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everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Admirable film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The title had led me to anticipate gritty realist drama; but the Italian cinema had by 1965 largely lost interest in those at the bottom of life's heap, and this film - which seems intended to be an extremely black comedy - is instead set amidst a household still struggling precariously to maintain it's grip on its former secure status.Fifty years ago all this must have seemed bracingly anarchic; but sophisticated audiences at that time still laughed indulgently at the scene in which hulking Gaston Modot hilariously strikes a bourgeois woman in 'L'Age d'Or' for accidentally spilling a drink down him (Bunuel himself wasn't particularly impressed with 'Fists in the Pocket'); and what could then be acclaimed as non-conformity increasingly looks to modern politically correct sensibilities like bullying born of boredom (especially since the anti-hero Alessandro seems still to subsist at a social strata at which he's spared the far more tedious burden of having to work for a living).As played by the slightly built, baby-faced Lou Castel, Allessandro lacks the physically intimidating presence of, say, David Warner as 'Morgan!' that would make him seem like a bully; but he still reserves some of his most brutal treatment for those least able to defend themselves, like a blind woman and a mentally handicapped epileptic.

My signature uses the words "God Awful Experience." This film with its unraveling psychosis is hard to watch, but it's principle character is simply necessary to draw out the sickness of all the participants. A young man, prone to epileptic seizures, is truly psychotic. He is bored and sees life as quite hopeless. In his nihilistic, existential angst, he has little trouble murdering his mother whom he sees as a nuisance, a distraction, and a pest. He wants some kind of autonomy. There is fratricide and incest and other horrible realities in this film. Killing seems somewhat easy, though hiding the act is not easy. The perpetrator is not able to achieve satisfaction. There is something pretty Freudian here (perhaps counter-Freudian). One strength is that while we have no idea what will happen next and there is no natural flow to this, we can't take our eyes off the movie. If you want something to challenge your senses, take a gander at this film.

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 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.