Friday | June 15, 2018 7:00 pm

Rocco and His Brothers
(Rocco e i suoi fratelli)

Screening on Film

Directed by Luchino Visconti.
With Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot.
Italy/France, 1960, 35mm, black & white, 145 min.
Print source: HFA

Rocco and His Brothers is a devotional work, a pious tragedy set in Visconti’s ancestral home. The narrative follows a migrant family from southern Italy travelling north for better economic prospects. The Milan Cathedral towers above their aspirations, loves, successes and downfall. Alain Delon casts a saintly figure as the title character who rises to become a prizefighter at the expense of his relationship with his apish brother Simone (the Esau to Delon’s Jacob). From the minor miracles—the southern family’s first glimpse of snow, the steam of the modern laundromat, the legendary Milanese fog—to the transcendent climax, in Rocco Visconti perfects the dreamy spirit of White Nights within the space of Catholic mysticism.