This review is republished from Nick Bruno’s blog, The Rain Falls Down on Portlandtown.
A key moment in Luchino Visconti’s (The Leopard) 1960 epic Rocco and His Brothers comes near the end when Rocco (Alain Delon) declares to his family that he dreams of one day returning to their land in Northern Italy. The film tells the story of five brothers who, along with their recently widowed mother, Rosaria (Katina Paxinou), make the transition from a rural setting to the urban environs of Milan. Although Visconti equally divides the film into a chapter per brother, the heart of the picture concerns the destructive rift that develops between Rocco and his brother Simone (Renato Salvatori), a downward spiral that Rocco (and the film itself) seems to believe has come about as a result of the move to Milan.
