Rocco and His Brothers

Luchino Visconti quickly abandoned his neo-realist roots for more ambitious works. La Terra Trema (1948) shows Visconti experimenting with the epic format, albeit with docudrama styling. Senso (1954) provides an exorbitant Technicolor romance. Rocco and His Brothers (1960) is similarly conventional, a long but intimate study of an Italian family's trials and tribulations. This long but absorbing show matches Visconti's later epics in everything but scope.

Along with their mother (Katina Paxinou), the Laprondi brothers relocate from rural Italy to Milan, where they find difficulty fitting in. Vincenzo (Spiros Focas), already established in the city, is charged with housing his relatives, causing tensions with his fiancee (Claudia Cardinale). Rocco (Alain Delon) struggles with menial jobs then joins the Army. Ciro (Max Cartier) studies at university. Then there's Simone (Renato Salvatori), whose work as a boxer draws him into less reputable activities. A fling with prostitute Nadia (Annie Girardot) has dire consequences when she also falls for Rocco.

Many label Rocco as a neo-realist film, but this is misleading. Despite the working class setting it's really a classic, big-scale melodrama like The Best Years of Our Lives. Visconti spends much time drawing the family conflict, watching the small-town Parondis adjust to life in Milan. The city makes mincemeat of the brothers, drawing them into crime or else dehumanizing, unsatisfying work; even the educated Ciro ends up in a factory. Yet unlike La Terra Trema, this isn't a Marxist tract but a layered character drama.

Visconti's script provides an episodic structure, ostensibly developing each of the Parondi brothers. But the narrative's main thrust (and interest) involves the feud between Rocco and Simone. Visconti avoids the temptation to make Rocco a saint; he's nice and well-meaning, but essentially complacent. In contrast, Simone soon slides into desperation and depravity. There's a disturbingly sexual dynamic between Simone and his manager (Nino Castelnuovo), who openly ogles Simone in a shower. Inevitably the catalyst between Simone and Rocco is Nadia; she narrowly escapes audience contempt by developing a belated sense of self-worth.

Visconti provides direction unfussy yet stylish. He and photographer Giuseppe Rotunno show a nice eye for the grunginess of factories, freezing tenements and smoke-filled boxing arenas, but make the show suitably cinematic. Throughout he casts moody shadows and crafts stylish set pieces like Simone's final confrontation with Nadia. If Nadia stretching her arms Christlike rings false, the scene's dramatic impact compensates. Despite its nearly three-hour length, Rocco never grows tiresome like some of Visconti's later works.

Alain Delon scored his big break playing a nice character a world apart from his gangster roles. Renato Salvatori (Z) draws pity, showing Simone as unable to overcome his shortcomings. Annie Girardot (The Witches) makes a strong impression, alternately tragic and hysterical. Claudia Cardinale appears briefly as Vincenzo's feisty fiancee. Nino Castelnuovo and Paolo Stoppa (Once Upon a Time in the West) play crooked boxing managers. Katina Paxinou (For Whom the Bell Tolls) gets stuck playing a stereotyped Italian matriarch but makes it work.

Rocco and His Brothers stands out as an affecting drama. There's no greater tragedy in melodrama than a family self-destructing, whether Willy Loman's brood or the Corleones. Visconti shows a family struggling, suffering, but finally enduring.

The Witches (1967)

Producer Dino De Laurentiis assembled five of Italy's greatest directors for this anthology. A showcase for Silvana Mangano (or Mrs. De Laurentis), The Witches (1967) is more notable for its talent than the uneven content. Besides auteurs Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Vittorio De Sica, there's also an oddly-cast Clint Eastwood.

The Witches consists of five short films featuring Mangano. Luchino Visconti's The Witch Burned Alive shows Mangano as Gloria, an actress taking refuge at a mountain resort. Besieged by papparazzi, inflaming the men to passion and the women to jealousy, Gloria's exile drives her to despair. Mauro Bolognini's Civic Responsibility depicts a selfish woman driving an injured man (Alfredo Rosi) to a hospital. The Earth as Seen from the Moon is a fairy tale by Pier Paolo Pasolini, with widower Ciancicato (Toto) and son Baciu (Ninetto Davoli) pursuing their ideal woman - the deaf-mute Absurda Yelp. The Sicilian shows an unfaithful Sicilian wife triggering a blood feud. Finally there's An Evening Like the Others, where housewife Giovanna fantasizes about cheating on her milquetoast husband Carlo (Clint Eastwood).

