Luchino Visconti
Excellent stuff! I’ve not seen La Terra Trema for ages, but have to say i’ve been taken more with some of his sumptuous period films like Senso (especially), The Leopard, The Innocent.
With Visconti’s early neo-realist career, Renoir and Toni are crucial as influences, on his politics and especially on Ossessione. Of course he still made his own personal way
“Unreconciled tension between a Marxian vision of society and an operatic conception of character.” Yes, an unusual mix of Aristocratic opulence, high cultural interests and Marxist leanings
Re-reading your post, i’m struck by how well you pinpoint concisely so many essential characteristics of his career
Thanks Kenji. I’m going to continue this kind of analyzing pictorial elements of great directors works on my blog. Recently I wrote an article for Iranian “Film Monthly” about how one should pick right frames and how systematically discuss them in the context of a particular film or the oeuvre of a director. My next project will be John Ford.
well i must say this is the sort of useful thread that deserves more interest- sadly, Visconti often tends to be overshadowed by Fellini and Antonioni
Thanks, those pictures bring back fond memories of my Visconti’s favorites (all of them pre-Gattopardo).
I know next to nothing about Visconti. The only film of his I’ve seen is “Ossessione”. I’ve always wanted to see “La Terra Trema” for some unknown reason. There’s something that sounds interesting about it to me.
Some have argued that Visconti was the best stylist of his generation in Italy. Would anyone here agree with that?
I’ve only seen The Leonard, Rocco and The Damned
Joks; that’s true, for sure. When everybody (including masters like De Sica and Rossellini) was trying to expand his cinematic language within the boundaries of neorealism, he was a real fearless freelancer (see La Tera Trema) from both ‘social commitment’ and ‘style’ point of view. In the second modern wave of Italian cinema (talking about Fellini, Antonioni) he was already a giant figure as far as complex rhythms and new narrative techniques were concerned. But maybe he was too arty, too aristocrat and two drowned in the past for the critics and audiences who excepted something quiet opposite from Italian cinema, due to all those cliches established from Fascist period to even Fellini age. Please go back and dig his early days and also his English biography book by Gala Servadio.
Very nice selection of stills.
Andre Bazin said Visconti tunred the fisherman in “La Terra Trema” into “Renaissance princes.”
His art is complex and varied — as is his life.
His ancestry can be traced directly to Charlemgane.
His family built the Catheral on whose roof Alain Delon and Annie Giradot perform a major scene in “Rocco and His Borthers.” They also built the opera house in “Senso.”
My faves are “The Leopard,” “Senso,” “The Job” (from “Bocaccio ’70”), “Death in Venice” and “Conversation Piece.”
“Ludwig,” “The Damned” and “Sandra” are also teriffic.
His love affair with Helmut Berger both inspired him, and was the end of him.
And that’s just his films.
He had a considerable career in Italy as a stage director — comparable in influence to Elia Kazan.
And then there’s opera. He pretty much INVENTED Maria Callas.
Ehsan, an effective use of still images to highlight your points. Well done,. The Leopard is one of my all time favorite films, when Criterion released the film back in 2004 with both the US cut (which was the only version I had seen at that point) and the original cut of the film I rejoiced. I really must make a concerted effort to watch more of his early work.
Hence his family built the cathedral which recently had such … impact … on a certain small politico. I think Visconti would approve :)
I think I like his work best around the time of Senso and Il Gattopardo, magnificent elegies for a world which could only vanish, which is living its last days completely consciously and even with a kind of ‘demob’ enthusiasm (he certainly didn’t work with Renoir for nothing), which is ethically unjustifiable and knows it but, at least in extremis, has a human consciousness which isn’t always guaranteed elsewhere. Filling the screen with magnificent faded textiles and flaking gilt and characters whose lives are drifting out of their hands.
By the time of The Damned and Ludwig it had all got a bit too big. But what do you do if you’ve lived all your life in a palace where you can’t guarantee you’ll run into the cook for days together and you leave messages for the staff in case your paths don’t cross (or so Helmut Berger said in a documentary which I remember watching with some amusement)?
The rarities I saw once and wish I could find again – you’ve got no shots from them either Ehsan, have you seen them? – Bellissima and (perhaps even more) Vaghe stelle dell’Orsa.
Have to agree that he went overboard with “The Damned”.
There’s a lot of melodrama in Rocco and Terra Trema which I enjoy.
A decent print of Ossessione is long overdue. Some real fireworks in that one.
Ali; I have seen all Visconti films (including his partially made films with other Italian directors). I love Bellisima and the sexual subtext in the second one (that I know as Sandra - US title) is very interesting for me. it’s a meeting between Antonioni and Freud in extreme points. Some stills from Sandra for you:
Yes, Visconti’s career has been varied- which has probably counted against him, with many critics liking consistent clear-cut auteurist style. David, i read not long back that huge numbers in Europe can trace their ancestry back to Charlemagne, but of course Visconti did have that Aristocratic pedigree. I like Bellissima too, Ehsan. What little i’ve seen of White Nights was beautiful, and colours are striking e.g in Senso (a romantic yet painful film, a rare mix of romance and cynicism) and The Innocent, also with bitter-sweet emotions. Opulence with a sting in the tail
Ossessione is often claimed as the first neo-realist film- i presume it fits for Italian neo-realism, but other films before had neo-realist characteristics; Toni, Ozu’s Inn at Tokyo, Aniki Bobo (of which only Toni was really known internationally when Ossessione came out). Anyway, neo-realism was part of a continuum, and influenced by French films of the 30s. I’ve not seen Blasetti’s 1860 (1934) but understand that was a precursor too
Very nice topic, and the different aspect you point reconstruct my memory about Visconti. It’s great.
