Senso

In 1866, in the spring of Venice, an underground rebel movement against the Austrian occupation in Italy is getting stronger. The married Countess Livia Serpieri (Alida Valli) sees her cousin challenging the Austrian Lieutenant Franz Mahler (Farley Granger) for a duel in the opera and being arrested and sent to the exile for one year. When she meets Mahler, she first hates him but after a night together walking along the streets in Venice, she falls deeply in love for him, becoming his mistress. When the war starts, she moves to her property in the country missing Mahler. When he visits her during a night, she forgets her principles, decency and betrayals her cause with cruel and tragic consequences.

I am one of the greatest worldwide fans of IMDb, but sometimes I am disappointed with the ranking of this site. How can a masterpiece like "Senso" be out of any worldwide serious list of the top 250 best movies? The "red noble" Luchino Visconti is one of the best directors ever and this masterpiece explores a wonderful, cruel and tragic romance in times of the Italian "El Risorgimento". Each scene in this movie looks like a picture of the XIX Century, full of details. The cinematography is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen, with a stunning recreation of a period. The story is fantastic, with a gorgeous Alida Valli in the top of her beauty, and Farley Granger splendid as a scum lover. The restored DVD released in Brasil by Versatil distributor is amazing, full of excellent extras. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Senso – Sedução da Carne" ("Senso – Seduction of the Flesh")

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.

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.

Italy is still probably in ruins of war at this point, real or figurative, so what does this filmmaker do, Visconti? By waving his wand, he conjures up an earlier Italy, also in the throes of occupation and war, it's the last days of the Austrian occupation around Venice, but now it can all be placed in the safer distance of history, set up as operatic melodrama on a stage.

You'll see this self-referential waving of the hand in the just the opening scene. We open in an opera house in the middle of a play, with actors on stage valiantly rushing to weapons. As soon as the play is over, patriot viewers rain the place down with revolutionary pamphlets.

It is an operatic play that we see; film as opera. Up on this stage, collaboration with a regime can be safely contained in a love affair, rich countess falling for the dashing Austrian lieutenant. In the usual melodramatic passion, she risks all. The whole point of the story is to have moments like when news reach her of a battle won against the Austrians, but instead of rejoicing at liberation, she must look terrified because her beau might have been on that battlefield.

It's not something I can get excited about, nor would I recommend you go out of your way to find it, except as contrast to other, more pertinent things about how a viewer can be choreographed through space. I mean, here is a cinema of vistas and gestures. When a camera pans around a room that someone walks in, it's just this room that we see. War is suddenly introduced as a series of vistas with crowds rushing about, filmed in a disjointed way in order to convey chaos and mobilization and yet they manage to look placid and painterly.

But how about this? It ends with another self-referential note but now one that waves away illusion, dispels fiction. Having risked all, she finds out he's not the dashing hero of operas that she wanted him to be.

Up on this stage, turning your back on your countrymen is only the innocent fallout of passion, all because you maybe yearned for some of the romance of stories from the past.

I have rated this film 9 because of it's length, there are some ponderous moments, but otherwise it is a 10. Italian cinema was still having growing pains from the war, but this epic succeeds, and skillfully incorporates the war torn landscape into this tale of an earlier war. The music score is very big and melodramatic, but fitting. The film opens with an opera in an enormous opera house, and this is fitting for the grand scale and operatic scope of this romance and the background. This is "Gone With the Wind" - Italian style - with a much more sympathetic heroine.

I am a fan of Alida Valli and have sought out her work. Perhaps because this is in her native Italian, and/or because of her Italian director, she is a full, vital, feminine woman in this film; very different from her more restrained work in America. (Her breathtaking performance in "The Paradine Case" is a study in austerity and an almost masculine stillness.) I had hoped that we would see a more free actress in her native language, and we do! She flutters and tosses her hair, she is a Countess reveling in her earthy affair. This is a full bodied performance.

Farley Granger's performance, whether in response to Valli, or just given a really meaty bad-boy to play, is a total revelation. He is lusty and sexy, provocative, pouty and passionate. In one scene, he greets her by wordlessly grabbing her hand and almost devouring it with kisses. This is a rare film where both the woman AND the man have real powerhouse roles. The confrontation scene at the end is gripping.

A small but pivotal role is played by Marcella Mariani. Her cow-like leadenness, laced with sisterhood, bespeaks a worldliness that, paired with her ethereal youthful beauty is just wrenching. All supporting roles, especially the maids, are interesting and give a sense of intrigue throughout.

A previous reviewer mentioned that the outcome of a major plot point is cut out, which leaves you wondering... "but what happened with that?" Still, the major story is the romance, which I think will be satisfying for men as well as women, because both sides are given such full emotional life. IF YOU CAN FIND IT, it is an enjoyable, big emotion, epic wartime romance.