Combining Italian neorealism and conventional melodrama, Luchino Visconti's stirring and expansive family epic is set in 1950s Milan, telling a tale of changing times, family ties, conflicting moral codes, human weaknesses, jealousy, rape and murder with realistic trappings and operatic style. After the death of the family patriarch, widowed Rosaria Parondi (Katina Paxinou) moves from a farm to the city with her five sons (including Alain Delon as Rocco).