Marco Bellocchio

Fists in the Pocket

Fists in the Pocket

Tormented by twisted desires, a young man takes drastic measures to rid his grotesquely dysfunctional family of its various afflictions, in this astonishing 1965 debut from Marco Bellocchio. With its coolly assured style, shocking perversity, and savage gallows humor, Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) was a gleaming ice pick in the eye of bourgeois family values and Catholic morality, a truly unique work that continues to rank as one of the great achievements of Italian cinema.

Film Info

  • Italy
  • 1965
  • 108 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.85:1
  • Italian
  • Spine #333

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Marco Bellocchio, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Interviews from 2005 with Bellocchio, actors Lou Castel and Paola Pitagora, editor Silvano Agosti, critic Tullio Kezich, and filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci
  • New interview with scholar Stefano Albertini
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Deborah Young

    Cover by Neil Kellerhouse and Peter Grant

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

DVD Box Set

50 Discs

$650.00

Out Of Print

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Marco Bellocchio, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Interviews from 2005 with Bellocchio, actors Lou Castel and Paola Pitagora, editor Silvano Agosti, critic Tullio Kezich, and filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci
  • New interview with scholar Stefano Albertini
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Deborah Young

    Cover by Neil Kellerhouse and Peter Grant
Fists in the Pocket
Cast
Lou Castel
Alessandro
Paola Pitagora
Giulia
Marino Masé
Augusto
Liliana Gerace
Mother
Pierluigi Troglio
Leone
Jenny MacNeil
Lucia
Credits
Director
Marco Bellocchio
Written by
Marco Bellocchio
Produced by
Enzo Doria
Production manager
Ugo Novello
Cinematography
Alberto Marrama
Music by
Ennio Morricone
Art direction
Gisella Longo
Edited by
Silvano Agosti
Dubbing director
Elda Tattoli
Assistant editor
Anita Cacciolati
Sound
Vittorio De Sisti
Camera operator
Giuseppe Lanci
Assistant camera operator
Alberto Rosa

Current

A Howl of Defiance from the Italian Sixties
A Howl of Defiance from the Italian Sixties

Marco Bellocchio’s subversive debut feature, Fists in the Pocket, emerged out of a period of social unrest, taking aim at both bourgeois values and Catholic hypocrisy.

Fists in the Pocket: Ripped to Shreds
Fists in the Pocket: Ripped to Shreds

Made in 1965 and still considered by many to be Marco Bellocchio’s masterpiece, Fists in the Pocket foreshadows the years of student protest in a family tragedy bordering on horror.

By Deborah Young

A Pair of Perverse Shockers, Newly Restored

Repertory Picks

A Pair of Perverse Shockers, Newly Restored

If you’re in the mood for some auteurist horror, be sure to catch Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket and Brian De Palma’s Sisters in New York this week.

Atom Egoyan’s Top 10
Atom Egoyan’s Top 10

Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan has directed fourteen features.

Mad Man: Lou Castel in Fists in the Pocket

Performances

Mad Man: Lou Castel in Fists in the Pocket
Fists in the Pocket, a gasp-inducing, mouth-frothing, black-comic attack on bourgeois values, is remembered first and foremost as a shocking debut from director Marco Bellocchio. But it gave its star, Lou Castel, a memorable entrance of his own: h…

By Michael Koresky

Singing Morricone’s Praises
Singing Morricone’s Praises
The eighty-one-year-old Ennio Morricone has been composing hypnotic music for film since the early 1960s, for projects ranging from spaghetti westerns (his whistling, woodwindy five-note theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of the most rec…
Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Top 10
Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Top 10

Writer and filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin collaborated for many years with Jean-Luc Godard, on the Dziga Vertov Group films as well as Tout va bien. He also made three popular films, Poto and Cabengo, Routine Pleasures, and My Crasy Life.