Abstract
Visconti's family melodrama reflects boxing's ascendency in Italian popular culture in the 1940s and 1950s, fuelled by the favourable results of Italian boxers in the ring and numerous Hollywood and Italian boxing films in theatres. An examination of this cinematic intertext in the preparation, production, and presentation of the film reveals a disruption to any ontological link between the film and the migrant crisis, introducing generic codes not normally associated with an auteur like Visconti. Moreover, attention to the body of the boxers redirects criticisms that Visconti embedded a personal, racist perspective on southern Italians within Rocco e i suoi fratelli. How this cinematic archetype was deployed to narrativize a hot-button social issue highlights the limits of the canonical means for interpreting the film: neorealism, adaptation, and impegno.
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