Perfect cast and a good story

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

An epileptic young man in a bourgeois family who,as soon we meet them ,seems not only to be living in the past,but to be already dead :they only get out of the house to go to the cemetery;the blind wodowed mother has delegated her authority to her elder son ,a nice handome man who "takes care" of his siblings :a girl who seems in love with her brother -she does want to see the prostitute her brother sleeps with,as though she would like to be her(and thus his) just for a while -, a half-wit ,and Sandro who passes for a ne'er do well to his clever brother's eyes:he is denied everything ,all his attempts to get out of this mausoleum fail (taking his driving licence , raising rabbits )and his restrained hatred knows no bounds .He's really got a chip on his shoulder ,and he becomes almost fascistic : one has to get rid of the improductive population - like in Rosselini's " Germania Anno Zero "in which a schoolteacher ,feeling nostalgic for the Führer, urges a little boy to kill his bedridden father-He does not realize he is in a cul de sac ;his big brother did stay with them because of the mother ,but as soon as she dies ,he wants to get married and to live his life .Sexually repressed -he refuses to dance with a girl who invites him (and not the other way around) and can only have sex with a prostitute,life is a blind alley for Sandro ;as for his big brother,he cannot stand his licit happiness ,he feels the approval of the others ,of the society ,still cooped up in this petty life.As he is not able to get rid of this powerful man who accepts the golden rules,he sacrifices a substitute ,his kid brother.Bellochio 's movie should be seen as a fable ,a transparent metaphor ,not really realistic ,with elements of melodrama (the sister's fate);Sandro is sick ,but so are people around them even though they are not aware that their old world ,through a slow process but inexorably , is collapsing .Epilepsy is just an alibi."Il Pugni In Tasca" took a rebel stand against the family;but Marco Bellochio's fight had only just begun: " Nel Name Del Padre " denounced the Church;in "Marcia Trionfale",at a time the militay service still existed in Italy (and almost everywhere in Europa),the army was hauled over the coals.

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.

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.

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