Senso

Senso was Visconti at his most elegant and aesthetic. It opened his series of historical spectacles. The film showed that epics and melodramas can entail political criticism as any other genres. Senso is his intelligent analysis about the Italian unification - Risorgimento. The film's criticism didn't please all the people and it suffered from censorship and it was edited several times. Nonetheless this aesthetically beautiful film still stands out as a fine ironic masterpiece.

The year is 1866 and the moment people have dreamed for decades - centuries - is in our hands. Garibaldi is coming and the Italians are beating the Austrians. In the middle of all this Visconti tells us a story about an Italian woman, who is the cousin of the leader of the underground resistance, who falls in love with an Austrian lieutenant. She is blinded by her romantic illusion and is ready to betray her family, friends, ideals and native land - these are part of the ethical problematics in Senso.

Senso was Visconti's first color film and he obviously had put a lot of effort to it. It's visually gorgeous and meant an aesthetic revolution for Italian cinema. It is no coincidence that it starts in an opera which Visconti did a lot himself too. The opening sequence shows us the basic power of Opera and melodrama - to change life, infrastructure without forgetting the concrete history.

Historical films always tell us about two different ages, intentionally or unintentionally: the one the story takes place in and the time it was made in. It's a film about the Italian unification but also a study about the deepest emotions in Italy during the 1950's. Italy after WWII, filled with neo realism - antifascist battle and hope for democracy. But also about the downside; the victory of the right-wingers and the beginning of the Cold War.

Senso is a gorgeous film which requires patience and love from its viewer. It's a political, ironic, revolutionary and aesthetic film. Truly one of the biggest landmarks in Visconti's career but also in the history of Italian cinema.

This has to be one of my all time old favorite Romantic Motion Picture.

Visconti brings about Magic and beauty onscreen making every shot a glamour in experience!

There are so many great moments in Senso that it will take you ages before this Picture wears out in your memory.

Besides the fact that Visconti is one of the great Film-makers of all times it has to be said that this Director simply had a feel about shots to form a scene to imprint that exact emotion or feeling that was intended by him. He always knew to capture and captivate the viewer and bring about that special bond which nowadays we have lost with contemporary Motion Pictures!

For all out there whom enjoy the Art of Film-making, for all whom cherish good Film-making, go fetch "Senso"! It's an experience not to forget!

Senso is about the magic which comes about when a Picture finds it's way through the Projector unto the White screen! It's an experience rarely seen but so is this Art which is only understood by a handful of Film-makers!

Luchino Visconti, I thank you for this venture and understanding of the greatest Art form in this Universe!

Whatever Anton Bruckner had in mind when writing his majestic Seventh Symphony, it probably wasn't as the score to a postwar Italian love story set during the Italian-Austrian conflicts of the Risorgiamento. Though the use of pre-existing classical music as backdrop for films is to be discouraged, here it works in surprising ways. Alida Valli is the Countess Livia Serpieri, in a loveless marriage to an older, collaborationist official. At the opera (Venice's La Fenice during Il Trovatore!) she meets up with a dashing young Austrian officer, Farley Granger. (Digression: After a handful of American films -- They Live by Night, Rope, Side Street, Strangers on a Train -- Granger journeyed to Italy to work with Visconti then fell off the screen for years, only to resurface in a few schlock films in the late 60s and early 70s. What happened to him?) They kindle up a clandestine and dangerous affair -- the wealthy older woman and the manipulative wastrel. After wheedling a small fortune out of her to bribe a doctor who declares him unfit to serve, he dumps her. But hell hath no fury....Luchino Visconti, assisted by the young Franco Zeffirelli -- both were opera directors, too -- pulls out all the stops, ending with a finale reminiscent of Tosca (but with a twist). Senso is a shameless and unforgettable wallow in Italianate passion -- unabashed verismo translated to the silver screen.

A feast for the eyes this lush melodrama may be an acquired taste for some but I doubt anyone could say it wasn't visually stunning. Venice is rendered so beautifully you will want to hop the next flight there and with the composition of all the other scenes it is like watching a story take place inside of paintings. However as gorgeous as all that is it also can be distracting and take you out of the story as you study the detail which at times feels a bit surreal. Having only seen Alida Valli in her English language films where she often seemed stiff and ill at ease her performance here is quite a revelation. She is fully in command of the screen and her anguished turmoil is compelling to watch. Farley is not bad although his part really doesn't offer him much more than being a slick and very handsome wastrel.

Opens with a lush rendition of Il Trovatore at Teatro La Fenice, SENSO is an ostentatious melodrama imprinted with Visconti's pronounced blue blood opulence, retells an Italian countess' (Valli) vain and poignant attempt to pursue her one-sided affection to an Austrian officer (Granger shines in the rich Technicolor palette as an Adonis), whose misogyny and promiscuity will cause his own doom and mar her mentality up to the hilt.

The film sets its time during the fall of Austrian occupation in Venezia 1866, Valli is wavering between her bureaucratic husband (Moog) and rioting cousin (Girotti), to break loose from the stalemate, she irrevocably falls for a young lieutenant in the opponent camp, but he is no knight in shining armor but a foul and spineless scoundrel with irresistible sheen of deadly charm. Granger's gorgeous lover-boy image is a quintessential smokescreen to veil his despicable innards, but after all, it is a consensual deal despite of Valli's false hope, more significantly its anti-war signals have been forcibly cast by Granger's self-abandonment and the lousy war battlefield experienced by Girotti, which, more plausibly it is an intentional move by Visconti, a distraction from the central turmoil, but done with a tinge of amateurish fecklessness.

Valle shoulders on a profound effort to scrutinize a woman's inscrutable sexual desire which being repressed for too long, both she and Granger align themselves with Visconti's brimful-of- emotion style (again, thanks to Techincolor and the overstuffed score as well) which approximate the OTT threshold in certain degree, although falling out with Visconti eventually, Granger succeeds in bringing about his best screen persona and it was such a great era when a gay man can play an outright straight womanizer on the celluloid.

On the one hand SENSO fails to impress me as my favorite among Visconti's work of art, and scale-wise pales by comparison with LUDWIG (1972, 8/10) and THE LEOPARD (1963, 8/10), but on the other hand, only Visconti can flaunt such an overbearing melodrama with true mettle and without any compromise, a trend-setter would inspire later kindred spirits, for instance Baz Luhrmann's 3D adaption of the bourgeois sumptuosity THE GREAT GATSBY (2013, 8/10).