Selected by A.O. Scott | The New York Times

“I was a college student when I first saw ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS—interested in movies but more enamored of literature. Lucchino Visconti’s 1960 epic was the first film I recall seeing that seemed to do everything a novel could do and more. Its story, about a family of migrants from Italy’s impoverished rural South to its industrial North, is both intimate and sweeping, encompassing individual fates as it illuminates a large-scale social transformation. Its dramas of passion and betrayal reminded me of Dreiser and Dostoevsky, but what really swept me away was its visual texture: the glow and grain of the black-and-white cinematography; the shadows of its urban landscape; and noble, gorgeous, suffering faces of its stars.” – A.O.S.

A. O. Scott joined The New York Times as a film critic in January 2000, and was appointed chief critic in 2004. Previously, Mr. Scott was a Sunday book reviewer for Newsday and a frequent contributor to Slate, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications. He has served on the editorial staffs of Lingua Franca and The New York Review of Books. He also edited “A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays,” a collection by Mary McCarthy, which was published by The New York Review of Books in 2002. Mr. Scott was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism in 2010, the same year he served as host for the final season of “At the Movies,” the syndicated reviewing program started by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.