Birthday of Rocco and His Brothers
On September 6, 1960, the premiere of Luchino Visconti's film "Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers)" took place at the Venice International Film Festival.
Luchino Visconti himself, Suso Cecchi D'Amico, with whom Visconti wrote the scripts for three previous films, and also the famous Italian writer Vasco Pratolini took part in the creation of the film's script. The script was inspired by three works: the short story by Giovanni Testori "Il ponte della Ghisolfa", published in 1958, the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, and the novel "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose work Visconti was imbued with in the process of working on the previous film - "Le notti bianche" (1957).
The shooting of the film was made in the spring of 1960 and was accompanied by great difficulties. The authorities, who considered the film's script to be immoral and rife with violent scenes, created barriers to filming in Visconti's preferred locations, which forced the crew to change locations regularly. When the film, despite all the difficulties, was nevertheless completed, the censorship demanded the removal of 4 scenes from the film, which, according to the creators of the picture, were of key importance, but, according to the censors, contained obscenities. The producer of the picture, Goffredo Lombardo, had to compromise and cut 2 scenes from the film, and darken the other two.
Another problem arose when the original name of the fictional family in the film, Pafundi, became known to a certain high-ranking servant of Themis, who also bore this surname. Rumors had reached him that the film that had just been shot contained all sorts of nastiness, and he declared that if the film tarnished his name with disgrace when it hit theaters, he would sue the creators of the picture. The crew had to repeat the dubbing so that instead of "Pafundi" in the film, "Parondi" sounded. In addition, they had to hastily change advertising posters, which featured the name Pafundi.
The film "Rocco and His Brothers" was nominated for the main prize of the festival - the Golden Lion. But the jury of the film festival, chaired by the French screenwriter Marcel Achard, gave preference to the French film "Le passage du Rhin (Tomorrow Is My Turn)". Let's not throw stones into the garden of this French film and theater figure, because two years before that he headed the jury of the Cannes Film Festival, which awarded the victory to Mikhail Kalatozov's film "The Cranes Are Flying". In addition, Luchino Visconti's film did not remain without an award from this festival: it was awarded the Special Jury Prize. By the way, the jury of the 1960 Venice Film Festival included the great Soviet film director Sergei Bondarchuk.
Luchino Visconti's film "Rocco and His Brothers" was not the only nominee for the Golden Lion, later recognized as a masterpiece of world cinema, but was left without the main prize of the festival. At least two other films have found themselves in the same position: the American film "The Apartment" by Billy Wilder and the Japanese film "Ningen no jôken I 人間の條件 I (The Human Condition I: No Greater Love)" by Masaki Kobayashi. But the Japanese film also won the Pasinetti Prize.
The next year, 1961, the film "Rocco and His Brothers" was awarded the Italian David di Donatello Prize (tied with Luigi Comencini's film "Tutti a casa (Everybody Go Home!)". And in 1962, Luchino Visconti's film received the Danish Bodil Film Award in the category Best European Film.
In 1962, "Rocco and His Brothers" was nominated for the British BAFTA Film Award for Best Film from any Source. But the British Film Academy decided to award its prize to the Soviet film "Баллада о солдате (Ballad of a Soldier)" by Grigory Chukhrai and the American film "The Hustler" by Robert Rossen. The American film "Judgment at Nuremberg" by Stanley Kramer, the French film "Le Trou" by Jacques Becker, the Indian film "Apur Sansar অপুর সংসার (The World of Apu)" by Satyajit Ray and others made up the company of relative "losers" to Luchino Visconti's film.
Most critics, though not all, were very enthusiastic about the film. Even the eternally squeamish and malicious film critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times literally condescended to praise, putting Visconti's film on a par with the American film "Grapes of Wrath" by John Ford, as well as with the great Greek tragedies, and calling it "A fine Italian film...garlanded with laurels that are quite as appropriate in this context as they are richly deserved."
But the role of Bosley Crowther was taken on by Pauline Kael, a famous American film critic, who wrote in her review: "Luchino Visconti’s strange sprawling epic, from 1960, is a flamboyant melodrama ... more like a hollow, spectacular version of a Warners movie of the thirties ..., but the characters aren’t as vivid and individualized as the Warners actors made them." It is likely that such a derogatory assessment of Visconti's film masterpiece is due to the fact that the critic was too lazy to get the full version of the film and limited herself to watching the castrated American version. American censorship, before the picture was released on the American screen, cut out another half an hour of screen time from it.
In the Soviet Union, the film "Rocco and His Brothers" by Luchino Visconti was released in cinemas in 1962. It is difficult to say in what form this film came out, but judging by the fact that it had restrictions "Children under 16 are not allowed", no serious cuts were made. Due to age restrictions, I could not watch this film in the 60s. Luckily for fans of real cinema, the original negative of the film has been completely preserved, and after its screening at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, a restored version on DVD was released, which has a full 177-minute length.
Recognized guru of American film criticism Roger Ebert included this film in his list of "Great Movies" and wrote: "The experience of watching "Rocco and His Brothers" is rather overwhelming. So much happens, at such intensity and complexity, with such an outpouring of emotion, that we do feel we're witnessing an opera. Like many operas, it has too much melodrama in too little time. That can be exhausting but it can be exhilarating as well." Martin Scorsese included the film in his list of "35 Foreign Films You Must See Before You Die", while Francis Ford Coppola cited "Rocco and His Brothers" as an inspiration for his "The Godfather".
In Italy, over 10 million moviegoers, or more than 20% of the population, watched Rocco and His Brothers in the first year of its screening. Thanks to this, the film took third place in the Italian box office in 1960. The rating of the film by modern moviegoers can be characterized by the following figures: 74% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film a score of 8 to 10. At the same time, 23% of users gave the film a "ten".
With that said, Luchino Visconti's "Rocco and His Brothers"'s rating according to FilmGourmand version was 9,227, which allowed it to take 120th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
