Gruppo di famiglia in un interno

Beautiful interiors and the detail of a picture by Arthur Davies observed through magnifying glass by an elderly Professor. The picture occurs to show a family... Can anyone realize that this painting shall soon constitute a prelude to such unpredictable events and reflections?

Luchino Visconti did not make many movies in his career because he insisted on saying that his films related to the things that really captivated him. When he wanted to say something significant, he just made up his mind to commit himself to another production. And of course there are better and worse movies of his, naturally; however, I personally think that CONVERSATION PIECE (or rather the more accurate title GRUPPO DI FAMIGLIA IN UN INTERNO - group of the family within) is one of those movies that intensely reveals a desire to convey a message. Count Visconti is much different and older here than 30 years earlier in his OSSESSIONE but equally powerful.

It is truly a psychologically captivating image of a communication among people who are absolutely different in their coexistence. The Professor (Burt Lancaster) is a man of clearly defined ideas, an elderly intellectual who has already set down his life and seeks to be left alone among his "mute pictures." However, a group of people intervene and insist on him to rent the elegant upper flat. These are Marchesa Bianca Brumonti (Silvana Mangano) with her lover Konrad (Helmut Berger), and her daughter Lietta (Claudia Marsani) with her boyfriend Stefano (Stefano Patrizi). Although they seem to be nice people at first sight, they occur to be a true riddle for the Professor who is gradually losing contact with reality. Their vulgar talk harms him and their open bisexuality shocks him. Things turn worse and, consequently, the suspicious events make the Professor more and more annoyed till the climax of events: emotional conversation. Then, the atmosphere gets most exciting, Marchesa drinks rare evening coffee and people harm themselves: some physically, some emotionally and some in both ways. Yet, no one can predict what this horrific climax moment will cause...

Thanks to unpredictable content and good action, the film occurs to be the Visconti's production of particular impression and interest. But that is not the only aspect that talks for the movie. Art is expressed in beautiful images, excellent interiors comparable to IL GATTOPARDO and some brilliant performances. I say "some" because not everyone gives a top notch performance. Burt Lancaster does the continuation of the magnetic job he did as Prince Salina in IL GATTOPARDO: he is very convincing as the Professor portraying a man desirous of stability, a bit intolerant and maniacal as he described elderly people, but overall a warm hearted reliable character so anxious with all sorts of sudden changes (moral ones too). Silvana Mangano is appealing as Marchesa Bianca: eminent, partly decadent, very elegant and nervous. She represents the other side of the older generation escaping not to books or paintings like the Professor but rather to life of luxury and extraordinary journeys. Yet, consequently, she also loses link with reality. She is more acknowledged of the world and alleged information than real dangers within her family. Youngsters, however, do not appear that convincing. Helmut Berger, though a good actor especially after his role in LUDWIG, appears to be a bit pathetic in the role of Konrad, Claudia Marsani is rather sensual and beautiful than talented and Stefano Patrizi does not appeal to me at all. Some good job among the supporting cast is done by Elvira Cortese as Erminia, the housekeeper who has some wonderfully witty moments.

But finally, I should address the most important aspect of the movie that makes it so impressive and so unique. It is the psychology of what is going on in the entire film, it is the constant attempt at communicating rather simple ideas, yet failing to do that. Why? Because the contrast is too serious: intellect vs parroting, mutual goodness vs hedonism, good will vs good fun, idealism vs materialism, the old vs the young with all specific fears and desires. That is the gist of the movie, that is what made the Professor realize and makes us realize a significant fact: it's really possible to speak one language, use the same codes, yet absolutely fail to communicate and coexist. It makes people remark the division of society, which is not a very privileged fact, but true one, unfortunately.

CONVERSATION PIECE is a film I'd recommend you to see. But remember one thing: it really has to do with the theme you are not likely to find elsewhere: shallow understanding of nothing and profound understanding of everything. 8/10

Conversation Piece is a very important film to me for two reasons, firstly it's very easy for me to identify with "The Professor" (Burt Lancaster's character is never referred to by any other name), and if a film has the same purpose as Franz Kafka said a book has, to be "the axe for the frozen sea within us", then this film is an axe for me. Secondly it's a fascinating experiment, what we have here, in the isolation of a chamber piece, is an entire wealthy family, but we never see the far right industrialist patriarch. What we get instead is a kindly old man transplanted in his stead. It's really beautiful, the effect that has.

The movie takes place in the home of a retired professor, who shuts himself away from the masses to concentrate on art appreciation, rejecting the world in favour of his imagination and the imagination of others. Like the professor I withdrew from science after completing advanced studies due to a suspicion that it was not a liberating force. I have also surrounded myself alone with beautiful things, with music, with pictures, and with art, in an apartment in the sky; I am twenty years his younger and on his path. We shared the same perception, the public is a flock of crows, and you cannot change that, you dismay has no power, any actual positive change so rare as to be written down to fluke or accident of an evolving economy. Many choose to become crows.

A great creative choice is to use Burt Lancaster as the actor, to make the Professor someone physically attractive, so the audience doesn't cop out with, "this man is alone because of his looks". There is also the risk that we say, "he is from another, better time". In fact I think men of sensitivity and ethics have found public life impossible for millennia, and have often withdrawn into eyries (I say men because men have usually been the ones to be in the financial position to achieve solitude, as well as being under less pressure to end it). In fairness there is some sense of the contemporary to the movie, as it takes place during the so-called Years of Lead when political assassination became normalized.

