A failure in resilience: The corrupting influence of postwar Milan in Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47818/DRArch.2022.v3si074Keywords:
cinema and city, Luchino Visconti, postwar Milan, film and architecture, Italian cinemaAbstract
Abstract The 1960 Italian film Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi Fratelli) is one of the greatest exemplars of Italian post-war cinema. The film depicts the disintegration and deterritorialization of an immigrant family from Lucania, a southern Italian village in Basilicata, and their relocation to Milan. The director of the film, Luchino Visconti, continuously alludes to the protagonist’s fascination with their hometown (paese). This nostalgic and wholesome image of paese contrasts the ubiquitous alienation and exploitation in the industrial North. The film is replete with signs and metaphors which explicitly and implicitly reinforce the evident tension between the immigrant family and an industrialized metropolis. Based on an interview with Mario Licari, Visconti’s assistant who accompanied him on location visits, this article offers an opportunity to revisit significant locations of the film such as Quartiere Fabio Filzi, the Alfa Romeo Factory, Milan Duomo, Ponte Della Ghisolfa, Parco Sempione, Stazione Centrale and Circolo Arci Bellezza. Underpinned by the theories of Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Gramsci and Andre Bazin this essay creates a theoretical framework that works in parallel with a detailed analysis of the scenes, original archival material, dialogues, places, and history of architecture of the locations. The article demonstrates how urban and architectural spaces not only accommodated the narrative of the film but shaped, twisted and structured the story of the masterpiece. The paper shows how Visconti succeeded in visualizing a ‘hidden’ Milan that was never appeared on the silver screen before Rocco and His Brothers.
Metrics
References
- Agamben, G. (1971, 03/09/1971). Morto dei Vivi: Deprivati di Politea. Il Manifesto, 729, 4.
- AlSayyad, N. (2006). Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern from Reel to Real. New York Routledge.
- Bazin, A. (1967). What is cinema? (H. Gray, Trans.). Berkeley University of California Press.
- Author, 2011.
- Brunetta, G. P. (2001). Storia del cinema italiano. Roma: Editori riuniti.
- Charitonidou, M. (2022). Italian Neorealist and New Migrant films as dispositifs of alterity: How borgatari and popolane challenge the stereotypes of nationhood and womanhood? Studies in European Cinema, 1-24. doi:10.1080/17411548.2021.1968165
- D'Amico De Carvalho, C. (1978). Album Visconti / a cura di Caterina D'Amico De Carvalho; con una intervista di Lietta Tornabuoni a Michelangelo Antonioni: Milano: Sonzogno, 1978.
- D'Amico De Carvalho, C., Marzot, V., & Tirelli, U. (1995). Visconti e il suo lavoro Milan: Electa.
- D’Amico, C. (Producer). (2015a, April 19, 2019). Rocco e i suoi fratelli, tra sceneggiatura e montaggio finale. Incontro con Caterina D’Amico. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGvTaptJNV0
- Foot, J. M. (1999). Cinema and the city. Milan and Luchino Visconti's Rocco and his Brothers (1960). Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 4(2), 209-235. doi:10.1080/13545719908455007
- Gramsci, A. (1978). Antonio Gramsci: Selections from Political Writings 1921-1926 (Q. Hoare, Trans.). London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd
- Lima Diego, M. d. R. (2013). Rocco e seus corpos [Rocco and His Bodies]. Alceu - Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Política 13(26), 44-55.
- Nafus, C. (2019). LUCHINO VISCONTI: ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M8YCTa4l-M&t=12s
- Pagano, G. (1939). Un'oasi di ordine. Casabella, 11(144), 7-7.
- Palazzini, M., & Raimondi, M. (2009). Milano films, 1896-2009: la città raccontata dal cinema Genova Fratelli Frilli.
- Pasolini, P. P. (2013). Pier Paolo Pasolini Speaks. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IA1bS1MRzw&t=63s
- Prina, V. (2006). 'Case per il popolo': architettura della residenza, progettazione e riqualificazione urbana. Territorio(36), 39.
- Pugliese, R. (2005). La casa popolare in Lombardia, 1903-2003. Rome: Unicopli
- Rabissi, F. (2019). The body of Milan in Gabriele Basilico and Michelangelo Antonioni. The Journal of Architecture, 24(8), 1084-1095. doi:10.1080/13602365.2019.1708777
- Rocco e I Suoi Fratelli. (1960, 14/10/1960). Avanti!
- Rohdie, S. (1992). Rocco and his Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli). London BFI Publishing.
- Ronchetta, A. (2007). ARCHITETTURA E CINEMA. Domus (00125377), 4(97), 122-127.
- Rosengarten, F (2013). The Revolutionary Marxism of Antonio Gramsci. Amsterdam: Brill.
- Visconti, L. Archivio Visconti: Alcune pagine del copione. In C. S. d. C. L. Visconti (Ed.), Archivio Visconti,C26-004895. (pp. 69-101). Milan: Civica Scuola di Cinema Luchino Visconti.
- Visconti, L. (1960). Pessimismo dell'Intelligenza non della Volontà Schermi, 28, 322.
- Visconti, L., Aristarco, G., & Carancini, G. (1978). Rocco e i suoi fratelli. Bologna: Cappelli.
- Visconti? A Vero Milanese? (1960, 29/11/1960). L'Unità.
- Vitti, A. (1996). Giuseppe De Santis and Postwar Italian Cinema Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.
- Wilson, E. (1992). The sphinx in the city: urban life, the control of disorder, and women. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Hamid Khalili, AnnMarie Brennan
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
