Fists in the Pocket

1965 ‘I pugni in tasca’ Directed by Marco Bellocchio

Ale, a deeply disturbed young man subject to seizures, benignly decides to murder members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.

Lou Castel Paola Pitagora Marino Masé Liliana Gerace Stefania Troglio Jeannie McNeil Mauro Martini Gianni Schicchi Alfredo Filippazzi

Alternative Titles

De Punhos Cerrados, Las manos en los bolsillos, Mit der Faust in der Tasche

drama

105 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Robert Beksinski ★★★★ 1

Maybe a precursor to such deranged familial films like Dogtooth. This dark Italian movie conjures up enough angst and mental weariness that the absurdity that follows seems completely in the realm of possibility.
Fists in the Pocket is a jarring experience but it is one that creeps up on the viewer in subtle fashion. From the moment the film begins we notice the oddities of the family with incestual undertones, mental disturbances, filth, dependence with abnormalities and ailments of various members and a clockwork like existence. Perhaps one could say the film was a ticking time bomb waiting to end in tragedy but instead its fate turned out to be more akin to a slow disease eating away from the…
Review by Dina ▪️🔹 ★★★★

Italian story about a dysfunctional family, where the son starts planning to kill everyone off.
Didn't love the ending, some of the acting seemed a bit melodramatic but that's me judging a Criterion collection film harshly when I happily watch junk all the time. So I guess grain of salt and all that.
Review by russman ★★★½

i'm typing this review with my nose
Review by Keaton B ★★★★½

As dark as it is captivating, this post-neorealist gem allegorically captures the anarchy and the turmoil of the 60's. Brilliantly played by Lou Castel, who decides to murder the members of his wealthy family as if that was the only way to cure them, the protagonist if full of restless energy but doesn't quite know how or where to channel it. The spirit of the time is certainly alive in this film, but it transcends it with its acuity. The institution of family is not the film's only target, but it's the primary one. This supposedly happy catholic family turns out to be rotten to the core. The cure may be extreme, but it isn't treated as the wrong one.
Review by Diogo Serafim ★★★★½

A structuralist incestuous dream, a death drive oriented through revolt towards revolution, a premonitory epilepsy, dreams of 68 and their subsequent death, an attempt at an altruistic matricide, an universal fratricide, confusing tradition and morality, manners and ethics - the ultimate libertarian dream, to fly beyond the net of family and its nucleus of neurosis, where you can live as an individual and have your independence through financial and material autonomy, the ultimate socialist dream, to move beyond culture towards a free world.
Review by Emapolve ★★★★★

I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio è uno di quei film che passano una volta ogni 60 anni, che lasciano un segno indelebile nella società a cui temporalmente appartengono ma che potranno essere compresi appieno solo dalle generazioni successive.
La rabbia è il primo aggettivo che mi viene in mente per descrivere questa pellicola, la rabbia di Sandro nei confronti di una società che non lo accetta e di una famiglia che non lo comprende.
La rabbia di Bellocchio, che attraverso un perfetto montaggio ellittico riesce a donare all'opera una regia rarefatta, perfetta per descrivere l'Italia falsamente progredita degli anni '60.
Bellocchio critica aspramente quella famiglia medio borghese italiana di cui lui stesso ha fatto parte, persa in un…
Review by Sally Jane Black

What a great title. It captures the essence of this film entirely, I think. It is frustration, balled up and hidden away, knowing no release, the precursor to desperate acts and mad stupidity. The whole film is pressurized. Poverty, disability (mental and physical), isolation, and failure inspire horrors within a strange family in an Italian town, and the fallout is... fucked up.
The principle characters are all somehow flawed in the eyes of each other and/or the world. An epileptic, an incestuous thrill seeker sister, a mentally handicapped young man brother, a blind old mother, and the supposedly normal elder brother--but rather callous--all live together in a too small home, and the combination of their woes and poverty are holding…
Review by Kurdt ★★★½

Unsettling Italian neo-realism. A family filled with epileptic siblings, a blind mother, incestual undertones, all housed within a filthy home - that's a recipe for trouble. One of the brothers finally has it dawn on him how much easier life would be without having to be stuck within this hell and having to care for his siblings. It would be better if they were all dead, he thinks. Not just for him, but for them too. It's hell living with mental disorders and permanent blindness, he'd just be putting them out of their misery he argues.
There really isn't much of a plot to describe here, it's more of a stark look at a horrific idea and running with it.…
Review by b rad ★★★★½

Prime example of that wonderful period of filmmaking when the arthouse cinema provided genuinely dangerous ideas, as opposed to mere provocation. Provides a radical solution to the problems explored in Italian cinema up to that point, and interrogates the most sacred institution, the family unit, one of the few unturned stones in the national cinema at that point.
Among the carnage, some heartbreaking moments arise; psychopathic Alessandro has a crushing scene alone at a party where wordlessly he conveys a moment of self-revelation - that something inside him is broken, that simple happinesses like his brother's impending marriage, will always elude him for reasons he can't understand.
Review by Cahiers Du Cinéma

