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This first effort by writer/director Marco Bellocchio has been called a drama by some, and a horror film by others. It is both. It is neither.

It is a view of a dysfunctional family. I almost had the impression they cam from a long line of incest like The People Under the Stairs. One wants to get away, another has epilepsy, the mother is blind, one seems to be developmentally disabled, and the last, Giulia (Paola Pitagora)is really not classifiable, but she sure seems to spend a lot of time very close to her brother Ale (Lou Castel).

Ale feels sorry for his older brother, Augusto (Marino Masé) and hatches a plan to drive the rest of the family, including himself off a cliff so his brother can get on with his life.

His plan fails, so he starts doing them in one by one.

Watching him is mesmerizing. You just have to see what he is going to try next. In the meantime, the family just acts as crazy as you would expect.

Bellocchio went on to direct many more great films including A Leap in the Dark, The Prince of Homburg, and The Religion Hour. It is amazing his first was so good.

The family in Marco Bellocchio's startling debut "Fists in the Pocket" make the Femms of "The Old Dark House" seem normal. These indolent Italians laze around all day taunting each other at every opportunity while son Allessandro, (a truly terrific Lou Castel), contemplates the best ways to rid himself of the others, including his blind mother, for the sake of the one brother he cares about. This darkly funny satire wasn't like other Italian films of the time, taking an almost putrid look at the family values Italians hold most dear; a comedy about matricide, fratricide and possible incest that actually manages to be quite touching at times. It's also a movie that takes its time. For a director making only his first feature, Bellocchio bravely put narraitve on the back-burner opting instead for an atmosphere as lazy as his characters and killing off a number of sacred cows in the process. The Establishment hated it while young critics loved it though not enough to make it anything other than a cult movie and it's seldom revived. Perhaps its reputation outweighs its numerous qualities but however you look at it, it's a one-off and well worth seeing.

The Sixties was a time of breaking rules and exploring social themes and political ideas that weren't allowed to be expressed in the repressive Fifties. It was a Golden Era of Italian cinema, producing Antonioni's, Visconti's and Fellini's best films, along with so many gems like Olmi's "Il Posto", Germi's "Divorce: Italian Style" and Monicelli's "The Organiser." "Fists in the Pocket" stands out for its dark subject matter, which examines the mind of a sociopath.

While this was not new ground—Clouzot's "Diabolique", Clement's "Purple Noon", Powell's "Peeping Tom" and Hitchcock's more lurid "Psycho" allowed us into the head of a killer—"Fists in the Pocket" portrays a much more nuanced character. What those films don't spend a lot of time on is the motivation behind their characters' actions, outside of their own amoral nature or perhaps some hinted trauma. In this film, while we certainly don't sympathise with the characters' actions, we clearly understand their motivations.

The protagonist of the film is Sandro, but I'd argue that the main character is the family, since it's the family dynamic that drives all action in the film. Sandro and two of his three siblings have varying degrees of epilepsy, and all three grown children live with and care for their blind mother. There's a definite sense of claustrophobia and dread in this family, who all seem trapped by their own love for each other. Their desire to break free of their mother's control and the burden of caring for each other leads to plans being hatched and tragic consequences.

It's quite an oddball story, almost Lynchian, but what makes the characters so utterly believable is the unpredictability of their behaviour, along with some excellent acting, particularly by Lou Castel, who allows us to see into his mind without saying a word. Add to that a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone and absolutely sublime photography—it's one of those rare films where you can frame almost every shot—and you've got one of the standout films from a standout period of filmmaking.

The first time I saw Fists in the Pocket, I was 7 or 8 years old and I thought the film was a horror movie because of its gruesome subject matter. It had freaked me a lot then. Today, after viewing it for the first time in its entirety, and though I don't think the film can be considered to be an all and out horror flick, I still think there's enough gruesome and eerie qualities to this drama to call it an authentic neo-horror film. A horror film with intelligence. Unlike Hitchcock (no, I'm not saying his films aren't intelligent) or the plethora of other less subtle horror films, where the horror or terror is mostly obvious and played for thrills to manipulate an audience, in Fists the disturbing aspects aren't played out for thrills. They're there to show the sad situation in which the characters exist. Because of this, the film has a true morbid atmosphere, quasi-Gothic in nature, that permeates it from beginning to end. The characters inability to see the horrifying things they do or think (for most part of the narrative) makes this film absolutely unique in film history. It's a vivid "intimate" portrait of a dysfunctional family that's almost a cerebral horror film.

