ROCCO E I SUOI FRATELLI / ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (1960)

Just as the extended four-reel house reception finale of Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD/’63 was an inspiration for the three-reel opening of Francis Ford Coppola’s THE GODFATHER/’72 (though a very different sort of house party!), so too are the many far less noted influences coursing between Coppola’s classic and Visconti’s previous family saga.  Here, the borrowings come largely in relationships & character, particularly from the titular brothers, five handsome young men from Southern Italy come north to Milan with their wailing wall of a mother to seek a better life.  Especially clear in how two middle brothers, older hothead Simone and cool Rocco, mirror Sonny & Michael Corleone.  Renato Salvatori as Simone, even looks a bit like Caan, though no one, certainly not Al Pacino, could ever hope to look even remotely like circa 1960 Alain Delon’s Rocco.*)  Visconti, more up-tempo than usual for him, makes the struggles entertaining (three of the boys hit the boxing ring) with melodramatic violence mirroring social attitudes of lower-class life in the big city.  Though sometimes he seems to by staging operas he never got around to on-stage.  (LA FORZA DEL DESTINO for the sibling feuds; CARMEN for the climatic murder).  He also gets powerful things from Claudia Cardinale as a sister-in-law and Annie Girardot as the prostitute who writhes between the brothers.  Almost all the actors in here barely known at the time, four instant stars for life.  Unlike 1943 Oscar-winner Katina Paxinou as the mother who acts as if Anna Magnani is standing by to replace her at any moment.  Beautifully shot (and now beautifully restored) by Giuseppe Rotunno; memorably scored by Nino Rota, the film became Visconti’s first (and only?) commercial blockbuster.  Deservedly so.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And Visconti knew it.  Framing Delon as godlike icon, medium close-up, reclining, left arm raised to serve as the top of a frame line.  A Caravaggio portrait.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL:  Visconti drew his story from contemporary & classic sources.  Lots of Dostoevsky’s THE IDIOT in here for Delon, which would make Al Pacino Prince Myshkin in THE GODFATHER?!  Check out all baton passing from ROCCO and LEOPARD to GODFATHER, though pace yourself as another similarity between the films is a running time of three hours (give or take) each.