A Man Named Rocca

A Man Named Rocca (French: Un nommé La Rocca) is a 1961 French-Italian crime thriller directed by Jean Becker. The film adapts José Giovanni's 1958 novel L'Excommunié, with Becker and Giovanni sharing the screenwriting credit. Jean-Paul Belmondo heads the cast, supported by performers such as Dominique Zardi, Edmond Beauchamp and Jean-Pierre Darras. Shot in French, the picture runs about 102 minutes and blends crime and drama elements typical of the period's French genre cinema. Belmondo returned to the same source novel more than a decade later, appearing in a second screen version released in 1972, this time directed by Giovanni himself. The film remains one of the earlier crime thrillers in Belmondo's career, arriving just as he was becoming a leading figure of French cinema.