Many, maybe most, of the best scenes in the film involve Nadia. She is cruelly abused by her love for Simone, drops from high style to degradation in her career as a prostitute, and her last meeting with Simone cries out for operatic arias to express their feelings. Another great scene comes toward the end, as Ciro, who has a job on the Alfa-Romeo assembly line, speaks with Luca, the youngest brother, of his duty to his family and his ties to the south, a "land of olives, moonshine and rainbows," where he dreams they will someday return. In memory the south has become less harsh than the land that drove them north.
The film is shot in carefully composed black and white that foregrounds the brothers and Nadia in many shots, showing them listening or reacting to what is happening behind them. If there is a peculiarity of the casting, it is that all five brothers are almost improbably handsome -- beginning, of course, with the matinee idol Delon, then at the dawn of his career.
"Rocco and His Brothers" can be seen quite clearly, at this point, as an enormous influence on great American gangster films. Aspects of "The Godfather" immediately come into mind. And the critic D.K. Holm observes: "The tense, penitent relationship between Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) in (Scorsese's) 'Mean Streets' is almost unimaginable without the precedence of 'Rocco and His Brothers.' " At a very subtle level, the love between the brothers seems almost sexual, as in a late scene where Simone confesses to Rocco and Rocco fights with Ciro and vows to defend him. These feelings are well-concealed by the film, but they are there.
There's a great passage near the end, when Rocco has a great triumph on the same night when Simone ruins himself. Two fights, in a sense, are intercut. The neighbors pour out on to the balconies to cheer Rocco as a new champion, and then Simone comes home in wretched defeat to the always forgiving arms of his mother. The way the two story strands come together is manipulative, yes, but deeply effective.
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.
This film plays at 2:30 p.m. June 22 and 6:30 p.m.June 24 in a new 35mm print at the Siskel Film Center as part of a Visconti retrospective. "The Leopard" is also included in the Great Movies Collection.
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