Cars Plus Rocco and His Brothers
Aug. 16th, 2020 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_camera Note: Rocco maunderings are not what I think of as "spoilers" but may be what other people think of as "spoilers..."
I had what I suppose was a genuine panic attack while my car was in the shop yesterday.
My car is a 2003 Saturn Ion, which will run forever with proper maintenance.
It’s been a very good car, gets excellent gas mileage and requires very little attention from me in exchange for its faithful service, but it is 18 years old, so things do break down.
Problem is that its Blue Book value is now far less than the amounts of cash I pump into it whenever it needs work.
Cars are among those things that do not interest me in the slightest. I don’t understand people who think cars are status symbols; honestly, who gives a shit? They’re utilitarian machines designed to transport you in safety and relative comfort from Point A to Point B.
I could not live where I live—in the country!—if I didn’t have a car.
This time, the car needed brake and suspension system work. The bill was considerably higher than I thought it would be, but that wasn’t what made me panic. I have a reasonably healthy view of money, I think: I don’t spend a lot of it, and I see it as a renewable resource.
No, I panicked because I kept thinking: What if they can’t fix it?
Well, then, you’ll buy another car! I told myself.
But the aggravation one would have to go through to buy another car just seems insurmountable to me. That’s the main reason why I haven’t replaced the present vehicle.
So, the entire eight hours my car was in the shop, I kept thinking, I will never be able to drive to the Upscale Supermarket again! I will have to start taking buses! (There are very few buses here in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley.) My life will be miserable beyond reckoning.
And the panic was more than just a darkly foreboding voice in my head. It was an adrenalin surge, that feeling of lurch and weightlessness that comes when the elevator is first lifting.
You are being ridiculous! I told myself.
But I didn’t listen.
###
I got the car back.
There is one part that they didn’t have and that none of the auto supply shops had, but that part is not necessary for the safe operation of the car.
And I’m certain they will get that part in some time in the next week or so. They’ll pop it in—at no extra charge to me, they assure me!—and all will be well.
Still, I’m feeling… fragile.
My now dead X-Husband didn’t do much to ensure our collective survival. In fact, the term “collective survival” is kind of a joke in the context of my now dead X-Husband.
Even so, it was a nice fantasy to have.
That somebody had my back.
What else?
I watched Rocco and His Brothers.
I’d seen the film before, more than 50 years ago, when I lied about my age and snagged a candy counter job at the Thalia, a little indie movie house that used to be in the upper 90s on Broadway. But I didn’t remember anything about the movie.
I was 14; I told the Thalia people I was 21. In those days, nobody checked documentation.
My passion for French and Italian New Wave films comes from that job.
###
Rocco and His Brothers is an absolutely brilliant film right up to its final 15 minutes.
That final 15 minutes, though. It’s so bizarre, so over-the-top that it threw me right out.
It’s kind of as though Visconti got bored with the movie after 240 minutes and turned the directorial reins over to Lorne Michaels, and the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live.
I did wonder watching those final 15 minutes whether some sort of profound cultural mismatch wasn’t at work. Out of curiosity, I browsed the IMDB user reviews: Reviews written before 2019 were uniformly glowing; reviews written after 2019, coinciding with the great awakening of the “Woke,” dismissed it as misogynistic and wayyyyy too long.
So I wondered whether my own reaction was informed by a similar cultural shift. That last 15 minutes features a lot of grown guys crying and lamenting, and their mother crying and lamenting. A stereotypical representation of Southern Italian behavior, in other words.
I recoiled from it.
How accurate is it? I wouldn’t know. It is true that even today after decades of globalization, us Southern Italians tend to be more emotionally expressive—for which read: touchy/feelie, in-your-face—than our counterparts in other parts of Europe.
But by the time I was born, and in the place I was born, the men in my father’s family had stopped having screaming, raging, crying fests with one another.
If something went wrong, they merely walked out the door.
And never came back.
###
Rocco and His Brothers plot: Mother Courage (Campania flavor) comes to the Big City (Milan) with her extraordinarily attractive quintet of sons. They represent a family man (Vincenzo), a sinner (Simone), a saint (Rocco), a pragmatist (Ciro) and little Luca whom I guess is the Hope for the Future: at the beginning of the movie, Luca appears to be around nine years old, and even though the movie spans many years, at the end of the movie, Luca still appears to be around nine years old.
Vincenzo is married to Claudia Cardinale in what I think was her debut film role.
Solipsistic sidebar: Back in the Jurassic Era when I was a model, I was described as a “Claudia Cardinale type”:
The sinner and the saint’s relationship is the pivot point of the film. Was Alain Delon the most beautiful male human being ever to walk the earth? Maybe. He gives a very strong performance, too, as the unworldly Rocco.
But the film belongs to Renato Salvatori who is absolutely riveting as Simone and to Annie Giradot, the prostitute whom Rocco and Simone fall in love with.
There are graphic boxing scenes. Simone becomes a boxer as the shortest route to quick money, and Rocco gets dragged behind him. In fact, I did wonder whether Sylvester Stallone’s choice of character name—Rocky—wasn’t a nod to Rocco.
There’s a horrendous rape sequence.
There’s a brutal murder sequence.
There’s a wonderfully suggestive homoerotic seduction sequence.
None of those three sequences, by the way, is anywhere near as graphic as similar scenes in more contemporary films, but they carry a much greater punch. Combination of the superb performances and Visconti’s amazing eye for composition: Every shot in the film could be a painting.
