DVD Review: Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

A landmark in world cinema, Rocco and His Brothers marries the neo-realism of Luchino Visconti's early films with the grand, operatic vision of his later masterpieces.  The story centres around the Parondi family who leave their home in rural, southern Italy for the bright lights of Milan.  Brothers Rocco (Alain Delon), Simone (Renato Salvatori), Ciro (Max Cartier) and Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi) arrive amidst eldest sibling Vincenzo's (Spiros Focas) engagement to kindly Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale), whereupon their fiery Mama (Katina Paxinou) - suspicious of all beautiful women - squabbles with their future in-laws and gets everyone turfed out on the street. 

As the family struggle to survive in the harsh city, Rocco moves from dry-cleaning to military service and finally boxing, giving every penny of his hard-earned cash to his demanding mother ("If you have anything left - send it.  You can't spend it anyway").  Meanwhile, feckless dilettante Simone sinks lower and lower.  Things come to a head when both brothers fall for sultry prostitute Nadia (Annie Girardot) and the family unravels amidst robbery, rape and murder. 

Alain Delon excels in the role that - alongside Rene Clement's Plein Soleil (1960) - made him a superstar, but Renato Salvatori and Annie Girardot (married in real life!) deliver performances of equally remarkable depth and realism.  Visconti may have been an aristocrat, but he was also a Marxist and this film reflects his preoccupation with the injustices endured by the poor.  He tackles prejudice (Immigrants mocked as coming "from the land of layabouts") and satirises Milan's welfare programme (the Parondis are advised: "rent a house, avoid paying, get evicted and then city hall will look after you.")

DVD Review: Der Letzte Mann (1924)

F.W. Murnau's Der Letzte Mann ("The Last Man", also known as The Last Laugh) represented a major technical breakthrough for silent cinema.  Inspired by Nikolai Gogol's story "The Coat", it concerns an elderly hotel doorman (silent cinema giant: Emil Jannings) who, because of his age, is cruelly demoted to bathroom attendant.  Reduced to towelling hands and polishing sinks, he tries to conceal the truth from friends and family, but to his shame is discovered.  Neighbours believe he's lied all along about his prestigious job and taunt him mercilessly, while his niece (Maly Delschaft), her new husband (Max Hiller) and his aunt (Emilie Kurz) reject him out of embarrassment. 

Grief-stricken, the old man retreats to the hotel bathroom, where a kindly night watchman (Georg John) covers him with his coat while he sleeps.  A title card concedes the story should end here since "in real life the old man has little left but death".  However "the author took pity on him and provided an improbable epilogue."  At the end, the old man inherits a fortune and dines happily at the hotel where he once worked. 

DVD Review: The Seventh Seal (1957), 50th Anniversary Special Edition

Not before or since the 1957 release of Ingmar Bergman's haunting masterpiece The Seventh Seal has the momentous theme of humankind's search for existential meaning – within or outside a religious framework – been treated of with such furious grace, intelligence and insight. All cynicism concerning the re-release of a '50th Anniversary Digitally Remastered Edition,' in the year of the great filmmaker's death, must therefore be put on hold. Any reason to publicise or disseminate or roll back the technical decay of this supreme piece of cinematic art, whether or not the companies in question make some extra baksheesh by finagling historical contingency, is a good reason.

Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) is a crusading knight freshly returned to the shores of his native Sweden. He has lost all the moral certainty he left with, presumably having seen and participated in atrocities in the name of Christianity. The hypocrisy of this institution which teaches forbearance, peace and tolerance yet practices murder, torture and empire-like expansionism is too much for his reflective nature to bear without apostasy. He yearns for a meaning to life beyond the circumscribed and vague one offered by the Church.

Cult Clip: Mad Love (1935)

The great German character actor Peter Lorre appeared in a lot of terrific thrillers during his lifetime and one of the best films he made is Mad Love (1935; Karl Fruend). In this creepy classic Lorre plays a crazy surgeon named Dr. Gogol who is obsessed with a beautiful actress that happens to already be married to a concert pianist. When the woman's husband is terribly injured in a train accident that crushes his hands, she asks Dr. Gogol to help save him. Dr. Gogol replaces her husband's hands with those of a murderer and afterward tries to drive the man mad in order to have his wife all for himself.

Mad Love is currently available on NTSC Region-1 DVD as part of Hollywood's Legends of Horror Collection and you can see Peter Lorre as the mad Dr. Gogol in this terrific clip:

- Kimberly Lindbergs

DVD Review: Bellissima (1951)

It seems like you can’t turn on the idiot box these days without coming across the newest reality show star turn. Thirteen weeks of Big Brother and the great British public vote for a winner who thinks Shakespeare directed Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet simply because he was the nicest of a particularly motley crew.

Concerns about the dumbing down of TV aside, it does make you wonder what televisual legends we’re going to revere in twenty or thirty years time. Genuine talent seems to be in painfully short supply, and nowadays producers are reverting to the lowest common denominator, which is your basic common-or-garden talent revue. There’s no denying that there are some people in this green and pleasant land that do have genuine skill and presence, but that’s not exactly why people tune in – it’s to see either cute kids being pushed to the front of the stage by pushy parents living a dream vicariously through their offspring, or the judges arbitrarily ripping into self-deluded but honest people.