Rocco e i suoi fratelli: Luchino Visconti’s Lucania Between Real and Imaginary

Luchino Visconti’s cinema reflects on the essence of the relationship between the individual and society. This characteristic is especially true for his 1960 film Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers), whose protagonists come from Lucania (whose administrative name was and is Basilicata), a poor region of Southern Italy. In this chapter, my interest lies in the delicate issue of the relationship between preliminary materials—that is, studies about places, uses, customs, and people—and how they result in the film. Despite photographs that show his preliminary trip to Basilicata, Visconti chooses not to shoot the Lucanian prologue. In the artistic transfiguration, what is indomitable and wild in the individual protagonists comes from Visconti’s conscious choice of combining the emigrant family drama with more intimate conflicts between brothers and between mother and children. But Rocco, even for his name, represents something more: the claims and the two contradictory aspects of Southern Italy (i.e., tradition and modernity) come into play, also reconnecting with Rocco Scotellaro’s poetry and ideas. Visconti’s film expresses the image of Lucania through Rosaria, the mother figure, in whom the children’s bond with Lucania is revealed to be a connection to Mother Earth, to Mother Nature, the goddess of the Earth, an ancient matriarchal type.