Rocco and His Brothers (1960) - Eureka/MoC

[Oscar Rothman]

The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present one of Visconti’s most revered films for the first time in the world on Blu-ray, ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS will be release on Blu-ray on 14 March 2016.

From Luchino Visconti – the master director of such classics as La terra trema, Bellissima, and The Leopard – comes this epic study of family, sex, and betrayal. Alongside Fellini’s La dolce vita and Antonioni’s L’avventura, Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers ushered Italian cinema into a new era, one unafraid to confront head-on the hypocrisies of the ruling class, the squalor in urban living, and the collision between generations.

When a tight-knit family moves from Italy’s rural south to metropolitan Milan, the new possibilities - and threats - present in their fresh surroundings have alarming, unforeseen consequences. Operatically weaving the five brothers’ stories across a vast canvas, with an extraordinary cast including Alain Delon, Annie Girardot and Claudia Cardinale, Rocco and His Brothers stands as one of the most majestic and influential works of its era.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Gorgeous high-definition 1080p presentation from a new 4k restoration
• Optional English subtitles
• Two audio choices; the original Italian, and the French dub
• Les coulisses du tournage, a 2003 French documentary about the film
• A 1999 interview with Visconti’s cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno
• An interview with actress Claudia Cardinale
• A 2002 interview with actress Annie Girardot
• Luchino Visconti, an hour-long documentary about the life and work of Visconti
• Two vintage newsreels
• Original Italian trailer
• PLUS: A 40-PAGE BOOKLET featuring writing by Guido Aristarco, an essay written by the director in 1960, a vintage interview with Visconti and rare archival imagery.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...6&linkCode=as2

[nitin]

brilliant, one of the best.

[filmmusic]

I wonder if I should blind buy this.
I bling bought The leopard, but I didn't like it so much. (of course, I will give it a second chance)
I have also seen Senso and Death in Venice.
I think the last one is my favourite Visconti of the 3 I've seen.

[oliver_67]

About time they release more Visconti on blu ray. I want death in Venice, Sandra, ossessione, la terre trema, the damned and the Ludwig on blu ray.

[Vakulinchuk]

I wonder how much the restoration will improve over MoC's DVD... preordered already, of course.

[rapta]

Originally Posted by Vakulinchuk

I wonder how much the restoration will improve over MoC's DVD... preordered already, of course.

I posted these some months back on the Eureka thread, but not sure if you saw them or not:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lM8UutWsyGA

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kK1WXnyEkBk

Honestly, it's going to be one of those end-of-year favourites. Very happy they're including all the extras from the DVD too, but I wonder if they'll add anything new?

I was hoping they could get something from Scorsese, maybe at the same time as recording the intros to the next WCP set? Wishful thinking perhaps...

[crazyman]

Hmm. I don't recall the MoC DVD looking that bad, in fact I thought it look pretty good.

Seems to be like sometimes they exaggerate how bad these "before restoration" clips are on these features.

[CelestialAgent]

Might be a day 1 purchase for me.

[ravenus]

I've seen one of the Visconti films, The Damned. While it was admirable in parts I found it way too sprawling and overwrought. I suppose from a different point of view that's a good thing, but I'm a little apprehensive about blind-buying any of his movies.

[nitin]

Rocco too is somewhat overwrought and sprawling, but IMHO it's a much better film than The Damned. Seriously, this is one of the best films ever made.

[filmmusic]

I've seen some screenshots from the Spanish Bluray (I assume it's a bootleg having as source the Japanese one?), and it doesn't look good!
Evident macroblocking, perhaps worse than Olive's The Quiet Man.
I'm hopeful that the Eureka release will be better.

[malakaheso]

Visconti was one of the best stylists of his time, but I must confess that I find some of his films boring.

Rocco and His Brothers is great though, and I hope we get Death In Venice on blu-ray soon too.

dragon ghost film?

[benhoppel]

The review here claims a bit rate of 28 Mbit/s. Given the film's length and over 2 hours of supplements I don't see how this is possible on one BD unless the supplements have real low bit rate. Do they?

[adamhopelies]

Originally Posted by benhoppel

The review here claims a bit rate of 28 Mbit/s. Given the film's length and over 2 hours of supplements I don't see how this is possible on one BD unless the supplements have real low bit rate. Do they?

They must do. Dvdbeaver has the same bitrate, and says that 45gb of the 49gb of space used on the disc is dedicated to the film itself.

[StLouisRibs]

FWIW, here's the breakdown of that space:

Feature - 42.7 GB
Visconti Doc - 1.2 GB
Les coulisses du tournage - 440.2 MB
Giuseppe Rotunno Interview - 566.1 MB
Annie Girardot Interview - 645.8 MB
Claudia Cardinale Interview - 323.1 MB

I wouldn't say they're terrible bit-rates, they're just all in SD quality.

[David M]

Originally Posted by benhoppel

The review here claims a bit rate of 28 Mbit/s. Given the film's length and over 2 hours of supplements I don't see how this is possible on one BD unless the supplements have real low bit rate. Do they?

Yes they do. They were all SD in origin*, and to get them into such a small space, I treated them with high quality effective noise reduction. They are sometimes as low as 1.5mbps (for 1080i/60 video). (I of course didn't do that to the film itself because that would damage the film grain).

Because I use x264 for encoding, it offers nearly unlimited customization of the encoding options. On Blu-ray, there's a little known Level 4.0 mode which allows for a whole image to be stored only every 2 seconds (instead of every 1 second as is normally the case) if the bitrate is capped at about 20mbps - which is absolutely fine for filtered SD bonus features. The feature itself doesn't use this mode (its bitrate need to go up to the full 40mbps at times) but the bonus features are done in Level 4.0 which allows for better compression efficiency, especially with the aforementioned NR. (I believe Warner Home Video had the FRIENDS box set encoded this way which again is how they can cram so many of those episodes onto one disc).

So yes, if you want to see highly optimized AVC video, take a look at the bonus features on this disc!

* (Actually there are trailers and film newsreels in here that were obviously originally on film, but there's no HD transfer for these).

[benhoppel]

Thanks for the detailed explanations.

[barrett75]

Lyris, what do you think about Pro-B review stating that light filtering adjustments were used? (he gave PQ 4/5 anyway)

[David M]

It does look like the shadows were degrained, yes (not by me). I've seen that quite frequently in new 4K restorations: shadows with grain reduction, rest of the image left without. I don't see the point, personally.