mmacklem wrote:<<Spoiler alert>>
I recently saw Rocco and His Brothers for the first time on Monday, and afterwards, I was bothered by something about it and was having a hard time putting together exactly what it was. So I read a bunch of reviews and articles, which for the most part did not help in isolating my problem. After much thought, what I ended up coming up with was the following...
The movie follows the main family, with Rocco and Simone being the extreme points and the other three brothers sort of filling in gaps in the familial spectrum. With the separate chapters for each brother, we see their individual storylines develop and intersect, with the main scene being the rape of Nadia and the fight between Simon and Rocco.
My big problem was that scene, and the treatment of the character of Nadia before and after. Beforehand, she seemed treated as a main character, not one of the brothers but with her own storyline that happened to intersect with the storylines of the others. Her character was well-developed from the screenplay and the performance of Annie Girardot.
However, it seemed as though the rape scene and the ensuing fight seemed to be almost entirely focussed on Simone and Rocco, and treated Nadia as existing outside of the main story, as though the conflict in this scene was entirely about the two brothers, despite the obvious harm done to her. And the movie did not feel as though it knew what exactly to do with her character afterwards, despite the obvious change in her lifestyle and actions. I understand that both Rocco and Simone mistreat her badly in different ways, in part because they each seem to look past her: Simone sees his own needs, and Rocco sees his brother's obvious pain. But my problem is that the movie seems to share their perspective, seeing her character entirely in relation to the conflict between the brothers, despite the effective character development at the beginning of the movie. And the fact that the change in the film's perspective is at the rape scene seems problematic to me, almost as though after the rape the movie itself devalues her character. And this perspective obviously raises flags.
As I mentioned at the outset, the movie itself blew me away, and I was impressed and amazed at the performances (despite Delon's terrible boxing) and the storyline. But still, something didn't quite feel right at the end, and I wanted to find someone else who saw it to see if they could help me rectify the two responses.
Any thoughts?
I believe I've mentioned before that I wasn't very impressed with
Rocco and his Brothers. When I first watched the film, I was bothered by the exact point that you bring up: that the film oddly focusses on the brothers' perspective, as though sympathizing with them, in spite of the atrociousness of their actions. While this still bothers me about the film, there was something that bothered me about the film as a whole, which I came to understand later.
While the film is fine at a certain level--it is well-acted, in the mainstream, professional sense; it is nicely photographed; the plot is fairly compelling; etc.--it is also a tremendous letdown from such a masterful director. Luchino Visconti was essentially responsible for bringing neorealism into actuality, and he also constructed a film that was essentially the height of the movement:
La Terra Trema. He had perfected more than any other director the process of filming non-actors and constructing a film out of unperformed performances. He helped, as much as Rossellini, De Sica, et al, to define an idea that cinema could be more than theatrical play-acting and stylized photography thrown together; you could take real people, playing out events very close to their real lives, and construct a film that is quite compelling, and somehow more meaningful. Filmmaking could never be quite the same afterwards.
Yet with
Rocco and his Brothers, Visconti retains only the style of Neorealism. We are still seeing people living in poverty (though not through the entire film), and we still see uncleaned streets and the cinematography carries a certain neo-realistic grittiness to it. Yet we are also watching actors living out lives very distant from anything that they could ever have lived through (beginning with the fact that Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, and Katina Paxinou are all pretending to be Italian). We are still seeing a very mainstream, Hollywood-ish story. The boxing, while well-executed in some ways, seems like a joke the moment that we try to take it seriously. Annie Girardot is as unbelievable as a whore as any character in film--we would never know that she was one if she hadn't informed us of it.
So by Hollywood standards, the film is excellent. It is epic, it is dramatic, it is nicely photographed, the performers are charismatic (indeed, they have charisma coming out their ears), and the story is suitably executed. Nevertheless, I feel cheated by Visconti, who has made much better film. He was essentially resting on his laurels in putting out something as mainstream and financially successful as
Rocco. There's certainly nothing in the film that Scorsese couldn't do better. In any case, I remain comforted by the fact that the success of
Rocco allowed him to make
The Leopard.