Simply put, it's brilliant!

The actors are all excellent but Lou Castel's performance as the frustrated, crazed, death obsessed brother is mesmerizing. You can't take your eyes off him. And even though it was made in 1965, the film feels contemporary, mainly because of its refusal to amplify and exploit it shocking aspects or the characters' foibles to heights of schlock or melodrama. Plus, the fluid direction gives this morbid drama (which could have easily been heavy and static) a deceptively "normal" quality which works perfectly and adds even more to all of the characters' sad state of mind. The film is equally claustrophobic and expansive; claustrophobic with the (very) tight interiors and the family drama that (like one of the characters of the film wants to do) makes you want to break free and escape at all cost; and expansive because of the Italian countryside that surrounds these doomed characters. The scenery, natural and man-made, is a character of its own, seemingly symbolizing the characters precipitous existence but also overwhelmingly vast, stark and crushing, dwarfing the already tightly-knit family down to minuscule size, which then heightens their already claustrophobic existence that much more. Ennio Morricone's score is characteristically moody & chilling and complements the film perfectly.

Fists in the Pocket is a very earthy, grounded, morbid & blunt portrait of a doomed family! A must-see for those who love "pure" cinema.

Pimpin places a call to his favorite writer Michel Houellebecq.

Pimpin: Hello.

Michel: Hello. Who is this?

Pimpin: Michel, its me Pimpin.

Michel: What do you want?

Pimpin: Sorry to disturb. I wanted to discuss a film that I watched. I wanted to hear your thoughts on it. Its this Italian film - Fists in the Pocket by Marco Belloccio. Came out in the 60s.

Michel: OK.

Pimpin: What do you think about it?

Michel: It did have a couple of nice pieces of ass. Paola Pitagora was unforgettable.

Pimpin: Hahahha. I agree. What did you think about the film?

Michel: Well, it was one of those films where the protagonist rebelled against his family and Catholic values. You know what I think about all that stuff, Pimpin. Nothing good came out of it. Sure, a lot of people escaped their families. And then they went and lived alone. Did drugs. Drank a lot. Individuality and personal freedom. Look at where all that got Europe now.

Pimpin: I thought the film was quite slow.

Michel: Its a piece of crap. But then, it was made in the 60s.

Pimpin: I did some research on it. The film apparently predicted the student and youth riots of the late 60s in Italy.

Michel: Hahahah. You really bought into all that crap?

Pimpin: I know its a bit like how Indian social commentators use crappy films like Deewar to explain the 70s and 80s.

Michel: Exactly. Its completely phony Pimpin.

Pimpin: I'm still confused. I don't know what to think about the film. I mean, the film is quite depressing.

Michel: Well, tell me something about the cinematography, pacing and background score. That would help us interpret it better.

Pimpin: It was a very stark film. Morricone's score was very bleak. The score is played during all the murder and post-murder scenes. It is one of Morricone's bleakest scores. I liked the way some of the scenes were framed. Like at the party where the rebellious protagonist is sitting alone and there are a lot of people dancing. He does not even drink. He has no bad habits. But he wants to kill off his family. The pacing was slow.

Michel: Did you identify with the film?

Pimpin: Sort of. But like I said it was too slow. The actors were great. The director was quite successful in capturing the claustrophobic environment in which the family lives.

Michel: Did you get married recently?

Pimpin: Yes.

Michel: So you are not to be trusted.

Pimpin: Why?

Michel: You would have liked this film a lot more during your wild bachelor days.

Pimpin: Thats probably true, Michel.

Michel: It is.

Pimpin: I did think that it was a very personal film. I mean, the director is very talented. He did portray the ills of the bourgeois life and the life lived on pure instinct quite well. I don't think he was rooting for either.

Michel: Did it work as a murder mystery?

Pimpin: No. I think it works best as the zeitgeist of that time in Italy. But it was quite boring for me.

Michel: OK. Is there anything else that you want to discuss?

Pimpin: The actors were great. I mean, most of them were better than the ones in the worst Indian movies. But I would not watch another movie because anyone of them were in it.

Michel: OK.

Pimpin: Read about he Paris attacks. Quite scary.

Michel: (Silence)

Pimpin: Hello?

Michel: Pimpin, you weren't too impressed by this film. In fact, you were bored to death. You only called me because it had an 8 rating on IMDb.

Pimpin: You are right, Michel.

