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 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?
Ma certo, caro! "Rocco" is considered the last (and by some, the best) of his "neo-realist" films. The story of a Southern Italian family's stress and disintegration after migration to Milan in the post-war boom, it has been called "the Italian 'Grapes of Wrath.'"
Visconti as you know has a claim to authoring the first "neo-realist" film in 1942, Ossessione, based on James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett made an excellent Hollywood version with John Garfield and Lana Turner in 1946, but Visconti's pirated, Italian adaptation is even better). I also recommend his La terra trema, although that story about Sicilian fisherman shot in the Sicilian dialect is more of an "acquired taste."