Visconti
From June 21 to July 26, the Gene Siskel Film Center, in partnership with Cinecittà Holding and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Chicago, presents Visconti, a ten-film series devoted to the great Italian director who combined visual splendor with vivid characterizations and a tragic sense of social-historical change.
Visconti (1906-1976) was born into one of the wealthiest and most prestigious aristocratic families in Italy. In Paris in the 1930s, he entered filmmaking as an assistant to Jean Renoir and became a lifelong Marxist--without, however, sacrificing his luxurious aristocratic lifestyle and seigniorial manner. Visconti aided the Resistance during the war and was imprisoned by the Fascist government. His first films, OSSESSIONE (1942) and LA TERRA TREMA (1948), are considered foundational works of the Italian neorealist movement.
Possibly influenced by his simultaneous careers as one of Italy’s leading theater and opera directors, Visconti confounded (and, at first, alienated) critics by moving in a markedly different direction: sumptuous, sensual, baroque, literary, melodramatic, operatic. The lavish costume drama SENSO (1954) marked a turning point in his career, although elements of his later style can be retroactively recognized in his early neorealist work.
ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (1960), a hybrid of his early and late styles, was a major international hit. The culmination of his mature style came in THE LEOPARD (1963), initially unsuccessful in the U.S., though immediately lauded in Europe and now widely recognized as Visconti’s masterpiece. THE DAMNED (1969) and DEATH IN VENICE (1971) solidified his status as one of the superstars of the auteur-dominated art-cinema movement. Rarely seen today, Visconti’s final films, LUDWIG (1972), CONVERSATION PIECE (1974), and THE INNOCENT (1976) brought his style to an uncompromising extreme that continues to divide critics. Weakened by strokes, Visconti died while editing his final film, THE INNOCENT.
Visconti’s sweeping, operatic style and fanatical attention to detail make his films 35mm musts. None of his films are currently available in the U.S., with the exceptions of THE LEOPARD and SANDRA (and those only in archival prints). Because of rights problems, OSSESSIONE, LA TERRA TREMA, WHITE NIGHTS, and THE STRANGER are regrettably not available at this time. The rest of the films are being imported from Europe in prints supplied by Cinecittà Holding. We encourage you to take advantage of this rare opportunity to see Visconti’s grandly stylized films on the big screen.
BELLISSIMA, SENSO, THE LEOPARD, LUDWIG, CONVERSATION PIECE, and THE INNOCENT will all be screened when Visconti continues in July. Please check our website and our July Gazette for dates and show times.
Visconti was organized by Cinecittà Holding and is sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Chicago. Special thanks to Tina Cervone and Patrizia Gambarotta, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Chicago; Federica Terzulli, Cinecittà Holding; James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario; Jim Sinclair, Pacific Cinematheque; Schawn Belston, Caitlin Robertson, 20th Century Fox; Jared Sapolin, Sony Repertory; Marilee Womack, Warner Brothers Classics. -- Martin Rubin
DEATH IN VENICE
1971, Luchino Visconti, Italy, 130 min.
With Dirk Bogarde, Björn Andresen
Homosexuality became a more central element in the bisexual Visconti’s late films, preeminently in this richly atmospheric adaptation of Thomas Mann’s celebrated 1912 novella. A German composer (based by Visconti on Gustav Mahler) visiting Venice becomes obsessed with the idealized beauty of an androgynous boy, causing him to linger in the city as a deadly cholera epidemic spreads. Gorgeous location photography, a haunting music score based on Mahler’s Third and Fifth symphonies, and Bogarde’s superb performance have made DEATH IN VENICE one of Visconti’s most popular films. In English. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
Saturday, June 21, 7:30 pm
Thursday, June 26, 6:00 pm
ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS
(ROCCO E I SUOI FRATELLI)
1961, Luchino Visconti, Italy, 180 min.
With Alain Delon, Annie Girardot
“Neither the neighborhood intimacy of MEAN STREETS nor the grandeur of the GODFATHER movies is imaginable without Visconti’s example.”--A.O. Scott, The New York Times
In this vivid and violent family saga, the five brothers of the peasant Parondi clan are traced from their beginnings in grinding rural poverty to the flowering of their rivalries and ambitions in working-class Milan. Through the changing fortunes of one family, Visconti charts the societal changes that swept a generation from the fields of their ancestors to the cold concrete of the 20th-century city, and sent moral compasses spinning wildly. In Italian with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
Sunday, June 22, 2:30 pm
Tuesday, June 24, 6:30 pm
THE DAMNED
(LA CADUTA DEGLI DEI)
1969, Luchino Visconti, Italy, 156 min.
With Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin
“May be the chef d’oeuvre of the great Italian director--a spectacle of such greedy passion, such uncompromising sensation, and such obscene shock that it makes you realize how small and safe and ordinary most movies are.”--Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Visconti pulls out the stops with Wagnerian gusto in this lurid saga (originally X-rated in the U.S.) of a Krupp-like German industrial family that throws its support to the Nazis in the 1930s. Their devil’s bargain yields spectacularly dire results, as the family descends into depravity and murder, and Germany itself is consumed in a storm of fire and blood--the latter most evident in the stunning recreation of the “Night of the Long Knives” massacre. In English. 35mm. (MR)
Saturday, June 28, 7:30 pm
Tuesday, July 1, 6:30 pm
SANDRA
(VAGHE SELLE DELL’ORSA)
1965, Luchino Visconti, Italy, 105 min.
With Claudia Cardinale, Jean Sorel.
One of Visconti’s least known and most complex films, SANDRA is an essential link between THE LEOPARD and THE DAMNED in an unofficial trilogy of films dealing with families in decline. Newly married to an American, a young woman (Cardinale) returns to her family’s mansion in Tuscany and finds it haunted with secrets from the past, including brother-sister incest and collaboration with the Nazis. Strikingly photographed in high-contrast black-and-white, SANDRA won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. In Italian with English subtitles. 35mm archival print courtesy of Sony Pictures Repertory. (MR)