Happy Birthday, Luchino Visconti! Born today in 1906 as Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo, this Italian screenwriter and theatre, opera and cinema director was one of the few film directors who also had the distinction of calling himself a genuine aristocrat.
Born in Milan, Lombardy, Italy, Visconti was the son of a prominent noble family, one of seven children. He was formally known as Count don Luchino Visconti di Modrone, and his family is a branch of the Visconti of Milan.
In his early years, Visconti was exposed to art, music and theatre. Over time, he had studied under many musical artists.
Most notably, this included Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini, of whom has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after [Giuseppe] Verdi".
Puccini's early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera.
His most famous compositions include Madama Butterfly (1895), La bohème (1904), and the soprano aria O mio babbino carro from his opera Gianni Schicci (1918).
Years later, during World War II, Visconti joined the Italian Communist Party. Afterwards, Visconti began his filmmaking career as an assistant director on two of Jean Renoir's films.
Most notably. this included working on Renoir's forty-minute 1936 French black and white comedy/romance film 'Partie de campagne' ('A Day in the Country'). This had been through the intercession of their common friend, Coco Chanel.
After a short tour of the United States, where Visconti visited Hollywood, he afterwards returned to Italy to be Renoir's assistant again on another film.
Together with Roberto Rossellini, Visconti joined the salotto (salon) of Italian film critic and producer Vittorio Mussolin. Here, Visconti presumably also met Federico Fellini.
Vittorio was the second son of then-Prime Minister and fascist Benito Mussolini, of whom was then the national arbitrator for cinema and other arts.
Along with three other Italian filmmakers, Visconti co-wrote and directed his first film. It was also the first film of which he is best known.
This was the 1943 Italian black and white noir/crime film 'Ossessione' ('Obsession').
The film follows a young drifter named Gino Costa (Massimo Girotti), of whom stops at a diner/gas station. It is here where he becomes immediately attracted to Giovana Bragana (Clara Calamai), the young wife of the owner, Giussepe (Juan de Landa).
Frustrated by the struggle of working at the dreary diner with the unappealing Giuseppe, Giovana seduces Gino, then convinces him to help her murder her husband.
Eager to remain with Giovana but wary about replacing Giuseppe, Gino agrees, and the couple engages in a crime that leads to more betrayal and death.
The film had been based on American author and journalist James M. Cain's 1934 mystery romance crime fiction novel The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Visconti was also a celebrated theatre and opera director. During the years 1946 to 1960, he directed many performances of the Rina Morelli-Paolo Stoppa Company.
Visconti, like a good aristocrat, had also dabbled in directing opera, the influences of which are manifold.
Three years after the release of 'Ossessione', American film director and writer Tay Garnett would base Cain's novel to his film of the same name.
This would be the 1946 American black and white noir/crime film 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'. It starred Lana Turner and John Garfield.
Today, 'Ossessione' is considered by many to be the first Italian neorealist film, though there is some debate about whether such a categorization is accurate.
Unfortunately, the negative of 'Ossessione' was destroyed by Mussolini during the war years. However, Visconti managed to save a print.
Visconti continued working throughout the 1950s, but he veered away from the neorealist path with the second film of which he is best known for co-writing and directing.
This was the 1954 Italian Technicolor historical melodrama war film 'Senso' (also known as 'The Wanton Countess').
Set against the backdrop of Spring 1866 in Venice, in the last days of the Austrian occupation, the film tells of a troubled and neurotic wanton contessa, La contessa Livia Serpieri (Alida Valli).
She later betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affiar with an unscrupulous Austrian officer, Lieutenant Franz Mahler (Farley Granger). However, the times are changing.
'Senso' was an adaptation of Italian architect and engineer, and a noted art critic, art historian and novelist Camillo Boito's 1899 fiction novella of the same name. The word "senso" is Italian for "sense," "feeling," or "lust."
In 'Senso', Visconti combines realism and romanticism as a way to break away from neorealism.
However, as one biographer notes, "Visconti without neorealism is like [Fritz] Lang without expressionism and Eisenstein without formalism".
The biographer describes the film as the "most Viscontian" of all Visconti's films. Originally, Visconti had hoped to cast Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando in the lead roles.
Later that same year, 'Senso' was nominated for the Golden Lion. However, it did not win. This occurred at the 15th Venice Film Festival.
Visconti's love of opera is evident in 'Senso', where the beginning of the film shows scenes from the fourth act of Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore (1853), which were filmed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.
Six years after 'Senso', Visconti returned to neorealism once more in co-writing and directing the third film of which he is best known. This was the 1960 Italian black and white drama/crime film 'Rocco e i suoi fratelli' ('Rocco and his Brothers'). It has a runtime of three hours.
Rosaria Parondi (Katina Paxinou), an impoverished Italian mother, moves to Milan with her close-knit family of five sons to find opportunity in the big city.
However, a heated rivalry begins when two of Rosaria's boys -- Rocco (Alain Delon) and Simone (Renato Salvatori) -- fall for Nadia (Annie Girardot), a beautiful prostitute with whom each has an affair.
As soft-spoken Rocco and brutal Simone both pursue Nadia in their own way, tension between them threatens to tear the family apart.
Later that same year, 'Rocco and His Brothers' received two accolades. This included the FIPRESCI Prize and the Special Jury Prize. However, Visconti and Italian film producer Goffredo Lombardo both refused to accept the award.
The film was also nominated for the Golden Lion. However, it did not win. This occurred at the 21st Venice Film Festival.
