I just watched a DVD of Visconti's The Damned [La Caduta degli Dei] over the weekend, after having recently rewatched Death in Venice and The Leopard [Il Gattopardo]. I've never seen Rocco. Should I?
I guess I'm excited to find fans of good Italian cinema here, so here's also a clip from another movie by a great Italian neo-realist, the "leading man" turned actor, Vittorio De Sica. This movie, I bambini ci guardano [The children are watching us], a domestic drama about the break-up of a young family and its effect on a young child, Pricò, was filmed the summer of 1942, just before the onset of the first major Allied air raids on Italy. It was also the first major collaboration between De Sica and his screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, which was later to bear fruit in the greatest of all Italian films, Ladri di biciclete [Bicycle thieves]. In this scene, Papa is leaving Pricò at boarding school after Mama has run off with Roberto - he pleads with Father to assume a "quasi-paternal" role towards Pricò, and when told everyone is "just like a family" at the school, replies, "That's what he needs: a family."