The Witches advances from a singularly macho conceit: women (specifically Mangano) always cause trouble. The Witch Burned Alive explores this at greatest length: the hotel women relish in stripping Gloria's makeup and wig; a jealous rival (Annie Garadot) seduces a young waiter (Helmut Berger) to prove her womanhood. But the selfishness of Civic Responsibility and The Sicilian's protagonists registers, along with Giovanna's shrewishness. The ideal woman, of course, is Absurda, unable to communicate or hear anything. Baggage aside, how do the stories stack up?


Visconti's story is long, stiff and ponderous without appropriate payoff. Auteurists may recall Bellisima's excoriation of stardom, while Gloria's catatonic exit presages Ingrid Thulin's final scenes in The Damned. But the material's just to thin to match Visconti's pretensions. Bolognini's and Rossi's shorter entries just sort of sit there. Civic Responsibility is an unfunny gag stretched out interminably; The Sicilian resorts to crude jokes about shotgun murders and shrieking widows. Somewhere the filmmakers forgot to add humor.

Nonetheless, Witches gets two lovely chapters. The Earth as Seen From the Moon is a mini-masterpeice. Stars Toto and Ninetto Davoli previously collaborated on Pasolini's The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966), a similarly broad comedy. With absurd hairstyles, exaggerated gestures, fast motion and goofy sight gags (flirting with a mannequin!), they effectively update comedia dell'arte for the '60s. Mangano matches them with an hysterical pantomime performance, down to a delightfully absurd demise. It's strange yet endearingly whimsical, without the off-putting tawdriness of Pasolini's later work.

De Sica's An Evening Like the Others plays like Brief Encounter re-imagined by Fellini. De Sica contrasts Giovanna's dour marriage with her absurd fantasies of sex and violence. She alternately flirts with superheroes Diabolik and Batman, shoots Carlo while wearing a Barbarella costume, or stripteases in a stadium of drooling admirers. Eastwood sends up his image, sporting Man With No Name garb and asking Giovanna if she wants to see A Fistful of Dollars! Mangano comes off best here, eschewing vanity to play an unattractive, unappealing woman.

The Witches is an odd patchwork film, alternately brilliant and lousy. (I haven't even mentioned the Terry Gilliam-style credits animation.) If nothing else, it's an eclectic monument to Dino De Laurentiis's hubris: five of Italy's most talented filmmakers, collaborating on a silly vanity project/sketch comedy. The mind would boggle if this weren't the man who later gave us Orca.

The Leopard

Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963) stands as a landmark in Italian cinema. This sprawling adaptation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's novel is long, beautifully shot and intricately plotted, creating a masterwork of commendable depth. 

Don Fabrizio Corbero, Prince Salina (Burt Lancaster) enjoys life in 1860s Sicily: he has a large family, vast estates, a young mistress and money to indulge his hobbies. Salina's life turns upside down when Giuseppe Garibaldi's Red Shirts capture the island. Salina takes the advice of his ambitious nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon): "Everything needs to change for everything to stay the same." Salina arranges Tancredi's marriage to Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), the daughter of Don Sedara (Paolo Stoppa), a nouveau riche in with the Republicans. As he negotiates with the new government, Salina realizes time has passed him by.

The Leopard provides no end of beautiful scenery, from Giuseppe Rotunno's pastoral shots of Sicily's countryside and elaborate palaces to the scenes of revolutionary turmoil. Visconti stages a violent street battle in Palermo, outdoing Hollywood epics in its breathtaking sweep. In Salina's mountain exile and hunting trips, Visconti scales individuals against verdant, unchanging landscapes. The scope and pageantry displayed is amazing: Visconti's come along way from his neo-realist roots.

Visconti dwells on ritual, incorporating church services, dinners and elections into his thematic texture. One remarkable scene has Salina's family visit a village cathedral. While priests in red-and-gold vestments toil in the foreground, the drably-clothed aristocrats fade gargoyle-like into the pews. There's Salina's dinner, rudely interrupted by Tancredi's storytelling and Angelica's raucous laughter. The most celebrated scene is the concluding ball, where traditional aristocrats mingle with military heroes and erstwhile revolutionaries. All beautifully express an ancien regime eclipsed by an uncertain future.