Michel: Take care, Pimpin.

Pimpin: Bye, Michel.

Michel: Bye

When this film first appeared in the 1960s, the effect was so startlingly individual: there had never been a film as bold, as seemingly unhinged, yet as ruthlessly controlled, as this first feature by Marco Bellocchio. The wonderfully atmospheric black-and-white cinematography seemed to be developed from some dingy dream which dared to bring out into the open the most heinous family secrets, yet the utterly dispassionate fury which animated the most frenzied sequences was so freakish it was almost funny. This constant tension somehow allowed for a sneaky kind of compassion to enter the movie, so that the family dynamics, though extreme, seemed to come out of a common nightmare. FISTS IN THE POCKET remains an embattled cry for a new society, by focusing on the remnants of the diseased upper classes, yet this tale of sound and fury seems to have been made in the kind of frenzied reverie that is analogous to the stream-of-conscious jumble which William Faulkner used at the beginning of THE SOUND AND THE FURY, and to the same effect, i.e., to chart a family's disintegration as a mirror to the decaying grandeur of a dying society.

(1965) Fists in My Pocket/ I pugni in tasca PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA

Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio starring Marino Masé as Augusto craving to leave his family life to marry and be independent, except that he has one brother who has epilepsy, his mother is blind, and another brother who has seizures, Alessandro or Ale for short(Lou Castel). The only 2 people who appear to not having any kind of physical ailments are the oldest brother, Augusto and his sister, Giulia (Paola Pitagora) who may have some incest thoughts. Viewers soon learn that Ale also has a mental ailment as well as a social path who reacts to his oldest brothers burden. Music score by Ennio Morricone. Controversial in it's initial release and denounced by the Catholic church.

Marco Bellocchio directs his first full-length film, and it's already a masterpiece, a milestone in the history of Italian cinema.This movie is all about contemporary uneasiness and family crisis in today's society (only, some two decades in advance). Every time I hear of family massacres on the news, I've got to think about problematic, disturbed Lou Castel deciding to get rid of his mother and younger brother for the benefit of the eldest, embodying not only a stage of criminality, but above all a wrong philosophy, a twisted point of view about life, a failed maturity. Ennio Morricone' score is just perfect, fully successful in his aim to highlight the dramatic potential of the story. Lou Castel has never acted like this, his grimacing and his usage of the dead moments are unforgettable. The frames of the mother's death are like an howl, they "send shivers down your spine". A must-see.

I quit watching after 30 minutes, wasn't interested in the storyline and it seemed to be going nowhere. I found it boring and I wasn't interested in the characters.

Despite my best efforts there are some highly lauded films that I just can't get on board with, or which don't do anything for me, even if I do like them in one measure or another. Despite repeated efforts, there are some esteemed filmmakers that I struggle with in a like capacity, for I might love some of their pictures and hate others, or even be bored by them. As it should happen this is my first experience with filmmaker Marco Bellocchio, so I can't necessarily place him in the same category as Ingmar Bergman, Jean Luc Goddard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, or Oshima Nagisa. On the other hand, as I began to watch 'Fists in the pocket' ('I pugni in tasca'), it readily felt distinctly familiar.

How is this 1965 release familiar? Firstly, there is a great deal to appreciate in these 110 minutes, for it is ably crafted and ably demonstrates the skills of those involved. The cast give striking, spirited performances, and I'd love to see them all in other movies; though Lou Castel takes center stage as troubled Alessandro, Paola Pitagora's playfulness as Giulia is also a delight. This is beautifully shot, a tremendous credit to both director Bellocchio and cinematographer Alberto Marrama; from shot composition, to camerawork, to the fundamental orchestration of scenes, it's all very easy on the eyes, and maybe even more so in black and white. That's even more true given the lovely filming locations, excellent production design and art direction, and sharp costume design, hair, and makeup. And with master composer Ennio Morricone providing the score, what can one possibly say of the music except that it's superb, and a fine, dynamic, flavorful complement for the proceedings?

How else is this 1965 release familiar? Well, the thing is: secondly, I really don't know what it is that I'm supposed to be taking away from it. There are some darkly wry and satirical airs about the feature, and even with these on hand it has all the makings of a dour and ultimately disturbing drama. Given the illnesses with which the chief characters struggle, and the major, multifaceted dysfunction of the family unit, one might suppose that there was commentary in Bellocchio's mind. For my part, however, I watch 'Fists in the pocket' and it just doesn't make any particular impression. I came, I saw, so what? I don't know what it was that Bellochio was doing here, nor what it is that I, as a viewer, am intended to get from it.

