November 2, 2006

Visconti @ 100.

Luchino Visconti "Luchino Visconti occupies a singular position in film history," wrote Maximilian Le Cain in Senses of Cinema nearly five years ago. "He was instrumental in the creation of modern cinema by being the first to throw down the neo-realist gauntlet with Ossessione (1942) and later contributed one of the movement's canonical cornerstones, La Terra Trema (1948). Of the three giants of the first wave of post war neo-realists, he was the only one to maintain his position at the forefront of art cinema into the 60s, when Rossellini had moved to television and De Sica was making more commercial films. Visconti's later career was devoted to the creation of a series of period movies including Senso (1954), The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963) and Death in Venice (Morte a Venezia, 1971) that are still without parallel in terms of atmosphere, detail and sheer dramatic force. It was in these that his genius, although often evident from his earliest work onwards, developed fully."

Visconti would have turned 100 today; Emanuel Levy marked the centennial a few weeks ago: "As with Antonioni, and later Pasolini and Bertolucci, there's an unresolved tension in Visconti's best work between his social Marxist perspective and the commitment to sheer cinematic aesthetics and the beauty of the image as a legit value in its own right, further complicated by his growing awareness of his homosexuality and its impact on his films."

Otherwise, there isn't much in English marking the event other than a translation of a story from the Deutsche Presse-Agentur at Monsters and Critics. But the BFI's fine feature with essays, stills, posters and such, is a good commemorative browse and you can watch Franco Zeffirelli and Maria Callas talk about Visconti at the BBC.

In other languages, an official site in Italy is tracking news of an exhibition and more, while, in the German press today, you might read Bernd Kiefer in film-dienst, Marli Feldvoss in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and Peter Zander in Die Welt.



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Posted by dwhudson at November 2, 2006 1:22 AM

Comments

Hi there!

Berlin based Kino Arsenal is showing some Visconti films throughout November/December. There is some writing on Visconti on their website, too. Maybe this is of interest, too, though it's written in German language.

Best-
Thomas

Posted by: Thomas at November 2, 2006 2:20 AM

Oh, and radio station "Deutschlandfunk" did a small feature this morning. See the text here and listen to it here.

Posted by: Thomas at November 2, 2006 3:57 AM

Many thanks for these tips, Thomas. This and the Guy Maddin retrospective at the Arsenal - oh, for more time!

Posted by: David Hudson at November 2, 2006 6:02 AM

Hey Dave, thanks for this post. I'll be doing a mini-tribute on TheScreenGrab.com today -- it'll probably go up around noon or 1. Visconti is in my top 3 of all time. An absolutely amazing filmmaker who is more influential than most film buffs realize.

Posted by: Bilge at November 2, 2006 8:53 AM

Visconti and Burt Lancaster shared a birthday.
Luchino was many years older than Burt.
Saw the Leopard the other day on DVD.
Miss them both. They were classy.

Posted by: Vitro Nasu at November 2, 2006 11:50 AM

I have mixed feelings about some of Visconti's later work. However, there is nothing mixed about my views on The Damned, which was shown on TCM on French TV last night and which reinforced what I thought about it many years ago. I quote "It is a ludicrously baroque and garish caricature of the 20th century's most tragic era. It sets out to examine the ideological and economic link between the Nazis and the bourgeoisie, but gets hypnotised by the Nazi regalia. The jackboot kissing Helmut Berger in Dietrich drag romps with the Boys in the Bund, while the rest of the British, Swedish, French, Italian and German cast mouth banalities in whichever of the languages the film is shown in.'

Posted by: ronald bergan at November 4, 2006 1:12 AM

Also watched Visconti's schmaltzy Death in Venice again with Bogarde giving one of his worst screen performances. Every gesture is calculated as is the boy's where you can almost hear Visconti's voice saying 'turn right, turn left, smile..' I love Mahler but the adagio from the 5th symphony is used ad nauseum and sentimentally, almost in a Max Steiner Warner. Bros manner. As for the flashbacks... dreadful.

Posted by: ronald bergan at November 8, 2006 5:44 AM