These rituals showcase Visconti's sensitive yet critical portrayal of this dying breed. Salina lives an empty life, a parade of church services, shooting trips and civic duties. His family is a constant headache: his wife (Rina Morelli) is a nagging prude, daughter Concetta (Lucilla Morlacchi) an introvert, Tancredi a reckless spendthrift. Hobbies (astronomy) and vices (his mistress) provide little respite. Salina only rouses to action when events threaten, negotiating with power brokers to keep his family in sybaritic stasis. Visconti gently condemns the gentry by showing their superfluity.

Italy's resorgimento was a complicated series of wars and political deals, involving not only Italy's various states but Austria, France and Prussia. Visconti focuses on Garibaldi's dramatic early success, even then showing signs of dissolution. In the film's key scene, Salina explains to Victor Emmanuel's naive emissary (Leslie French) that Sicily's fierce independence causes them to resent interfering foreigners, however well-intentioned. His cynicism proves well-founded: Garibaldi himself becomes an undesirable as Italy transforms into an unstable monarchy.

Indeed, The Leopard evinces potent cynicism for bourgeois "revolution." The Red Shirts speak loudly of democracy but defer to established power structures. The rigged plebiscite is treated as a comic set piece, with Sedara's pompous victory speech interrupted by an overeager marching band. Visconti's scorn for middle class moralism has an interesting double-edge, as not only the hereditary Duke of Cardone but also a Communist. From this perspective, feudal Sicily at least lacks republican hypocrisy.

Lampedusa's broad narrative allows Visconti to flesh out characters and subplots. Cash-poor Tancredi and lower-class Angelica make a perfect love match, symbolically, practically and romantically. Initially a playboy, Tancredi proves a cagey survivor who joins the revolution to uphold family prestige. He has no use for the lovesick but complacent Concetta, herself romanced by a dashing soldier (Terence Hill). Sedara exploits events for personal gain, while Salina's friends Father Pirrone (Romolo Valli) and Ciccio (Serge Raggiani) see nothing but trouble ahead.

One mark of a classic is its influence on future filmmakers, something The Leopard has in spades. Sergio Leone borrowed a few grace notes (and several actors) for his later epics, but Francis Ford Coppola grafted Visconti's style wholesale onto The Godfather, from Connie's elaborate wedding to the lush Nino Rota score. Michael Cimino and Martin Scorsese paid homage less successfully in The Deer Hunter and Gangs of New York, respectively. There's a fine line between grandeur and excess, a tightrope Visconti effortlessly negotiates.

Burt Lancaster gives a remarkable performance. Physically imposing as always, Burt is nonetheless near-unrecognizable framed by leonine whiskers, aristocratic outfits and a dour expression. He's dubbed into Italian by Corrado Gaipa, which oddly benefits his performance: it's much easier to accept Lancaster as a 19th Century Sicilian without his unmistakable voice. Salina isn't a particularly noble character, but Lancaster provides him remarkable hauteur, warmth and humanity.

Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale provide a glamorous counterpoint. Delon mixes swashbuckling idealism with knowing cynicism, a ruthless but charming survivor. Cardinale gives possibly her best performance: Angelica's pouty reserve masks a vivacious personality and social ambition. Histrionics aside, has a more beautiful couple ever graced the screen? They're simply a joy to watch.

Romolo Valli (Death in Venice) provides warm support as Salina's grouchy priest. Paolo Stoppa (Once Upon a Time in the West) mixes bonhomie and vulgar craftiness in a complex character turn. Leslie French makes as an impression, too, as an idealistic Republican official. Spaghetti Western fans can spot Terence Hill, Giuliano Gemma and Lou Castel in minor roles.

The Leopard is a remarkable achievement. Long and stately at 185 minutes, its endlessly watchable for depth, scope and impeccable craftsmanship. It's Luchino Visconti's magnus opus, and one of Italy's greatest films.

Senso

Senso (1954) was Luchino Visconti's dramatic break with neo-realism; from here on he'd be associated with lavish epics. Then Italy's most expensive film, Senso flopped domestically and barely gained foreign release. A butchered version retitled The Wanton Countess, with English dialogue co-written by Tennessee Williams (!), got periodic TV play without recognition. Two years ago Criterion gave it a handsome restoration, leading some critics to proclaim it a rediscovered masterpiece.

