Rocco And His Brothers

Wide-ranging family epic from Luchino Visconti, 1960
A before, we have Visconti's wide, deep takes. There is a reticence to these, we do not cut in too often in the longe takes, though do change angle. The images are deep, complicated, full of contrasts. The cinematography is deeply, specially beautiful in this film; panoramas of a city with a wonderful soft transfer from Eureka, as always. The diffusion of the light, even in night scenes, means the blank walls themselves become part of a wonderfully judged, wide, mis-en-scene. As in 'Bellissima', as the film progresses, the emotions ramp up, the camera moves in, to close-ups, by the end. This movement of stages is not immediately noticeable, but fits the dynamic of the piece. One other interesting camera piece is the boxing scene9s); though largely kept still and from a distance, there is some movement in to some very modern, presumably handheld in some way, tight tracking.
Visconti's cinema, here and for us, is a nocelistic cinema. Here we have the nineteenth century realist novel of the family saga (though all close in time). Thomas Mann, who of course Visconti went on to make 'Death in Venice' from, springs to mind. Whay novelistic? The deep, rich stories of each brother, the crossing of points of view, the sheer time and scale of how we get to know each. This is done quite classically, with establishing, often a kind of love interest, develoment and twists, interconnections, climax, and truly epic series of stories coming together. Each series we have, like chapters in a novel, is quite a long one; there is hardly any crosscutting until the big climax (for thematic's sake) very near the end. Also notice the elipses that cover months, even years, between the chronologically contiguent chapters.
This thought of the great social novel is there in the themes, which here I can no more than indicate to. There are themes of class, of country and the city, an economic determinism in place again reminiscent of Mann. Again, it is hard not to go auterist and examine Visconti's attitude. We have the condemnation, anger, of the idiocy of some actions, and yet a deep, deep something, almost a veneration of Delon and other's pure goodness, at times. As in the great realist novels, there is a distance often absent from more subjective traditions. This film is really hugely ambitious in the themes it tackles, and it has universal aspirations (for my mind, largely achieved) for its analysis of a society, a generation even.
At a closer level, we have Delon and Giradot as two centres, who are allotted close-ups even at the start. Their beauty seems to suck the camera in. The case of Giradot in this film is fascinating. Again, I worry about Visconti's treatment; she seems to be seen through the eyes of the men almost exclusively, there is a nasty tendency to blame her, and the one act that is the toughest moment of this film is surely passed over with far too much ease. Giradot's performance and character seems though to burst out of this reduction; her laight, her charisma over the viewer's and the brothers, make her far more than she should, on paper, be. She is perhaps the most interesting character here; one wonders if Visconti could account for this.
The focus on the men though is the structuring element, and one slowly reads the aggression, the frustration, the moments of comreadeship, of these deeply complex and rendered creations. Their is a fatalism, with the shining sheer goodness, and the impossbility, that leads to at once tragedy and melodrama at the end. Not here the calm final sequence of 'The Leopard'. Visconti's scenes can look like the cliches of Italian cinema, but the underlying richness means they can't really be laughed at or dismissed. In thematic and narrative ambition, this film shoots for the moon. It achieves a world, and a deeply powerful one, with its fine images and warm characters.