Chased by poverty, a widow Rosary and her four sons arrive to Milan to look for a brighter tomorrow. Rocco and Simon soon begin boxing and figure out how to win and defend themselves. The brothers have no idea that their biggest fight is the one against their weaknesses, societal superstition and fear to disobey traditions. The masterful story follows traditions of ancient Greece tragedy while leaping over its time and foreseeing the collapse of traditional family.
About the film
Details
- Running time
- 2 hr. 50 min.
- Country, year
- Italy, France, 1960
- Genre
- Drama
- Language
- Italian
- Subtitles
- Lithuanian
- Age rating
- N-16
Credits
- Director
- Luchino Visconti
- Screenplay
- Luchino Visconti, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, Enrico Medioli
- Cinematography
- Giuseppe Rotunno
- Music
- Nino Rota
- Cast
- Alain Delon, Renato Savatori, Annie Girardot, Katina Paxinou, Alessandra Panaro
- More information
- www.imdb.com
Festivals and awards
- Venice Film Festival
Director
Luchino Visconti
The director was a great connoisseur of literature, which is why Visconti’s films cannot be completely understood without first learning the “literature lessons” that were important to him.For his whole life, he dreamt of adapting Search of Lost Time for the screen but it never came to fruition.The time dimension was important to him:Visconti knew how to materialise the flow of time in his films - just look at, say, the finale of Death in Venice.
Visconti’s debut in cinema was unique, as it became a prelude to a new movement in cinema called neorealism, which soon rejuvenated film throughout the world.The Obsession (Ossessione), created in 1942 was a free-form adaptation of a novel by an American writer James M. Caine published in 1934, called The Postman Always Rings Twice.