About the Marxist part, that’s remind me another italian movie, Prima della Rivoluzione of Bertolucci, more political but in the same way than tthe Neo realist does with frontal and documentary style. Visconti reconstruct those battle in interior, in the family area, separate but attached to the society.
I’ve got to mention for the pantheon of Italian movie that early Pasolini are such a cinematographic extase including the social commitment and the esthetic point of vue. But Visconti have developed it in a better way i will say. Staying good with different kind of screenplay, in different social classes. And Antonioni is a movie maker that i will put near Visconti, just on is left bohemian arty side.
By the way i will mention to participate to this topic that i’ve recently watch a re-issue of L’étranger (The foreigner ? from the book of Albert Camus). He make a real good job filming litteraly the roman with just a little twist in the first sequence. He’s really close to the original and create the loud and hot atmosphere with bright lights surrounding exterior scene. And Marcello Mastroianni is great, as usual.
more shot analysis by anyone that’s capable please! 1 because i love that stuff and 2 because la terra trema’s poetry shouldn’t be getting such a pasting in the directors cup….
“Bellisima” is quite wonderful. Anna Magnani (at her most overwhelming) stars as a would-be “stage mother” anxious to get her very small, very young and in no way talented daughter into the movies. Her efforts at doing so are both comic and heartbreaking. While Visconti always exhibited great control over his players with Magnani he knew when to stand back and let a fprce of nature work. It paid off in the climactic scene with exhasted at the end of a long night she finds herself on a park bench with the child asleep in her arms. Suddenly Magnanni screams out “Help! Help!” This wasn’t in the script, but it’s perfection — and Visconti knew it.
“The Damned” was a very troubled production.It nearly fell apart several times during the shooting as investors bailed for one reason or another — so Visconti put his own money into it. He was also fashioning it as he went along into a star vehicle for Helmut Berger. He had shot a number of scenes with Dirk Bogarge that established him as the film’s central figure. Madly in love with Berger he decided to cut them, and told Bogarde so — apoligizing and saying he’d make it up to him. Understanding completely Bogarde said that was quite alright. And Visconti DID make it up to him — giving him the role of his life in “Death in Venice.”
Visconti and Fellini were friendly rivals. Claudia Cardinale told me “8 1/2” and “The Leopard” were shot at the same time. As she was in both masterpieces their respective auteurs buttonholed her constantly for information about what the other was doing. She found it all incredibly funny.
Thats is so funny. Man, Claudia Cardinale is one of my favorite actress! How lucky! Did you by chance ask him any questions regarding Sergio Leone?
She was in town specifically to talk about Sergio Leone. “Once Upon a Time in the West” is one of her most important films and she adored making it.
oh what!
Could you please share some of her insights into Leone, and the movie Once Upon A Time in the West?
She spoke of him in eneral way, as she did about Fellini and Visconti. His attention to detail, and how he made the actors aware of the coneption of the entire film as it was being made. Everything counted for Leone. Every scne and every gesture within each scene was building towards an overall conception about people places and time. This made her feel more of a participant in the process than she would in an ordinary film. She wasn’t there simply to read lines and follow directions mindlessly.
Has anyone of you seen Siamo Donne (Of Life and Love)? Saw the Magnani segment at the Finnish Film Archieve. It was one of the three parts of a compilation film called Three Episodes. The rest two parts were scenes from Boccaccio ’70 and The Damned.
The thing is that I’d love to see the rest of the Siamo Donne (the segments with Alida Valli and Ingrid Bergman among others), so if there’s anyone who knows where to get this film, please get in touch.
Ehsan Khoshbakht
Revisiting some of Visconti’s early films, it was very interesting how in the idiom of neorealism he is implying a very personal view (and style). How he is escaping from the limitations of Italian cinema and goes beyond the warm-hearted depiction of everyday life of ordinary people:
Powerful elements of queer subjectivity from his very first picture, and discussing this theme, directly in his latter works.
Sexual conflict and the image of the destructive woman. Reappears in his later films as “fascism and sexual perversion.”
Quasi-documentary realism; the exoticism intrinsic to the subject matter; the underlying “human geography.”
Extensive use of close-ups.
Dialectical confrontation between high and low, ancient and new, aristocracy and proletarian as depicted in contradiction between architecture and man, or people and their surroundings.
Unreconciled tension between a Marxian vision of society and an operatic conception of character.
Depicting the dissolution of the aristocracy with sympathy and understanding for the aesthetic and intellectual qualities that Visconti, as an aristocrat himself, so deeply appreciated. One can call all his best films, the stories of decadence of his class. Meanwhile notice how Visconti use mirrors as a object of reflecting the inner state of the main character , or to show passing of time and coming to age (especially in Leopard case), when Burt Lancaster is standing in front of a mirror, and it’s reflecting Alain Delon’s image.
I find these two shots from La Terra trema, one of Visconti’s most crucial shot/reverse shots among his early films.
Men leave for sea. Women farewell them. As they close the shabby house’s door. Two shot, from two different angle picture this severance and shows how Visconti substitutes neorealist subjectivity with a pure pictorial aesthetics, based on opera.See the emphasis on architecture, the sense of space that goes beyond daily reality. And also look how a bared tree turns into a aesthetic element of the shot. The unusual angle between two shots is nothing like common reaction shots that we used to see in the films of that particular period. In a sense, it’s an unnecessary shot, but it works perfectly and we can extend this idea to Visconti’s way of building his sequences, too.
That’s also the way Visconti create his unique cinematic rhythm. Pacing in his early films anticipated the 1960s art cinema style with less emphasis on action and more emphasis on character development and creating a special sense of time and space. His films have many long sequences that may at first viewing seem “unnecessary” for the development of the plot, but that are actually crucial to Visconti’s study of the mood and psychological aspects of the film.