S/D: Luchino Visconti (born 100 years ago today)

Rocco is bad opera.

A guy and I broke up shortly after watching Senso.

Mastrianni in The Stranger is supposedly wonderful; is it still out of print?

Haven't seen the Decadent Trilogy (Death in Venice, The Innocent,
The Damned).

I don't quite see Leopard / Godfather being too blatant aside from party finale / wedding opening. Which aren't that similar visually, even -- Coppola hops from table to driveway to Brando's lair, Visconti just follows Burt around.

i really liked ludwig, but i know many people don't.

bellissima is very funny, and appunti su un fatto di cronaca is very moving.

and the leopard of course.

but my favorite is probably senso, with farley granger.

judging from photographs taken on set, luchino had some really nice suits.

Like Daniel Day-Lewis in The Boxer?

After screening L'Eclisse this weekend -- which has his most feral, feline performance post-Purple Noon -- I suspect that Visconti, as besotted with him as the rest of us, just gazed and gazed.

I got to see 10 seconds of Bellissima in Volver last night.

A guy and I broke up shortly after watching Senso.

Debating the chops of Farley Granger takes its toll. I saw Granger do Q&A a couple years ago after the film, don't recall a damn thing he said!

"Always been curious about The Damned, as it was a regular late night cult feature in the seventies, before I could go to such things."

It fairly easy to get the DVD over here - it has some deranged scenes making a point about Nazis and their depravity. That deep.

I actually liked it, though I needed some recovery time after that.

Watched 'Obsessione' yesterday - the issues of trust are worked more interestingly than in 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'. The courtroom stuff I wasn't too bothered about, but you can see its function. Anyway, the latter does have a better ending.

I've missed so many screenings of The Leopard over the last two years that the powers that be decided to make a cracking film about the novel the film is based on (shown last night) and to show the film itself tonight on BBC four.

Bah, I might miss a screening of Sandra tonight do to a last-minute time change for a company party. Hopefully I can make The Leopard tomorrow.

really dug Le notti bianche for its studio set artificiality, not that familiar with other italian films like that

senso out on criterion soon

A guy and I broke up shortly after watching Senso.

took break from 2010 film avalanche to see Conversation Piece, sort of a 1970s epilogue to The Leopard. Good Burt (alas dubbed Italian print) and Helmut Berger in bellbottoms.

the English print is on yT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aqMLCwmceQ

I was skeptical of yet another restoration, but this time the color in The Leopard looks more amazing than I remember.

also didn't remember that Burt has two telescopes in his study, possibly a reference for Local Hero?

By far Visconti's best, and close to Burt and Delon's too. One of the few films to capture the sense of time present and time past in the same scene.

Anyone seen White Nights? The library just got a copy.

Too long ago to offer a useful opinion

Sounds like a Senso-type weeper (which means I gotta be in the mood).

I like it, just like someone wrote upthread is wonderfully artificial, but something is missing: also Maria Schell is pretty terrible. But there is Clara Calamai, who also worked in Ossessione (always my favourite Visconti).

Caught Obsession last night as part of Neo-Realism rep series...easily the best Postman... rip. It was also amusing to see Visconti's taste for sprawl was already present there in the beginning (140 minutes--the thing has to be one of the longest noirs).

The Earth Will Tremble (La Terra Trema) in two weeks.

La Terra Trema tonight. Once again with the sprawl, all the better to crush the protagonists completely into the dust

^ LTT on disc tomorrow; I'd never seen it before. The amateur cast really delivers, and one can see it in a way as a precursor of Rocco.

senso is amazing.

i'm a fan of ludwig, actually, though that film has a bad rep. i thought it was kind of great.

i think senso is his best though.

i like the leopard of course but i might be a little tired of it? i've seen like 20 restorations by now.

The Stranger not out yet

watching Senso for the first time since '98? One of the few times I "identified" with a protagonist.

I have less patience with Valli this time -- she's not a resourceful actress, is she? I'm again impressed though with how his men and women interact with architectural spaces.

Don't think I've ever thought see was much good in anything except The Third Man.

see=she. auto typo

yeah, valli is a weak point. farley granger though.

i really liked "ludwig" but nobody else seems to

A few powerful passages with a lot of boring ones.

Or so it felt like at the time..

4K restoration of Rocco showing at Film Forum in NY before it rolls out across the country

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/rep-diary-rocco-and-his-brothers/

always disappointed me that Delon wasn't nude in it

sending you to meme jail

the new restoration of rocco is gorgeous (as is delon in the movie itself, mamma mia)

finally going to catch ossessione in a few weeks at the BFI. cant wait. was never keen on the leopard, but i might have a different view, now that im older, wiser, etc etc.

#mindBlown

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/18/style/18iht-dub_.html

Professional dubbers, many of whom are the children of dubbers and who, unlike their colleagues in other countries, seldom do any other acting work, make big money.An in-demand dubber can easily make $200,000 a year, and one like Ferruccio Amendola, who "voices" Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Sylvester Stallone and Robert de Niro, is reckoned to earn some $4 million.

Threatened to sue because the Italian geezer was better than him, I assume.

No doubt

"beside himself realising two versions" seems like a neat productivity trick

it's a recognised use that i wd probably sub to something like "make" in this instance unless the writer was a prima donna not worth annoying :D

Realizin' Whoopee

The dubbing practice also made Italian cinema much freer than almost everywhere else. It's a huge reason why neorealism happened there, that they never cared about sound recording while running around in the ruins of Rome. It's also part of the reason why Rossellini so easily could make films with Ingrid Bergman, one of the most important collaborations in film history. So yeah, it's fairly important. It never stops being weird, though...

Exactly. Is it time to talk about the almost reverse way Poland dealt with foreign language imports?

I don't know what you're talking about, so would love if you did :)

http://edubbing.blogspot.com/2007/10/polish-dubbing-no-emotions-attached.html?m=1
Enjoy. The reader is called, obviously, the lektor.

Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lector

In Poland, a lektor is a (usually male) reader who provides the Polish voice-over on foreign-language programmes and films where the voice-over translation technique is used. This is the standard localization technique on Polish television and (as an option) on many DVDs; full dubbing is generally reserved for children's material.

haha in the uk in the 60s the lektor technique was mainly used in children's TV, to repurpose foreign series like robinson crusoe (which was french)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE10msGsCn4

Oh yeah, I'd heard about that! In the great Polish film The Last Family from last year, one of the characters does that. This guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomasz_Beksiński

In Denmark, all the Astrid Lindgren films were done like that, presented with a lector. A woman, though. Brings back memories :)

Speaking of Day For Night, it's Jean-Pierre Léaud's birthday today. Bon Anniversaire!.

Ludwig is getting a bunch of screenings in New York:

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/film-week-ludwig/

I remember Ludwig as downright constipated with period detail. But then if I had permission to film in Neuschwanstein I'd probably go over the top too.

lol yeah - when I saw it (this is about 10 yrs ago) I dismissed it as The Leopard but without the control. I like the review quite a bit - if that print comes around here I'd be up for a re-watch.

This is Nick Pinkerton on the same season: https://www.artforum.com/film/the-royal-treatment-75708

Ludwig is the culmination of a NY retro, so i'll have my last 3 blind spots covered.

https://www.filmlinc.org/series/visconti/#films

more on LV (and Antonioni)

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5732-journeys-beyond-italy-with-visconti-and-antonioni

I didn’t see much similarity between Ludwig and The Leopard at all. Thematically and main characters are pretty divergent and Ludwig (necessarily for the subject) gradually moves toward camp bordering absurdity. I agree w Kael’s line about it being “footage in search of a style”. Most interesting thing to me are the ways his ambition is shown to have no hope of being realized fairly early on.

knocked off the last 2 features i hadn't seen

White Nights > Ludwig

Maria Schell (and Bill Haley and his Comets) crucial to the success of WN

Bluray of Rocco:

https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/rocco-and-his-brothers

La Terra Trema is beautiful, hard to believe it was made 71 years ago

I saw Sandra projected (DCP) a few months ago. One thing that stuck out was the use of the Italian song that became "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me" on the soundtrack.

looking forward to seeing Sandra at some point

I want to visit Aci Trezza

uh, DEATH IN VENICE?? why has no one talked about this movie other than Alfred 13 years ago

I haven't read the Mann novella, and have only seen The Leopard, Senso, The Damned, and DIV. all great, but DIV is something else- so little dialogue, so many amazing images, incredible Bogarde performance, the music... it reminded me most of Bad Timing, an intellectual in a foreign European city flummoxed and destroyed by impossible passion.

The Leopard is extraordinary though...

You can watch the English version of The Stranger on a pretty good YouTube clip.

Seeing this revive suddenly made me search out (not that Visconti is not great on his own) all these great Italian cinematographers, like Rotunno (who did The Leopard and The Stranger; still alive at 96!), but also Vittorio Storaro (I guess he's been working with Woody Allen?) and Dante Spinotti (who hasn't been doing much of note since his run with Michael Mann and Curtis Hanson). Kind of fascinating to look at their filmographies and a) see how busy they were and b) watch their creative fortunes sort of ebb and flow.

People kinda forget how many incredible cinematographers Woody Allen has worked with. He made three films with Zhao Fei!!! The guy who shot Raise the Red Lantern also shot The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. And yeah, Storaro too. Café Society is absolutely worth watching just for his cinematography alone, I haven't watched the two other films they made together. And honestly, while they're probably worth watching, I'm not really seeking them out...

He also worked with the Spanish cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, and Darius Khondji and Vilmos Zsigmond and ... yeah, lots of talented DPs in recent years. (And of course earlier years, too.) He and Scorsese have worked with pretty much everyone of note, but Woody has really made the rounds with the greats.

Yup. And most critics just write about a couple of one-liners and gives four stars. Year after year.

well, not anymore (except in Italy)

A shame he couldn't work with incredible screenwriters.

I didn’t think that Death In Venice had the depth of the Mann novel, but I haven't ever seen another film that made Venice look as beautiful

(while at the same time kind of 1970s bourgeois)

lol, Alfred

The novel The Leopard was great and the film The Leopard was really beautiful, especially the extended ballroom sequence

thinking about other films that had a memorable Venice setting The Comfort of Strangers and Don't Look Now come to mind

the Arrow release of Ludwig is great. I watched the five part TV version over two days, just intoxicating. better than The Damned but it has a foot in camp where Death in Venice and The Leopard don't. It's a shame that set is OOP, it looks incredible.

Senso: I forgot what a dumbass Farley Granger is when A. Valli comes to visit him in his bender apartment. Why taunt? Keep the prostitute in the bedroom. Say not now, Countess. Surely the firing squad was not far from his mind!

Anyway, I watched Meet Me in St. Louis yesterday and Senso muted. Although MMIST is surely one of if not the height of Technicolor?

A really nice on set account.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/on-set-death-venice-visconti-bogarde

Except for swoony-gross tracking shots on blood-stained boy limbs to rub his Thanatos fetish in the audience's faces, The Damned is minor and often leaden Visconti. Not his fault that I've seen this material done better in later films.

After The Leopard, his better films were the intimate ones. I don't know where Ludwig fits in that evaluation; it's an intimate film that happens to go on for four hours in the gaudiest locations imaginable.

Well, Death in Venice worked.

That's intimate inasmuch as it's about the observations of one character, not a social panoply like The Leopard or The Damned.

The Damned was Fassbinder's favorite film, I'll have to find his quote on it, basically "everything true and evil and wrong and beautiful and filthy, can be found in The Damned." I agree with you Alfred, I found it too campy and, if only because it isn't in widescreen, its form is at odds with its content. A world away from the sublime aesthetics of his next film, Death in Venice, even down to the title cards!

That's what I mean: Fassbinder did this soak-in-it decadence better, whereas Visconti's let's say doctrinal purity didn't produce sufficiently fraught results.

I like The Dammed precisely because it's campy, it's not something you think Visconti had it in him. It's a more worthwhile watch than Death in Venice.

RIP Austrian bisexual actor Helmut Berger who has died at 78. Visconti was his longtime partner while he had an affair w/ Marisa Berenson and later w/ Nureyev, Britt Ekland, Ursula Andress, Tab Hunter, Linda Blair, Marisa Mell, Anita Pallenberg, Jerry Hall & Bianca & Mick Jagger pic.twitter.com/BUi2k4NE6Q

— Bruce LaBruce (@BruceLaBruce) May 19, 2023