Rocco and His Brothers

Widowed Rosaria Parondi leaves her native village in southern Italy with four of her sons and settles in Milan, where her eldest, Vincenzo, has already been living. The family shares cramped lodgings and the brothers take whatever work they can find, from construction sites to the boxing ring, as each tries to secure a foothold in the city. Tensions surface when Simone, the most volatile of the brothers, becomes involved with Nadia, a young woman working as a prostitute. When Nadia instead turns her attention to his quieter brother Rocco, the rivalry between the two men turns destructive, threatening to pull the family apart.

Luchino Visconti directed, and wrote the screenplay with Suso Cecchi d'Amico and Massimo Franciosa. Goffredo Lombardo produced the Italian-French co-production for Titanus and Les Films Marceau. The sixth of the fifteen features Visconti directed, it followed White Nights and preceded Boccaccio '70. Alain Delon and Renato Salvatori play Rocco and Simone, with Annie Girardot as Nadia, Katina Paxinou as Rosaria, and Spiros Focás as Vincenzo among a credited cast of thirty-two. Running just under three hours, the film draws strong marks from viewers, holding an 8.2 out of 10 on IMDb from around 26,000 votes and an 8 on TMDB from a much smaller base of roughly 680. A critics' rating of 8.7 out of 10 from thirty-three reviews places it somewhat above those audience scores.