What more is there to say? I don't dislike this flick, and truthfully, I want to like it more than I do. I'm glad for those who get more out of it than I do. I glimpse what others have written about the film and it sounds like a more actively interesting, grabbing film than the one I watched. It does slowly gel more as the minutes tick by; at the same time, it feels overly long, sometimes droning on in a fashion that diminished my engagement. I guess I'm just not on the same wavelength as Bellocchio and other moviegoers - it wouldn't be the first time. By all means, check this out, and may you find it a more rewarding viewing experience than I did. It's just that as far as I'm concerned 'Fists in the pocket' isn't anything to specifically get excited about, and I don't know how I could offer any especial recommendation.

As Godard's Breathless was to French cinema, a stylish rupture with the past featuring a nihilistic lead character, so is Fists in the Pocket to Italian cinema. There is a certain visual appeal to this film, Lou Castel turns in a fine performance, and the score from Ennio Morricone finds a way to fit its bizarre story. Unfortunately, it's unpleasant to watch the main character's misdirected (and never particularly justified) rage explode. I believe director Marco Bellocchio's intention with the story was to satirize some of Italy's institutions, like family and the church, but I don't think he was all that successful because he spends most of his time on a deeply dysfunctional family.

Bellocchio gives us a cartoonishly distorted bourgeois family, one with incest, epilepsy, a learning disability, and blindness. The adult children behave like animals at the dinner table and know no boundaries. It's as if you see Bellocchio's mind work at trying to throw everything he could into creating the bizarre, claustrophobic, and insulated world they inhabit, referencing among other things Cocteau's Les Enfants Terrible. The fact that he used disabilities and mental illness as part of this is problematic to me, and the film would have been much more powerful without them.

The young man with pent-up rage (hence, fists in pocket) wants to f* his sister (and his brother's fiancée), throws his blind mother off a cliff, and then proceeds to trash his family's ancestral belongings. He is a combination of (literally) burn-it-all-down nihilism with some kind of mental illness, which didn't lead to any profound revelations. In the film's best scene, we get a glimpse of his alienation. He's at a party, with other young people dancing in sync, and he's awkward and isolated. If only there had been more of this kind of thing, or if he had some kind of humanizing virtues. As it was, it's more about the shock value of a completely unlikeable murderous epileptic. I liked the style of this one, but not the substance, and was glad when it was over.

This is a very good movie, but it's certainly not for anyone. I can't even fathom it's been created 60 years ago, it's too insane, bleak, weird. There is not even one likeable character. Some of them are not unlikeable but they're just too uninteresting to root for, so the viewer focuses on the unlikeable ones. And as a character study, this movie is exciting to watch, because the protagonists are faschinating. Alessandro, Julia and, incidentally, Augusto.

It's like watching a car accident. You're afraid that you will see some ugly things when you're passing by, things that might haunt you but you can't help yourself and you take a look.

Funny thing : Whereas it's bleak, it still remains entertaining and exciting. Things get nasty at some point, but it never gets unbearable to watch. I was curious to see where it goes even though i sensed that there are no happy endings here, and i am not too fond of sad ones.

Acting is amazing. Lou Castel's acting performance is like it's coming from the future, too fresh and timeless.

FISTS IN THE POCKET is a very good psychological drama (-thriller). Beware though, it's not for the faint of heart.

Seriously though, Fists in the Pocket is a fairly unique experience for any era of cinema, and I can only imagine being born too late to see this on original release how audiences (the ones who stuck with it anyway) were agog at some/most of the details as they unfold here. What marks it as so interesting and ultimately special as a darkly dramatic- and almost if it moved just a smidgen to the left or the right harrowingly satirical (and if it became twee it would be well Royal Tenenbaums I digress)- is how Bellocchio has such a miserable character at the center but the filmmaking, the direction and that eerie Morricone score included, is anything but.

Leo Castel is also a major reason this stands out for its time or any time. Maybe the closest his character reminds me of is the lead from Before the Revolution, only instead of an idealistic would-be Socialist it is a malcontent epileptic in a fairly well off secluded family where everyone kind of loathes one another. This is except the blind mother of then all who, well, needs help and guidance even to cut up her dinner, and doesn't really reciprocate it with anything like a mother usually does with affection. With Castel though, he has this leering look and this posture that says that he has had it and is so completely pathological, and yet his performances humanizes someone who we should despise from minute one.