The following year, Visconti was a member of the jury at the 2nd Moscow International Film Festival during July 1961. Afterwards and throughout the 1960s, Visconti's films became more personal.
Two years later, Visconti co-wrote and directed the fourth and final film of which he is best known.
This was the epic 1963 Italian/French Technicolor drama history film ''Il Gattopardo' ('The Leopard'). The film has a runtime of three-and-a-half hours.
As Italian general, patriot and republican Giuseppe Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life.
Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster) allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi Falconeri (Alain Delon), to marry Angelica Sedara, Bertiana (Claudia Cardinale). She is the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa).
However, the marriage is only arranged due to maintaining the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
The film is based off of Italian writer and the last Prince of Lampedusa Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's elegiac, bittersweet, and profoundly moving 1958 historical fiction novel of the same name.
It chronicles the decline of the Sicilian life and society at the time of the Italian unification (also known as the Risorgimento).
Later that same year, 'The Leopard' deservedly won the Palme d'Or. This occurred at the 16th Cannes Film Festival in May 1963.
Two months later, the film also received a David di Donatello for Best Producer. This occurred at the 7th David for David di Donatello Awards in July 1963.
The Leopard' was later distributed in America and Britain by 20th-Century Fox, which deleted important scenes. Visconti, however, repudiated the 20th-Century Fox version.
In 1966, Visconti's luscious reinterpretation of Verdi's three-act comic opera Falstaff (1893) for the Vienna State Opera was conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Post-performance, the opera was critically acclaimed.
It was not until Visconti co-wrote and directed the 1969 Italian/West German Eastmancolor historical drama/war film 'La caduta degli dei' (lit. 'The Fall of the Gods', or 'The Damned').
It was six years after 'The Leopard' that Visconti received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. However, the film did not win. This occurred at the 42nd Academy Awards in early April 1970.
'The Damned' was the first installment in Visconti's "German Trilogy". This was followed by the 1971 Italian/French drama film 'Morte a Venezia' ('Death in Venice') and the four-hour 1973 Italian biographical drama/history film 'Ludwig'.
Visconti made no secret of his homosexuality. His last partner was the Austrian film and television actor Helmut Berger, who played the discounted and ignored wealthy industrialist Martin Von Essenbeck in 'The Damned'.
Visconti's other lovers included Italian director and producer of operas, films and television Franco Zeffirelli.
Zeffirelli also worked as part of the crew in production design, as assistant director, and other roles in a number of Visconti's films, operas, and theatrical productions.
Visconti smoked up to one hundred and twenty cigarettes a day, of which eventually led to a stroke and subsequent ill health.
Despite this, he rallied long enough to make the 1976 Italian drama film 'L'innocente' ('The Innocent"). This was before passing in Rome, Italy on March 17, 1976. Visconti was 69.
Visconti's funeral was attended by Lancaster and 6th Italian President Giovanni Leone. Today, there is a museum dedicated to the director's work located in Ischia.
A director who heralded Italy's celebrated neorealist movement with his first film, Visconti was preoccupied with the moral disintegration of families. His films have large, epochal canvases – and the lavish style might seem intimidating to the uninitiated.
But don’t be fooled by all of the plush furnishings: Visconti was beloved by actors for a reason. It’s his characters we remember best.
The man also had a tendency to invoke highbrow cultural references. He was known for layered historical treatises utterly specific to their moment, whether it be late-19th-century Sicily or Third Reich Germany.
Visconti's well-bred background and international art education only seemed to enable his subversive tendencies.
He was both a Marxist and openly homosexual at a time when both could mean suffering terrible public consequences – but he also mourned the demise of his old social strata, and thought of himself as a staunch Catholic.
Visconti occupied a paradoxical position in Italian film culture, and his features vary from salt-of-the-earth tales of workers and fishermen to explorations of opulent nobility in various stages of torment and decay.
The precise décor of his palaces, gardens and sitting rooms are inextricable parts of his historical films.
He was said to work at a level of obsessive detail, often reconstructed from his own childhood memories. Even for 'The Leopard', he had flowers placed in rooms in which he wasn't even going to shoot.
So, it’s true that Visconti was never the most approachable of the great Italian directors.
He had employed more artifice than Vittorio De Sica, more narrative cohesion than Michelangelo Antonioni, and more historical baggage than Fellini.
Visconti was a director whose realistic treatment of individuals were caught in the conflicts of modern society contributed significantly to the post-World War II revolution in Italian filmmaking.
This later earned him the title of father of Neorealism. He also established himself as an innovative theatrical and opera director in the years immediately after World War II.
Some had ridiculed Visconti's lifestyle, opulent by any standards, let alone a famed Marxist.
Salvador Dali sneered, "He was a Communist who only liked luxury". Visconti told an American reporter in 1961, "I believe in life, that is the central point... I believe in organised society. I think it has a chance".
During his lifetime, Visconti had occupied a unique place in the history of world cinema. He is the most Italian of internationalists, the most operatic of realists, and the most aristocratic of Marxists.
Although one of the progenitors of the Italian neorealist movement, Visconti, with his love of spectacle and historical panorama, would seem to have more in common with Orson Welles or even Erich von Stroheim than with Rossellini or De Sica.
Directors as diverse as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder have all named Visconti as a major influence.
Visconti loved polished, formal compositions but also hysterical displays of passion and trauma. He simultaneously celebrated and mourned the passing of traditionalist Italy.
With his glorious blend of influence and experience, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a film artist quite like Visconti again.
Visconti had been active from 1941–1976.
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