Luchino Visconti’s rich and expansive masterpiece, the story of a mother and her grown sons who head north from Lucania in search of work and new lives, has an emotional intensity and tragic grandeur matched by few other films. Visconti turned to Thomas Mann, Dostoevsky and Arthur Miller for inspiration, and he achieved a truly epic sweep: in one beautifully realized scene after another, we observe the tragic progress of a tightly knit family coming apart, one frayed thread at a time. Alain Delon is Rocco, Renato Salvatori is his brother Simone, Annie Girardot is the woman who comes between them, and Katina Paxinou is the matriarch. Francis Ford Coppola so loves Rocco he asked its composer - the late great Nino Rota - to score The Godfather. Claudia Cardinale is beautiful in an early supporting role. Salvatore and Girardot became lovers in real life. And the film went on to win a clutch of major international awards. One of the great and defining films of its era, Rocco and His Brothers has now been stunningly restored, and Giuseppe Rotunno’s black-and-white images are once again as pearly and lustrous as they were meant to be.
Join us at the Opening Night Reception for Rocco and His Brothers on Friday, February 19 at the Gables Cinema, hosted by the Società Dante Alighieri. This special catered reception begins at 6:45 pm followed by the opening night screening at 7:30 pm.
