Rocco and His Brothers

Rocco and His Brothers aka "Rocco e i suo fratelli" (Luchino Visconti, 1960) The Parondi family moves up to Northern Italy from the country and they find simultaneous success and tragedy in the city.

 

It's the immigrant's story: they move to make a better life and the choices they make are wholly determined by their conditions. The widow Parondi (Katina Paxinou) moves her brood to Milano, where eldest son Vincenzo (Spiros Focás) is guest of honor at an engagement party for his intended, Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale). The family swoops in and North/South prejudices erupt and break up the party. The worst news for Vincenzo is that, as eldest, he has to provide for them and arranges a short term rental that he plans to break the lease on, so they can then be kicked out and depend on government housing. From there, the brothers must find work and make a life for themselves.

But it's tough to be a saint in the city. The film is divided into chapters for each brother, starting with Vincenzo, then the mercurial Simone (Renato Salvatori), good-hearted Rocco (Alain Delon), practical Ciro (Max Cartier) and the innocent Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi) who looks up to them all. Simone and Rocco take the fast money way out, going into the traditional immigrant sport—boxing—and its underworld of shady characters, Ciro gets an auto-workers job, while Vince ignores his mother's objections, marries Ginetta and moves out. Each brother, in turn, finds their escape from family, even Rocco whose mission seems to be to keep the family intact. The brothers are wholly unprepared for the city and their separate ways of dealing leads to internal conflict and strife, with the women in their lives often being the ones chewed up in their machinations.

It's not just the 3-hour length and terrific Nino Rota score that suggest it, but you look at Visconti's direction of Rocco and His Brothers and you see the playbook Francis Ford Coppola used for The Godfather: the half-lit sets, the faces emerging from darkness, the "communal" shots where a lot happens in long takes of activity, the simultaneous staging of triumph and tragedy, and the bursts of violence communicated with a minute pre-echo of dread. That Rocco matches so many of The Godfather's themes—the passing of old traditions in modern times, the splintering of the family, the immigrant's plight, and the futility of good intentions—one can see how film-buff Coppola was inspired to make a silk purse out of Mario Puzo's best-selling sow's ear.

The Leopard

The Leopard aka Il Gattopardo (Luchino Visconti, 1963)

Epic.

Extraordinarily epic.

Exquisite three hour film (that is, if you watch the original Italian, rather than the edited, dubbed American version*) of the change-over from one generation of Italian artistocracy to one with fewer ties to the past, amidst a changing landscape that will ultimately change fortunes. Don Salina (Burt Lancaster) is a prince of the old lineage observing the change that will ultimately overthrow the government and his rights to power, even as he sees the old ways and traditions begin to erode in the rise of his nephew Tancredi Falconeri (Alain Delon) who chooses to marry below his station to the manipulative Angelica (Claudia Cardinale). In one of the many allusions to the animal kingdom, Don Salina fears that his generation of leopards is being handed over to jackals.

In its timeline and its scope, it could be labeled the Italian Gone With the Wind. Certainly the care and attention to detail that director Visconti, Director of Photography Giuseppe Rotunno, and Production Designer Mario Garbuglia brought to bare can be compared to the extravagance of the American epic. But it's a smarter, richer film—a far better film—with layered subtleties that GWTW never aspired to.

Visconti had a special affinity for the material. Like the author of the original novel, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the director was born to the aristocracy. He knew its joys and pleasures and tastes, and he follows Lampedusa's celebration of that life in its recognition. But Visconti became a Marxist, so he looks at the excesses and hypocrises with less sentiment than Lampedusa does. But, he also acknowledges that change ultimately doesn't change much where fortunes are involved.

Contained here are some of the beautiful images that Visconti, Rotunno, and Garbuglia composed, rich in color and detail like fine paintings. But they're in motion and filled with life and portent and commentary.
I've seen The Leopard only once. Its beauties compel further viewings with which more of the complexities of the work will become apparent. One can't wait to get started.

Films like The Leopard are why one falls in love with the medium in the first place.

* Sydney Pollack supervised the dubbed version, and even he acknowledged it hurt the movie. One of the odd things about it is Lancaster's performance: He's actually better dubbed in Italian with a different, gruffer voice, rather than the soft, smokey baritone of his own voice. In fact, the combination of Lancaster's screen-work and substituted voice combine to make the greatest performance he never gave!