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. Charged by a coolly assured style, shocking perversity, and savage gallows humor, Fists in the Pocket 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.

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

Special Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer
New video interviews with director Marco Bellocchio, actors Lou Castel and Paola Pitagora, editor Silvano Agosti, and critic Tullio Kezich
Video afterword by director Bernardo Bertolucci
Original theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Deborah Young and an interview with Bellocchio

New cover by Neil Kellerhouse and Peter Grant

Purchase Options

DVD 1 Disc $23.96 SRP: $29.95

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

DVD Box Set

50 Discs

$650.00

Special Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer
New video interviews with director Marco Bellocchio, actors Lou Castel and Paola Pitagora, editor Silvano Agosti, and critic Tullio Kezich
Video afterword by director Bernardo Bertolucci
Original theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Deborah Young and an interview with Bellocchio

New cover by Neil Kellerhouse and Peter Grant

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Cast & Credits

Cast

Lou Castel: Alessandro
Paola Pitagora: Giulia
Marino Masé: Augusto
Liliana Gerace: Mother
Pierluigi Troglio: Leone
Jenny MacNeil: Lucia

Credits

Director: Marco Bellocchio
Screenplay: Marco Bellocchio
Producer: Enzo Doria
Cinematography: Alberto Marrama
Editing: Silvano Agosti
Music: Ennio Morricone
Production manager: Ugo Novello
Art direction: Gisella Longo

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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…

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Bellocchio Headed to Turin

It’s been announced that Italian director Marco Bellocchio, whose blistering 1965 family drama–cum–horror film Fists in the Pocket remains one of our favorite treasures in the Criterion Collection, has agreed to serve as the jury head for the I…

Jul 22, 2010

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…

Oct 23, 2009

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. This seminal first feature catapulted the twenty-six-year-old Bell…

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Apr 25, 2006

Explore

Ennio Morricone

Composer

After making a name for himself scoring spaghetti westerns, Ennio Morricone went on to work with some of the most renowned European and Hollywood moviemakers of all time in a career that has spanned five decades. The maestro was born in Rome and educated in trumpet and choral music at Italy’s National Academy of Santa Cecilia, one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, during World War II. Early in his career, he wrote background music for radio dramas, composed classical pieces, and performed in jazz bands, but it was his sixties movie scores for Sergio Leone—specifically his now ubiquitous woodwindy wah-wah for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—that put him on the international map. Thanks to the iconic themes from these films, Morricone would be commissioned to write music for more than forty other westerns, but he would also work with such filmmakers as Marco Bellocchio (Fists in the Pocket), Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salò), and, when he began scoring American films, Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven), Samuel Fuller (White Dog), Brian De Palma (The Untouchables), and John Carpenter (The Thing). Moving easily between B movies and prestige films, adventure and romance, Morricone has remained one of cinema’s most adventurous, active, and versatile composers.