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6

I hope Simone chokes on his own dick and dies

5

I don't think I've ever hated a fictional character more than I hate Simone.

7

A star for each brother

Rocco
Vincenzo
Ciro
Luca
and another one for Rocco

6

Filmed in 1960, at a peculiar moment in Italian history: the miracolo economico, the economic miracle that reshaped the country’s postwar foundations, transforming a largely agrarian nation into an urban and industrial society. What Visconti stages here isn’t just a family drama — it’s a moral anatomy of a people torn between past and future, between soil and cement, south and north — literally.

The Parondi family, leaving rural Lucania in search of a better life in Milan, embodies the journey of thousands of southern Italians who, throughout the 1950s, migrated to the industrial centers of the north in pursuit of work and dignity. But instead of progress, they encountered alienation, prejudice, and a brutal form of modernity. It’s worth…

7

The grand tragedy at the heart of it all the inability to truly see one another, yet at the same time the extraordinary beauty of it the desire to do so. Rocco and his brothers (and his mother, and his lover) each hold a differing outlook on life and how to survive its currents, each affected by where those currents took them and what rocks they crashed into. The bond holding them together is that of family, that family comes first because what else do they have? Food is scarce, money is tight, there is no where else to go without severing what little bonds they have left. And yet they cannot see each other. The eldest are steadfast, swimming…

2

they wouldn't last a day in quarantine together

3

Luchino Visconti’s epic melodrama of social migration and moral decay was first released in 1960, when it was met with great scandal (a prosecutor threatened to charge the director with “disseminating an obscene object”) and even greater success. Today, distanced from ridiculous controversy and dislocated from the provincial politics that drive its story, this immaculately restored classic of post-WWII Italian cinema often feels like a new experience altogether.

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Review by Graham ★★★★½ Liked

A film about the intricacies of family relationships that illustrates how despite blood being thicker than water, our obligation to family can often steer us towards decisions that are not in our best interests. Luchino Visconti's beautiful neorealist 60's gem also uses class divide as a theme throughout.

Mama Mia! What a terrific part Mrs. Parondi is. In fact, the film is full of larger than life characters. Interestingly though, in a movie that is as stereotypically Italian as they come, four of its biggest stars are French (Alain Delon and Annie Girardot) or Greek (Spiros Focás and Katina Paxinou). Many of the voices were overdubbed into the final cut of the film to retain the 'Italiano' feel of the…

Review by Dante ★★★★★

The yassification of Raging Bull

6

The varied personalities of the brothers are no coincidence since Visconti's episodic structure has the specific purpose of displaying those social strata that form part of everyday's conflicts under the smart pretext of "we are all brothers; our society is a massive family". Its roots can be appreciated in the new wave of American directors of the 70s, most predominantly Scorsese, yet this powerful epic has not quite been sured in both its intentions and its honest, tragic nature. A powerful statement even for today's standards.

98/100

P.S. Hunt down the three-hour version. There is a reason for that.

2

The opulent folds of cinematography only go so far with me when they're cloaking such contrived and reactionary morality-tale flesh. The rise and fall of the house Parondi is a visually beautiful, intermittently engaging but ultimately barren experience.

Rocco, his mother and brothers Simone, Ciro and Luca migrate from South Italy to Milan in the North to their elder brother Vicenzo. Initially penniless, they're forced to stay in insalubrious digs until the brothers can find work. All seems to be going well as Simone shows early promise as a boxer and finds love with a local girl called Nadia. Rocco watches on benevolently from the shadows, but he's destined to take Simone's job and his girl (though by happenstance…

3

Lots to say here about the major theme of the movie — the struggle to integrate a traditional way of living with the demands and conditions of industrial modernity — but for now I just want to say that Simone is a huge piece of shit.