Twenty-third session of Illegal_cinema

Screening of a film proposed by Bob Curwen, followed by a discussion.

Screening: Three Brothers (Francesco Rosi, Italy, 1981).

Summoned by their father, three brothers return to the village of their birth in the south of Italy to attend their mother’s funeral. The three brothers represent different perspectives on Italy in the late 1970s, marked by corruption and political violence. The eldest, Raffaele, is a judge in Rome. The middle brother, Rocco, is a social worker in a reform school for teenagers in Naples. The youngest brother, Nicola, is a trade unionist working in Turin.

In this film of great formal beauty, the Neapolitan director continues with the examination of Italian social reality developed in many of his earlier films, which include Salvatore Giuliano (1961), Hands over the City (1963) or Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979). In Three brothers, however, Rosi abandons the lineal character and the quasi-documentary style of many of his earlier neo-realist films, giving prominence to the concerns of the characters themselves, through conversations, flashbacks and dreams.

Bob Curwen has a degree in Fine Arts from London University. He has lived in the Basque Country since the early 1980s. He currently earns a living as a translator.