Hardly. Like all Visconti films, Senso is a sensory feast. But it's ultimately a trite melodrama kept afloat by technical skill and spectacle.

Venice 1866. Italian nationalist Roberto (Massimo Girotti) provokes a duel with Austrian Lt. Mahler (Farley Granger). Roberto's cousin Livia (Alida Valli), an unhappily-married Countess, tries to avert their conflict but falls for Mahler. She envisions the Lieutenant as a dashing Adonis, ignoring evidence that her lover is a two-timing lout. When Austria and Italy go to war, Livia provides Mahler money (collected for Roberto's underground movement) to desert, only to be betrayed yet again. Disgusted and disillusioned, she finally turns against her lover.

Senso works best in its early scenes. Visconti impeccably recreates 19th Century Venice, from the La Fenice theater to handsome period dresses and uniforms. G.R. Aldo provides gorgeous photography, whether of the elaborate curtain raising opera or the country estates. The simple romance plot works well at first, portraying two flawed, selfish people ensnared in a tawdry affair.  Alida Valli gives an appropriately outsized lead performance, matched by Farley Granger, surprisingly effectively as a cad. This mismatched duo promises to set sparks flying, and Senso starts out as an enjoyable melodrama.

Unfortunately, Visconti then tries to inflate Senso into an Italian Gone With the Wind. The second half features gorgeous location photography and expansive battle scenes as the Italo-Austrian conflict gets underway. These scenes are viscerally impressive but seem self-contained, scarcely tied to our heroes' anguished lust. Even Roberto vanishes long before the climax, his underground organization a disposable plot device. Worse though, neither Livia nor Mahler grows beyond their initial characterization. Later reels strain for epic tragedy that its shallow protagoniss haven't remotely earned.

Senso is ultimately underwhelming. At best it's a dry run for The Leopard, a much better-rounded epic. But man, is it lovely to watch.

The Damned

Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969) falls just short of a masterpiece. It's a warped large-scale melodrama, tying the self-destruction of a German steel family to the rise of Nazism. Only some questionable plotting hurts a remarkable film.

Steel magnate Joachim von Essenbeck (Albrecht Schoenhals) is murdered on February 27th, 1933, the day of the Reichstag fire. Police suspect Joachim's liberal nephew Herbert Thall (Umberto Orsini), but it was actually Frederick Bruckmann (Dirk Bogarde), angry at being passed over for Essenbeck's presidency. With the help of SS leader Aschenbach (Helmut Griem) Frederick secures the presidency in exchange for arms and political support. But Frederick faces internal rivals: Joachim's perverted son Martin (Helmut Berger), the "rightful heir"; his cousin, SA roughneck Konstantin (Rene Koldehoff); and most dangerous of all, Martin's mother Sophie (Ingrid Thulin).

Visconti trades The Leopard and Senso's melancholy for a darker portrait of aristocratic decay. Old-line Joachim carefully carved out corporate independence, which his heirs abandon in their scramble for power. Frederick's so single-minded that he's easily manipulated by both Sophie and Aschenbach. Martin first appears in drag and quickly proves a child molester. One victim kills herself, leaving Martin open to blackmail by Konstantin. Konstantin himself is checkmated when the Brownshirts fall out of favor. The Essenbecks are above the law, yet vulnerable to extortion: reputation is more important than legality. Aschenbach does little more than let the Essenbecks eat themselves alive.

The Damned brilliantly contrasts upper-class suicide with Nazism. Historically Hitler easily co-opted industries like Krupp and IG Farben, dispelling conservative fears of National Socialism with lucrative contracts. We see Nazi officials in conflict with the populist SA, the class-minded Wehrmacht and big industry. Aschenbach manipulates each faction, appeasing them until they can be subsumed by the state. Ernst Rohm's SA is eliminated wholesale, the Army and Essenbeck forced to cut deals. Decadent aristocracy gives way to a frightening New Order, whose outward morality masks a far greater evil.

Visconti subverts his usual photographic elegance, here shooting in dark tones emphasizing squalid details. The film's centerpiece is an SA retreat which degenerates into a drunken orgy and finally a massacre when SS death squads arrive. Drawing loosely on the Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler purged the unreliable Brownshirts, it's a hypnotic spectacle of depravity and graphic violence.