The professor's home is invaded by a vibrant and spontaneous gaggle of an extended family, sans patriarch. Despite the unhappiness they bring, he also realizes too late the value in being part of the lives of others. There is also the sadness that a man such as himself is seen as a great father but not as a great sire. Evolution's trick on us that these are not the same thing.

I say, with some considerable irony, that Conversation piece is another of those movies that gives men a glimpse of what it would be like to be in love with a brilliant woman. Just as we know what it's like to kiss Grace Kelly from Rear Window, Conversation Piece shows what it's like to marry Claudia Cardinale. Irony, because voyeurism and abstraction is what has imprisoned the Professor, something he finds out all too late.

Like another great Italian chamber piece (Ettore Scola's "A Special Day"), this movie has the power to lift us out of the river of time, and to reflect sacred truths. The trouble it stirs up inside me is a precious type, and I hope I will live with this movie and use it to be happier, either that or I will stand condemned by it.

Luchino Visconti, ailing and partially paralyzed by a stroke a year or two before, managed to finish 'Conversation Piece' (the Italian title to me seems better -- 'A conversation inside a family). He called upon Burt Lancaster to play his protagonist, the retired American professor who has withdrawn from the world, devoting his hours to his passion of minor English 18 and 19 century art and to his books, in Rome. We see not the energetic hero of 'The Leopard', but a tired older man without qualities, in a well ordered arrangement of taste for tradition and patterns and philosophical musing. And his apartment is the embodiment of that world that is not only antiquated but which time has passed by. His is a bourgeois order that belongs in history books or literature. And into his quiet world burst with great energy is the modern temperament of a dysfunctional family of the upper class, filthy with money and decadent. The beautiful Sylvana Mangano is the marchesa who finagles the professor to rent a vacant apartment above his museum like apartment with its stuffy furniture, it corridors brimming with portraits of bucolic scenes from the English gentry or great men and family, It is in a sense as musty and locked away as the long f=vacant apartment he lets for the marchesa's kept German lover Conrad (Visocnti's own lover Helmut Berger), as well as her daughter and friend. And suddenly, the upper floor is transformed, as a contrast, with a modernism that is loud and vulgar and in stark contrast to the professor's mausoleum, as he quietly awaits death, as much as he values his solitude and the silence of his own carthusian-like order. The marchesa is temperamental, demanding and will have her way with her rent lover, if he doesn't slip through her greedy grasp. The professor's world is turned upside down, as he is drawn into this world of his madcap tenants. As such, images of his mother (Dominique Sanda) and his wife (Claudia Cardinale) in brief scenes bring him back to the world he has shunned. And with a turn of the wrist, Visconti has hooked up the older bourgeois order to the new one, but his professor remains aloof until it is too late. For, despite his reluctance, the marchesa, her daughter, her daughter's friend and mercurial Conrad, a refugee from the turbulent 1960 radicalism, in the professor's mind have become his 'adopted' family; yet, the professor maintains his value free mind and refused to become engaged and with responsibility, until the tragic end. And then you have to wonder. Somehow, 'Conversation Piece' sets off bells in our minds today: its vulgar display of money, the absence of responsibility, the money cultural of a decadent capitalist class. Visconti with a year or so from his own death still had a vision of his own class and its failure to live up to values it espoused. It won't please everyone's taste, but it is worth seeing for the curious.

From disrespect without size, from total inelegance, apart from the unreasonable aggression of the gigolo, drug addict and leftist, and the jet set fell on the floor, that renovation in a (centenary) property that was extremely unpleasant... However, what follows is exquisite, a beautiful ménage à trois, poetic even, in the final rites a debate that is valid for every film, social criticism, social inequalities, and politics, questioning Franco's tyranny, a melancholic and exquisite outcome, adorable... "The character of the teacher played by Burt Lancaster is openly inspired by the figure of Mario Praz." "The role of Marquise Bianca Brumonti was initially proposed by the director to Audrey Hepburn, who refused to declare that she did not want to link her name to a murky and immoral role like that." "People get married to form a family, and divorce to get rid of it. - And get married again. - No! To be free."

On a second viewing after a 35 year gap, I am convinced this is indeed a lovely work and a major work of Visconti. This is is also one of those rare films that an actor--Burt Lancaster--helped a director to make a great film. (One recalls Kirk Douglas prevailing on Stanley Kubrick to change the ending of Paths of Glory, only to make it a major work of cinema). Here, Burt Lancaster, staked his own money to complete the film as producers backed out noticing the director was ill and could die before the film was completed.

One major fact that I did not realize was the title did not relate to conversations in the movie but was a well known (in the world of paintings) title for a series of paintings. That makes you to reassess the entire film. The film is a study of Italy through the eyes of three generations and their varied values on social interactions, art, politics, architectural design, music, et al.

Once you evaluate the film on the basis of the painter's decision to change the very trees and objects in his painting compared to the photograph taken of the same scene, the movie's stature itself changes. The opening credits that begin with a blast followed by the electrocardiogram graph roll streaming out unattended is a Visconti masterstroke.

That the film was made by the director sitting on a wheel chair is impressive. Is it a film about acquiring possessions or about understanding people? Both. One realizes the importance of understanding human behaviour of strangers, as one educated professor was withdrawing into solitude surrounded by books, works of art and great music. And his life changes for the richer experience in his sunset years. A great film indeed with superb performances from Burt Lancaster and Silvana Mangano. The cameos of Claudia Cardinale and Dominique Sanda do not contribute much except in providing insights into the character of the professor.

Highly recommended for serious viewers of good quality cinema.