Blood Brothers

Naples at the end of the nineteenth century. Nicola Bellizzi comes out of a reformatory wanting to be a lawyer and manages it with the backing of don Gaetano, a Camorra boss. The bill arrives soon enough: he has to defend Gaetano against a charge of sexual violence and murder, and while trying to get out from under his family’s obligations he ends up inside the violence himself. Pasquale Squitieri’s hundred and thirty minute film opened in Italy on 23 February 1974 and became the second part of his Camorra trilogy. Claudia Cardinale plays Lucia Esposito, Gaetano’s fierce mistress; she and Squitieri met on this film and later married. Franco Nero and Fabio Testi are also in the cast.