The British Film Institute will release on Blu-ray Luchino Visconti's film Rocco e i suoi fratelli a.k.a. Rocco and His Brothers (1960), starring Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, and Nino Castelnuovo. The release will be available for purchase on November 23.
Rocco and His Brothers was recently restored in 4K. The restoration was carried out by Cineteca di Bologna at L'Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, in association with Titanus, TF1 Droits Audiovisuels and The Film Foundation. Funding for the restoration was provided by Gucci and The Film Foundation.
Synopsis: Inspired by an episode from the novel Il Ponte della Ghisolfa by Giovanni Testori, Luchino Visconti's classics films tells the story of an immigrant family from the Italian South and its subsequent disintegration in the society of the industrial North.
After the death of his father, Rocco Parondi, one of five sons, travels north to join his older brother Vincenzo in Milan. Presented in five distinct sections, the film weaves the story of the five brothers as each of them adapt to their new lives in the city. The family's story starts well but this epic saga soon descends into bitter feuds and even murder.
Newly restored and featuring a world Blu-ray premiere, the film stars a young Claudia Cardinale in one of her first roles and a score by the Academy Award-winning Nino Rota (The Leopard, The Godfather). Luchino Visconti was a key influence of Italian neorealism with this film flitting between social realism and operatic melodrama, Visconti later abandoned this style to make films to elaborate style and imagination like The Leopard and Death in Venice.