L'innocente

Visconti's final film is a brutally beautiful masterpiece. As ever, the film is fetishistic in its attention to detail (witness the scene in which the two leads are having sex and the camera spends ages examining Luara Antonelli's exquisite shoes, bodice and stockings).

Giancarlo Giannini and Antonelli play a married couple whose pleasure and displeasure at each other's extramarital affairs border on the masochistic.

Giannini, the macho man whose personal moral code allows him not only to take a lover but to tell his wife in great detail about his lustings for his lover, is terrifying as the husband unable to choose between his wife and his lover, hurting both and eventually pleasing neither. But it is often overlooked that Antonelli, whose acting roles prior to 'L'innocente', featured such greats as 'Dr. Goldfoot and the Sex Bombs' and 'The Eroticist', startles as a woman who, although on first glance is 'more sinned against than sinning' but is equally manipulative and sadistic in her relationship with her husband, toying with him as he furiously attempts to make her admit to her indiscretions.

A wealthy and arrogant aristocrat openly has an affair with another woman, thus driving his wife to start her own affair with a writer that leads to a pregnancy and baby. Giancarlo Giannini is magnificent in a role that instills in the viewer zero sympathy and outright hostility. The film heads into what can only be described as one of the most memorably tragic conclusions since Shakespeare, and is also one of the most beautifully filmed and costumed movies ever, with sumptuous deep red wallpapered rooms with velvet curtains. Wealth and position can cut both ways, with Giannini's role going down into a dark and bankrupt morality that in the end is like a swamp.

Luchino Visconti's l'Innocente is a beautiful film. Magnificent details fill up the screen on every shot, as he has done so masterfully with other period films. It's also a strange, intense and erotic story set in the high society of Rome in the late 1800s. Giancarlo Gianinni is magnificent as an erratic, determined, egotistical and passionate man who alternates between arrogance and jealously, between lucidity and rage. Laura Antonelli is wonderful as his beautiful, repressed and enigmatic wife, who quietly surprises us at various points in this torrid tale. Jennifer O'Neill is very good as a mysterious and detached object of desire. This is a melodrama with some deeply disturbing themes. Occasionally, supporting characters show flashes of morality that contrast with the self-indulgent and self-destructive natures of the three protagonists. But the film does not need to have one character to provide a moral compass for the story, because the audience can see all too clearly everyone's very bad behavior.

I saw "L' Innocent" in the mid-eighties, at at time when I was discovering a lot of Visconti's films from his last period ("Death in Venice"--my favorite--, "The Damned," and "Conversation Piece") It made a very favorable impression then; but I do agree with the viewer who dwelt on the languid pace of the film, highlighted by the sensuous musical score. What saddens me is that not one of the viewers commenting on the film --I have little to add regarding the plot, and am trying to avoid spoilers-has remarked that it is based on a novel by Gabriele D'Annunzio (né Gaetano Raspagnetta), the most popular and yet one of the most aristocratic "fin-de-siecle" writers in turn-of-the century Italy. Visconti, the majority of whose films are based on European 19th and 20th century novels, was extremely faithful to D'Annunzio' book, down to the morbidest details. D'Annunzio was a sensual man and what was regarded in his day as a "decadent" poet and novelist. His scenarios were usually luxurious, his characters were often relentless pleasure-seekers, albeit dissatisfied in their passionate search for the ultimate fulfillment of the senses. Tullio, the character so intensely played by Giancarlo Giannini, is a would-be Nietschean "superman", beyond good and evil, as "L'Innocent'(the novel) was inspired by the Italian poet's readings of the German philosopher.

Despite the slow pace of the film, I believe "L'Innocent' to be one of its director's most characteristic achievements. The glowing beauty of its female stars (fragile, yet alluring Jennifer O'Neill and earthy Laura Antonelli)and Giancarlo Giannini's seething intensity alone make this movie a worthwhile experience for cinema lovers who favor art over technology and substance over mindless, noisy violence.

In the Nineteenth Century, in Italy, the atheist and aristocrat Tullio Hermil (Giancarlo Giannini) is married with Giuliana Hermil (Laura Antonelli) and has a paramour, Teresa Raffo (Jennifer O'Neill). He decides to leave his wife and to stay with Teresa, but after a period, she dispenses with him. Tullio comes back to his wife, but she had an affair with a writer, friend of his brother, and is pregnant. Tullio asks Giuliana to make an abort, but she refuses. When the child is born, Tullio hates him, but Giuliana tries to protect the baby. In the end, a tragedy happens. This movie is an intense drama, and certainly not indicated for a general public. The cast has an outstanding performance under the magnificent direction of Luchino Visconti. The movie shows also a wonderful and very detailed reconstitution of the Italian aristocracy in the Nineteenth Century. The very sad story does not bring redemption to any character. In Brazil, it is only available on VHS, but it deserves to be offered to the viewers by the distributors on DVD, to highlight the beauty of the scenes. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): `O Inocente' (`The Innocent')