The Damned only falters in its last half hour. Having so effectively set the stage, Visconti rushes the plot, tying up loose ends without resolving them. One character makes an unexpected 11th hour reappearance without registering much. Then there's Martin's crowning act of depravity: he goes from credible monster to cartoon grotesque. The final wedding scene is a macabre anti-climax, summed up with a trite double exposure effect.

Dirk Bogarde heads a flawless ensemble. He plays against-type as a frightening power-grabber shocked when events turn against him. Rene Koldehoff makes a cheerfully hateful thug; his paunchy figure and gravelly dubbing voice recall a Teutonic Lee J. Cobb. Renaud Verley gets an affecting character arc, going from sensitive musician to vengeful Nazi. Charlotte Rampling and Florinda Bolkan have minor roles.

Three performers standout. Helmut Berger (Visconti's then-lover) is a genuinely disturbing monster, all preening mannerisms, scarce-hidden perversion and whiny entitlement. Ingrid Thulin makes a chilling reptilian schemer crossing Queen Gertrude and Lady Macbeth. Helmut Griem's SS chief is the real villain, a charming but cold-blooded ideologue who makes mincemeat of the Essenbecks.

The Damned is a fine movie. Perhaps some script fine-tuning (and downplaying of sordidness) would have helped, but it's still a profoundly unsettling experience.

Death in Venice

"Do you know what lies at the bottom of the mainstream? Mediocrity!"

Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice (1971) is an overblown curiosity. This adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella is an aesthetic masterwork, anchored by Dirk Bogarde's commendable performance. Unfortunately, it lacks the dramatic weight to match its epic pretensions.

Hack composer Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) arrives in turn-of-the-century Venice on holiday. He leaves behind a tragic past: a rivalry with fellow composer Alfred (Mark Burns), a shattered marriage (Marissa Berenson) and a family tragedy. Aschenbach considers beauty as an intellectual construct, a view challenged when he meets teenaged Tadzio (Bjorn Andersen). Aschenbach grows obsessed with Tadzio, following him around Venice and even changing his appearance. But Aschenbach's new-found love takes a backseat when cholera strikes the city.

If nothing else, Death in Venice offers a sumptuous sensory experience. As with The Leopard, Visconti mixes impeccable costumes and period detail with gorgeous compositions. He matches the overcrowded hotel and dusty Venice streets with verdant flashbacks and a finale framed like a Renaissance painting. Ever-present flowers subtly introduce a death motif. Coupled with Gustav Mahler's music, dialogue-free passages of Aschenbach riding a gondola or hotel guests dining have the hypnotic effect of 2001's spaceship scenes or Sergio Leone's ritualized duels. Death is certainly never dull.

But Visconti's artistry serves a simplistic plot. At its crudest, Death provides a simple "coming-out" story: a repressed homosexual faces his identity, accepts himself and dies a happy man. Tadzio may be an aesthetic rather than sexual ideal, but Visconti's presentation make it hard to avoid a simple surface reading. If Aschenbach was better-developed, his dilemma would seem poignant rather than an exercise in self-torture. Similarly, the thematic pondering on art and mortality might register more strongly if they weren't restricted to flashbacks and an occasional gripe about plague warnings. Visconti provides operatic grandeur when a low-key approach would work better.

Dirk Bogarde admirably shoulders a character who in less rarefied hands would seem a creepy pederast. He does well conveying inner turmoil with meaningful glances and pathetic gestures; his self-embrace at a nighttime encounter with Tadzio is particularly effecting. Visconti symbolizes Aschenbach's quest for youth in cruder ways: in a particularly facile touch, Bogarde dons ghoulish makeup and runny hair dye for the finale. His life as a failed artist, all theory and no skill, emerges only in hamfisted debates with Alfred. Bogarde's more grounded characters in The Servant and Victim are more compelling.

Of the supporting cast there's not much to say. Bjorn Andersen embodies the youthful beauty required of Tadzio. Still, it's not really a performance. Romolo Valli's (Duck You Sucker) obsequious hotelier provides light comic relief. Marissa Berenson rehearses her meaningful glance style perfected in Barry Lyndon; Mark Burns (Charge of the Light Brigade) provides hammy ranting as Bogarde's fellow composer.

As sensual art, Death in Venice is fascinating. But it's certainly not the masterpiece Visconti wants it to be. Any thematic conceits become overwhelmed by luscious imagery and the protagonist's agonizing angst.