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

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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

two months pass...

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

five months pass...

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

six months pass...

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

one month passes...

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

two years pass...

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


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