Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

elvircorhodzic ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is a crime drama about the struggle of a poor Italian family from the South with an unknown and "modern" city life. This family drama is full of emotional turmoils and tragic upheavals.The four sons of a poor rural Italian family from the South travel with their mother to join their oldest brother in Milan. Each of the five brothers must adjust to a new life in the big city. Their mother is a strong bond that connects them. However, it is difficult to be a harmonious family in the big city. A beautiful prostitute is a cause of discord in their family...Every new experience in the lives of these people is a kind of incident. The protagonists are not able to change their lives. The family is what makes life. Life without the family does not make sense. This is a realistic view of a bitter life, which have gradually extinguished. Emotions are not consistent with the nature of some of the protagonists. Therefore, strong outbursts of emotions are a little bit grotesque. Jealousy, devotion to family or an unrequited love are completely normal life situations. In this case, these are incurable life's wounds. Emotionalism and realism are so intertwined that it is impossible to draw a clear line in some key scenes. Therefore, certain events in this film can not be called a life experience, more a tragedy. The atmosphere is obscured. It is a reflection of a life in the fog, without a clear future. Some scenes are truly shocking. Their significance is even greater, because, human spirit is excommunicated through these scenes.Alain Delon as Rocco Parondi is a loyal, generous and naive young man. He carries a burden of deep pain and family responsibilities on his shoulders. A character, who is trying to find the best in people. His performance has certainly captured the hearts of many viewers.Annie Girardot as Nadia has offered a great performance. A young and beautiful prostitute is torn between two philosophies of life. However, she is not able to choose between a false urban hedonism and true love. Others have chosen for her. It is a tragedy of her character. Renato Salvatori as Simone Parondi is a restless and depressed loafer. A violent man, who can not settle down. The big city is full of good opportunities, but some of them may be a great challenge for an inexperienced young man.Their support are Katina Paxinou (Rosaria Parondi) as a hysterical and helpless mother, Max Cartier (Ciro Parondi) is a kind of voice of reason, Spiros Focás (Vincenzo Parondi) is a quiet and calm oldest brother and Claudia Cardinale (Ginetta) is his emotional wife.This is a dynamic story about members of Parondi family which is falling apart under an influence of crime, mutual misunderstanding and superstition.

MisterWhiplash 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.

Cosmoeticadotcom Aside from its great portrayal of family life (and, via Rocco, all the hypocrisies and evils therein), the film is also great study in the effects of World War Two on rejiggering the Italian lifestyle, especially with expanded urbanization. In the end, the three older brothers cannot deal with the move from the pastoral life of their youth. Ciro, who is easily the most ethically grounded brother (despite Rocco's constantly being called saintly), can do so, and the film ends with the jury out on young Luca. This is heightened by the fact that we are not shown any images, within the film, of the family's rural roots- not domestic nor geographic. It, as the past always is, is another country. But, many poor critics have mistakenly called the film a 'tragedy,' when it clearly is not, for a tragedy demands a sense of grandeur or greatness, and there are no such people in this film. Instead, Rocco And His Brothers shows us dirt poor 'real' people scraping to survive (in stark contrast to Visconti's campier melodramas on the rich and powerful), and one of the consequences of survival is that only the fittest make it. Thus, Nadia, Simone, and one suspects Rocco, are doomed. But this fact is far more related to the film's Neo-Realist roots than its melodramatic faux 'tragedy.' And that all this is done so deftly, with an economy of narrative setup, is a testament to both the writing and acting in selling what could be a really bad cliché.Rocco And His Brothers is a great film, which only deepens upon successive viewings (in meaning and complexity) just as its nominal successor (Hannah And Her Sisters) was a quarter century later, but for the same reason, achieved by different means: it takes one into another (past) time and era seamlessly- making any inquiry into what mis-en-scene is seem silly; and in doing so proves it is timeless. And that is usually never too far from greatness.

A. Meyer 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.