A report on Luchino Visconti, Paolo Stoppa and Rocco and His Brothers

Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli) is a 1960 drama film directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Alain Delon, Annie Girardot, Renato Salvatori, Katina Paxinou, Roger Hanin, Paolo Stoppa, and Claudia Cardinale in one of her early roles.

As a stage actor, his most celebrated works include those after World War II, when he met director Luchino Visconti: the two, together with Stoppa's wife, actress Rina Morelli, formed a trio whose adaptations of works by authors such as Chekhov, Shakespeare and Goldoni became highly acclaimed.

His best-known films include Senso (1954) and The Leopard (1963), both historical melodramas based on Italian literary classics, the gritty drama Rocco and His Brothers (1960), and his "German Trilogy" – The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1972).

As a film actor, Stoppa made some 194 appearances between 1932 and his retirement in 1983, with roles in popular classics such as Miracolo a Milano (1951), Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960), Viva l'Italia! (1961), Il Gattopardo (1962), La matriarca (1968), and Amici miei atto II (1982).

Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963) is based on Lampedusa's novel of the same name about the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy at the time of the Risorgimento, where the change of times becomes visible in two of the main characters: Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster) appears patriarchal but humane, while Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa), a shrewd entrepreneur and social climber from the village, appears submissive, but foxy and brutal at the same time, a mafia-like type of the future.