Frankly... it is hard not to feel like young Alessandro will snap and do *something*, but the way he goes about it is equally fascinating and sickening. This isnt a horror film in the visceral extremes of the period like Polanski was doing, but it is a story where Alessandro dwells in his psychopathy and when, as it turns out, his best paid (dumbass) plan to snuff he and his family out in one fell swoop doesn't turn out, he goes about Plan B with his mom and then another character I won't mention and what makes it so fascinating is what is equally repellant about him. There's this icy logic where he suddenly explodes into bursts of laughter and energy, and he is so often sweating and looking in a daze (or about to have what could be another fit) and you don't know where he will pop off next.

It only occurred to me as I type this that this movie reminded me of a much less sneering and sarcastic Saltburn, only if the Barry Keoghan character was in the family wholly and not an interloper. While it's not a one to one comparison, like that film too Bellocchio is dedicated to his arsthetic and to making the look and feel of the film very particular. Fists in the Pocket often emphasizes Alessandro's point of view, like when he is at that party and sort of staring around at everyone and unable to really be able to have fun, and at other times like when he's chucking everything into that small bonfire and going ecstatic, that energy comes out through those erratic cuts - not even jump cuts exactly, more like it's shards of Alessandro's mind and body and soul being chucked around in that chaos.

I don't know if it is a particularly *enjoyable* experience exactly, but it is memorable because of how uncompromising Bellocchio shows this character and the nature of him in this family and how everything may be shown for a politically provocative effect. I've seen other reviews call this a Deathdream or expound about it being a parable for the end point of Socialism, and I don't know if I'm qualified enough to go down those rabbit holes. What I did pick up on was how this filmmaker is I don't think even showing something personal about himself (I hope not *that* far), but how if one takes masculine pride and economic striving (money means a lot to Alessandro, like... a lot) to a much further extent you do get someone like this guy, especially one so young and ruthless and without, needless to say, empathy.

Oh and did I mention how remarkable the actress playing the sister Giulia is? Because, my goodness that scene where she is in bed and says she doesn't love him anymore, you suddenly see this wounded heart bleeding all over the place. Fists in the Pocket is not a scary kind of horror rather that it is about the mania that unfolds when a human being can't be kept in any kind of check is... this. I have to wonder if Yorgos Lanthimos is a fan, albeit he is not Italian so it is a little different (ie Dogtooth or Sacred Deer, another Keoghan btw).

What a deeply sad film, what an unhappy family, what a melancholy and depressive drama, what strong and intense performances, they manage to convey all the pain and despair, all the kindness and dubious altruism of the characters... Marco, in his work, managed to show all the purity and despair of those affected by disturbances, physical or psychological, the soreness of a society of empowerment and exclusion, divine work...

Beautifully filmed, with nice cinematography and camera movements, mostly in indoor footage, the novienis also interesting in its unique subject. While the development of the story is perhaps too slow in the beginning (although with some grat scenes), the film becomes incrisingly disturbing. Hatred for family, order and tradition is portrayed as aiming a final solution - if you understand what I mean... All members of the family (in different ways, all of them are overly self-centred) are well developped in their dysfunctional relationship, phisically represented in blindness, intellectual disability and epilepsy. Curiously, a "handicapped" himself is moved by a creepy cleansing impulse. Even his closest person, his beautiful sister, with whom he has a complicity relatiinship, is not out of danger.

I found it a bit disappointing. There are great moments -the funeral or the dance party for example- but as a whole I came out of the theater pretty unimpressed. Still, you have to remember that it first came out in 1965,and what happens in the movie must have chilled the Italian public of that time. Rating;6

"With murder-suicide changing into a series of murders, Bellocchio unblinkingly divulges the worst in human nature, namely, how a younger generation sets to annihilate the older one, how handicap is cavalierly gauged as a disposable liability and most astutely, in the case of Augusto, whose saneness betrays his own morally compromised cruelty. After getting wise of Sandro's motive, he simply stays put, nominally regarding it as a joke, but Masé's subtle expression implies that Augusto might not entirely against the dastardly plan, after all, he has all the gainful benefit in the aftermath without being the actual wrongdoer, how many of us could resist such a temptation? At the age of 26, Bellocchio already sets out his stall as a formidable, perspicacious scrutinizer of humanity's dark torrents."

read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, thanks.