A Man Called Rocca (1961)

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General		Extras
Category	Crime	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1961
Running Time	102:01
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jean Becker
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Jean-Paul Belmondo Christine Kaufmann Pierre Vaneck Béatrice Altariba Henri Virlojeux Mario David Nico Pedro Serano Charles Moulin Jean-Pierre Darras Edmond Beauchamp Jacques Léonard
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Dual
RPI	?	Music	Claude Normand

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	French Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.66:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Retired criminal Roberto La Rocca (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is told that his hot headed friend Xavier Abe (Pierre Vaneck) has been framed for murder by his partner Villanova (Nico) and is awaiting trial. Rocca returns to the city where he seduces Villanova’s girl Maud (Beatrice Altariba), shoots and kills Villanova and takes over the gambling club previously run by Xavier and Villanova. He also renews his acquaintance with Xavier’s beautiful sister Genevieve (Christine Kaufmann). Meanwhile, Xavier is found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison. When standover thugs threaten the gambling club, Rocca shoots them and is sentenced to prison. In prison Rocca and Xavier meet up, suffer solitary and volunteer to clear land mines. Xavier loses an arm in an explosion, they receive remission because of their mine clearing, are released and settle down in a farm with Genevieve. But Xavier has an idea, which leads to tragedy.

     A Man Called Rocca is directed by Jean Becker (whose first film this was) based on the novel L’excommunie by Jose Giovanni. As a movie it has way too much plot, and in fact it feels like three separate stories cobbled together unevenly; the revenge plot, the prison experience and the final section after their release. Characters appear prominently, then disappear completely, and new characters are thrown into the picture without preliminaries or presaging even as late as the 90 minute mark, characters whose function is only to push the narrative in another direction. I have not read the book, but I would expect that these characters in a novel would have better introductions and motivations. Author Giovanni was unhappy with this screen adaption of his novel and ten years after this film, in 1972, Giovanni himself directed the movie La Scoumoune based on his own book, again staring Belmondo. La Scoumoune is available in the three disc set French Screen Icons: Jean-Paul Belmondo 2 from Madman, and will be reviewed on this site later this month.

     Jean-Paul Belmondo is a genuine screen icon, an actor who appeared in over 80 films in a career that stretched between 1956 and 2008. No matter the film or genre, he was the epitome of “cool”, the nearest equivalent in English language films probably being Steve McQueen. In A Man Called Rocca he looks very young, is handsome, cheeky, charismatic and lights up the screen. His scenes with the mine clearance team are quite tense and well-staged. Pierre Vaneck as Xavier also does well, but no-one else really gets enough screen time to stand out.

     A Man Called Rocca , despite the plot challenges mentioned above, has moments of interest and Belmondo is always worth watching.

     A Man Called Rocca is included in the three disc set French Screen Icons: Jean-Paul Belmondo 1 from Madman that also includes Moderato Cantabile (1960) and Weekend At Dunkirk (1964).

Video

     A Man Called Rocca is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1, which I believe is the original theatrical ratio, and is 16x9 enhanced.

     This is a reasonable black and white print. In the early out door shots the film lacks sharpness and has copious grain but the later indoor and set sequences are sharp and detailed. Later, in the outdoor mine sequences, the film is again softer. Blacks and shadow detail are acceptable. There is the occasional scratch and odd dirt mark, some aliasing and infrequent ghosting (see 101:27 for example) but nothing too distracting. For a 50 year old film it was quite good.

     English subtitles are in a yellow font. I noticed no obvious spelling or grammatical errors, although their timing with the French dialogue seemed slightly slow. There were also a couple of dialogue scenes in Spanish. When they occurred, burned in white subtitles translated the Spanish into French and the yellow English subtitles were overlayed.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     Audio is a French Dolby Digital 2.0 mono at 224 Kbps. Dialogue is clear, the effects such as gunshots were quite dull. In contrast, vehicle engines were quite good. There was obviously no surround or subwoofer use. While nothing special, the audio does the job.

     The music by Claude Normand was accordion based and does sound dated.

     Lip synchronisation was good.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     None

     I cannot at this time find another English friendly release of the film. A Region 2 French release does not seem to have English subtitles.

     I also cannot find an equivalent Belmondo collection listed on sales sites. The only thing close is a Region 2 UK collection that includes Breathless, Pierrot Le Fou, Le Professional, Stavisky and A Double Tour.

     A Man Called Rocca feels like three separate stories cobbled together unevenly. Characters appear prominently, then disappear completely and new characters are thrown into the picture without preliminaries whose function is only to push the narrative in another direction. Still, the film has moments of interest and Belmondo is always worth watching. .

     The DVD has adequate video and audio. There are no extras but the film is presented in a box set with two other films, which is great value for fans of Belmondo or French cinema.

     A Man Called Rocca is included in the three disc set French Screen Icons: Jean-Paul Belmondo 1 from Madman that also includes Moderato Cantabile (1960) and Weekend At Dunkirk (1964).

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall