uh, DEATH IN VENICE?? why has no one talked about this movie other than Alfred 13 years ago
― flappy bird, Thursday, 5 December 2019 06:17 (four years ago) link
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...
― flappy bird, Thursday, 5 December 2019 06:20 (four years ago) link
You can watch the English version of The Stranger on a pretty good YouTube clip.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 5 December 2019 11:05 (four years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 5 December 2019 12:56 (four years ago) link
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...
― Frederik B, Thursday, 5 December 2019 13:28 (four years ago) link
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.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 5 December 2019 13:37 (four years ago) link
Yup. And most critics just write about a couple of one-liners and gives four stars. Year after year.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 5 December 2019 13:39 (four years ago) link
well, not anymore (except in Italy)
― flappy bird, Thursday, 5 December 2019 18:19 (four years ago) link
A shame he couldn't work with incredible screenwriters.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 5 December 2019 19:09 (four years ago) link
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
― Dan S, Friday, 6 December 2019 02:16 (four years ago) link
(while at the same time kind of 1970s bourgeois)
lol, Alfred
― Irae Louvin (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 6 December 2019 02:20 (four years ago) link
The novel The Leopard was great and the film The Leopard was really beautiful, especially the extended ballroom sequence
― Dan S, Friday, 6 December 2019 02:23 (four years ago) link
thinking about other films that had a memorable Venice setting The Comfort of Strangers and Don't Look Now come to mind
― Dan S, Friday, 6 December 2019 02:30 (four years ago) link
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.
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 12 February 2020 06:44 (four years ago) link
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?
― flappy bird, Thursday, 6 August 2020 05:09 (three years ago) link
A really nice on set account.
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/on-set-death-venice-visconti-bogarde
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 28 February 2021 22:08 (three years ago) link
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.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 19 April 2021 21:32 (three years ago) link
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.
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 19 April 2021 21:54 (three years ago) link
Well, Death in Venice worked.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 19 April 2021 22:06 (three years ago) link
That's intimate inasmuch as it's about the observations of one character, not a social panoply like The Leopard or The Damned.
― Halfway there but for you, Tuesday, 20 April 2021 00:20 (three years ago) link
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!
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 20 April 2021 01:45 (three years ago) link
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.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 20 April 2021 01:48 (three years ago) link
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.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 20 April 2021 11:03 (three years ago) link
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
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 19 May 2023 19:29 (eleven months ago) link