A co-production between Italian studio Titanus and French production company Les Films Marceau,[1] Rocco and His Brothers suffered from multiple controversies and setbacks in its pre-release period.
"[7] After the death of his father, Rocco Parondi, one of the five sons of a poor rural Italian family, travels north from Lucania with his widowed mother Rosaria and three of his brothers—Simone, Ciro, and Luca—to the industrial city of Milan.
He becomes attracted to a prostitute named Nadia, who urges him to pursue a career in boxing, which his mother also encourages, as a fast way to achieve fame and wealth.
Not having realized how much their relationship would hurt his brother, Rocco breaks up with Nadia and encourages her to return to Simone, which she eventually does, though only to try to hasten his downfall.
While Rocco is fighting in a championship bout, Simone visits Nadia, who has returned to working as a prostitute, near the Ponte della Ghisolfa (it) and kills her after she tells him how much she hates him.
Rocco wins the fight, and, during the celebration with his family, he expresses a desire to return to their home in Lucania someday, and his mother indicates that she misses having all of her sons together.
As Luca walks away, he passes a newspaper stand and sees Rocco's picture in an article about the many far-flung cities in which he has upcoming fights.
There's a blending of strong emotionalism and realism to such an extent that the margins of each become fuzzy and indistinguishable... Alain Delon as the sweet and loyal Rocco...is touchingly pliant and expressive, but it is Renato Salvatori...who fills the screen with the anguish of a tortured and stricken character.
Yet the impact of the main story line, aided by the sensitive, expertly guided playing of Alain Delon as Rocco, Annie Girardot as Nadia, and Renato Salvatori as Simone, is great.
"[11] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote that he found the film "distended, sententious, ostentatiously frank, fundamentally trite, and thematically unsuccessful".
[12] When the film was released in DVD format, critic Glenn Erickson wrote: "A major pleasure of Rocco and His Brothers is simply seeing its portrait of life in working-class Milan in 1960.
Beautifully directed in the housing projects and streets of the city, this is a prime example of a film which will accrue historical interest simply because it shows so much of how people lived and what places looked like (now) 40 years ago.