The other interesting thing about Rocco and His Brothers is that Nino Rota wrote its musical score. The famous Godfather theme is almost a note-by-note transposition of one of the themes from Rocco.
I had what I suppose was a genuine panic attack while my car was in the shop yesterday.
My car is a 2003 Saturn Ion, which will run forever with proper maintenance.
It’s been a very good car, gets excellent gas mileage and requires very little attention from me in exchange for its faithful service, but it is 18 years old, so things do break down.
Problem is that its Blue Book value is now far less than the amounts of cash I pump into it whenever it needs work.
Cars are among those things that do not interest me in the slightest. I don’t understand people who think cars are status symbols; honestly, who gives a shit? They’re utilitarian machines designed to transport you in safety and relative comfort from Point A to Point B.
I could not live where I live—in the country!—if I didn’t have a car.
This time, the car needed brake and suspension system work. The bill was considerably higher than I thought it would be, but that wasn’t what made me panic. I have a reasonably healthy view of money, I think: I don’t spend a lot of it, and I see it as a renewable resource.
No, I panicked because I kept thinking: What if they can’t fix it?
Well, then, you’ll buy another car! I told myself.
But the aggravation one would have to go through to buy another car just seems insurmountable to me. That’s the main reason why I haven’t replaced the present vehicle.
So, the entire eight hours my car was in the shop, I kept thinking, I will never be able to drive to the Upscale Supermarket again! I will have to start taking buses! (There are very few buses here in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley.) My life will be miserable beyond reckoning.
And the panic was more than just a darkly foreboding voice in my head. It was an adrenalin surge, that feeling of lurch and weightlessness that comes when the elevator is first lifting.
You are being ridiculous! I told myself.
But I didn’t listen.
###
I got the car back.
There is one part that they didn’t have and that none of the auto supply shops had, but that part is not necessary for the safe operation of the car.
And I’m certain they will get that part in some time in the next week or so. They’ll pop it in—at no extra charge to me, they assure me!—and all will be well.
Still, I’m feeling… fragile.
My now dead X-Husband didn’t do much to ensure our collective survival. In fact, the term “collective survival” is kind of a joke in the context of my now dead X-Husband.
Even so, it was a nice fantasy to have.
That somebody had my back.
What else?
I watched Rocco and His Brothers.
I’d seen the film before, more than 50 years ago, when I lied about my age and snagged a candy counter job at the Thalia, a little indie movie house that used to be in the upper 90s on Broadway. But I didn’t remember anything about the movie.
I was 14; I told the Thalia people I was 21. In those days, nobody checked documentation.
My passion for French and Italian New Wave films comes from that job.
###
Rocco and His Brothers is an absolutely brilliant film right up to its final 15 minutes.
That final 15 minutes, though. It’s so bizarre, so over-the-top that it threw me right out.
It’s kind of as though Visconti got bored with the movie after 240 minutes and turned the directorial reins over to Lorne Michaels, and the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live.
I did wonder watching those final 15 minutes whether some sort of profound cultural mismatch wasn’t at work. Out of curiosity, I browsed the IMDB user reviews: Reviews written before 2019 were uniformly glowing; reviews written after 2019, coinciding with the great awakening of the “Woke,” dismissed it as misogynistic and wayyyyy too long.
So I wondered whether my own reaction was informed by a similar cultural shift. That last 15 minutes features a lot of grown guys crying and lamenting, and their mother crying and lamenting. A stereotypical representation of Southern Italian behavior, in other words.
I recoiled from it.
How accurate is it? I wouldn’t know. It is true that even today after decades of globalization, us Southern Italians tend to be more emotionally expressive—for which read: touchy/feelie, in-your-face—than our counterparts in other parts of Europe.
But by the time I was born, and in the place I was born, the men in my father’s family had stopped having screaming, raging, crying fests with one another.
If something went wrong, they merely walked out the door.
And never came back.
###
Rocco and His Brothers plot: Mother Courage (Campania flavor) comes to the Big City (Milan) with her extraordinarily attractive quintet of sons. They represent a family man (Vincenzo), a sinner (Simone), a saint (Rocco), a pragmatist (Ciro) and little Luca whom I guess is the Hope for the Future: at the beginning of the movie, Luca appears to be around nine years old, and even though the movie spans many years, at the end of the movie, Luca still appears to be around nine years old.
Vincenzo is married to Claudia Cardinale in what I think was her debut film role.
Solipsistic sidebar: Back in the Jurassic Era when I was a model, I was described as a “Claudia Cardinale type”:
The sinner and the saint’s relationship is the pivot point of the film. Was Alain Delon the most beautiful male human being ever to walk the earth? Maybe. He gives a very strong performance, too, as the unworldly Rocco.
But the film belongs to Renato Salvatori who is absolutely riveting as Simone and to Annie Giradot, the prostitute whom Rocco and Simone fall in love with.
There are graphic boxing scenes. Simone becomes a boxer as the shortest route to quick money, and Rocco gets dragged behind him. In fact, I did wonder whether Sylvester Stallone’s choice of character name—Rocky—wasn’t a nod to Rocco.
There’s a horrendous rape sequence.
There’s a brutal murder sequence.
There’s a wonderfully suggestive homoerotic seduction sequence.
None of those three sequences, by the way, is anywhere near as graphic as similar scenes in more contemporary films, but they carry a much greater punch. Combination of the superb performances and Visconti’s amazing eye for composition: Every shot in the film could be a painting.
The other interesting thing about Rocco and His Brothers is that Nino Rota wrote its musical score. The famous Godfather theme is almost a note-by-note transposition of one of the themes from Rocco.
