Brothers at IMDb
• Rocco and His Brothers at the TCM Movie Database
• Rocco and His Brothers at AllMovie
• Rocco and His Brothers at Rotten Tomatoes
• Rocco and His Brothers at DVD Beaver (includes images).
• Rocco and His Brothers – trailer on YouTube
• Palestra Visconti – one of the movie's location in Milan