Jean-Andre Fieschi: 'The Falling Sickness: Fists in the Pocket'
('Le haut-mal', Cahiers du Cinema 179, June 1966)
The kind of controlled fury, the methodical and calculated anger that marks out right from the beginning a radically new space - in which we can nevertheless all recognize and identify the demons of our own adolescence in spite of the deliberately exceptional nature of the mode of affabulation - bring powerfully into play the elements of a protest whose violence and impact lead us back to L'dge d'or and Zero de cOllduite: like Bunuel and Vigo, Bellocchio uses the forms of a dramatic poem to express the virulent arguments he deploys in his search for vengeance while at the same time preserving…
Review by Bruno Andrade ★★★★

(...) Para definir Bellocchio é possível se referir ao neorrealismo ou ao realismo socialista? Não. Aos filmes "a Antonioni"? Não. Em Bellocchio é a experiência destes últimos anos e, como tantos poetas e jovens escritores, como o próprio Bernardo Bertolucci, como o americano Ginsberg, Bellocchio representa uma alternativa cultural aos dez anos que o precederam; alternativa que caracterizará os próximos anos do nosso trabalho.
Dario Argento, "Un dibattito infuocato su Bellocchio", Paese Sera, 17 de março de 1966

(...) A crise epiléptica que mata Sandro/Lou Castel ao final de De Punhos Fechados é o prenúncio, o adiantamento mesmo do fracasso de 68 e das não-concretizações da geração à qual o diretor automaticamente se filia quando realiza este primeiro trabalho. Bellocchio…
Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★

It's like a wake-up call for modern families in such an absorbing society to reexamine their respective roles in their lives. Lou Castel offers a chilling performance as the core of a dysfunctional family with unclear priorities, his neverending torment being enhanced by an inner mental chaos supposedly surrounding him. What is really difficult is to make our index finger point towards what may or not be justifiable, as basically almost any topic can be seen from what Voltaire would define now as "double standards".
98/100

Recent reviews

Review by Thiago Borges ★

A tensão familiar fica no patamar mais raso, pois os personagens são o que o roteiro os obriga a ser. As coisas acontecem porque sim - tipo uma relação incestuosa, aventada por alguma razão. Tem algumas cenas e planos inúteis no começo.
Review by merrickagain

Me ha parecido fascinante esta familia disfuncional burguesa y de posible pasado fascista. El protagonista, a pesar de todo, me ha parecido magísimo. Llegué a ella por la bonita banda sonora de Morricone.
Review by Mark ★★★½

The Criterion Challenge #14 - A film made in Italy
Review by Emapolve ★★★★★

I pugni in tasca di Marco Bellocchio è uno di quei film che passano una volta ogni 60 anni, che lasciano un segno indelebile nella società a cui temporalmente appartengono ma che potranno essere compresi appieno solo dalle generazioni successive.
La rabbia è il primo aggettivo che mi viene in mente per descrivere questa pellicola, la rabbia di Sandro nei confronti di una società che non lo accetta e di una famiglia che non lo comprende.
La rabbia di Bellocchio, che attraverso un perfetto montaggio ellittico riesce a donare all'opera una regia rarefatta, perfetta per descrivere l'Italia falsamente progredita degli anni '60.
Bellocchio critica aspramente quella famiglia medio borghese italiana di cui lui stesso ha fatto parte, persa in un…
Review by igorsousa ★★★★

Muita coragem do Belochio de em plena Itália mostrar a família como um ambiente de castração, incesto, ciúmes, raiva, abandono, matricídio e fratricídio.
Ter o ponto-de-vista de Sandro é uma experiência desagradável e desconcertante, perfeitamente simbolizada no ataque epilético.
Review by Ben De Bono ★★★★½

Family as hell on earth. Incredibly well shot and acted, with one of Morricone's best scores
Review by Nour Awada ★★★★½

wow
Review by aversaci

No idea what I was thinking watching this on Valentine’s Day. Thoroughly unpleasant...I liked it a lot.
Review by EvanJH ★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

I can excuse matricide and fratricide, but I draw the line at incestuous undertones.
Review by Bora Bruce ★★★★★

An Italian gothic deconstruction of family values in this neo-realist debut from Bellocchio surrounding a dysfunctional family constrained in their decaying provincial home. Alesandro (Lou Castel) frustrated, pathological and disturbed; disenchanted with his family decides the best course of action financially and practically is to kill them off, either collectively or just those who hold a perceived burden over the family both in terms of finance and physical effort when it comes to their care (with a blind mother and a brother with severe epilepsy). The family spin a web of deceit and corruption, eldest Augusto (Marino Masé) is acutely aware of his younger siblings plans yet sits on the side-lines, curiously non-plussed. Sister Giulia (Paola Pitagora) is entwined in…
Review by Aidin Kamali

You brothers get shit like We Own the Night and what do we get? This is what we get?
Review by Kevin Sampaio

Murder is bad