Luchino Visconti was born into a prominent noble family in Milan, one of seven children of Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone, Duke of Grazzano Visconti and Count of Lonate Pozzolo, and his wife Carla[1] (née Erba, heiress to Erba Pharmaceuticals). He was formally known as Count don Luchino Visconti di Modrone, and his family is a branch of the Visconti of Milan. In his early years, he was exposed to art, music and theatre: he studied cello with the Italian cellist and composer Lorenzo de Paolis (1890–1965) and met the composer Giacomo Puccini, the conductor Arturo Toscanini and the writer Gabriele D'Annunzio.
During World War II, Visconti joined the Italian Communist Party.
Visconti made no secret of his homosexuality. His last partner was the Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who played Martin in Visconti's film The Damned. Berger also appeared in Visconti's Ludwig in 1973 and Conversation Piece in 1974, along with Burt Lancaster. Other lovers included Franco Zeffirelli,[2] who also worked as part of the crew in production design, as assistant director, and other roles in a number of Visconti's films, operas, and theatrical productions.
Visconti smoked 120 cigarettes a day.[3] He suffered a stroke in 1972, but continued to smoke heavily. He died in Rome of another stroke at the age of 69. There is a museum dedicated to the director's work in Ischia
Films[edit]
He began his filmmaking career as an assistant director on Jean Renoir's Toni (1935) and Partie de campagne (1936) through the intercession of their common friend Coco Chanel.[4] After a short tour of the United States, where he visited Hollywood, he returned to Italy to be Renoir's assistant again, this time for Tosca (1941), a production that was interrupted and later completed by German director Karl Koch.
Together with Roberto Rossellini, Visconti joined the salotto of Vittorio Mussolini (the son of Benito, who was then the national arbitrator for cinema and other arts). Here he presumably also met Federico Fellini. With Gianni Puccini, Antonio Pietrangeli and Giuseppe De Santis, he wrote the screenplay for his first film as director: Ossessione (Obsession, 1943), the first neorealist movie and an unofficial adaptation of the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice [5].
In 1948, he wrote and directed La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), based on the novel I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga.
Visconti continued working throughout the 1950s, but he veered away from the neorealist path with his 1954 film, Senso, shot in colour. Based on the novella by Camillo Boito, it is set in Austrian-occupied Venice in 1866. In this film, Visconti combines realism and romanticism as a way to break away from neorealism. However, as one biographer notes, "Visconti without neorealism is like Lang without expressionism and Eisenstein without formalism".[6] He describes the film as the "most Viscontian" of all Visconti's films. Visconti returned to neorealism once more with Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers, 1960), the story of Southern Italians who migrate to Milan hoping to find financial stability. In 1961, he was a member of the jury at the 2nd Moscow International Film Festival.[7]
Throughout the 1960s, Visconti's films became more personal. Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963) is based on Lampedusa's novel of the same name about the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy at the time of the Risorgimento. It starred American actor Burt Lancaster in the role of Prince Don Fabrizio. This film was distributed in America and Britain by Twentieth-Century Fox, which deleted important scenes. Visconti repudiated the Twentieth-Century Fox version.
It was not until The Damned (1969) that Visconti received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. The film, one of Visconti's better known works, concerns a German industrialist's family which begins to disintegrate during the Nazi consolidation of power in the 1930s. Its decadence and lavish beauty are characteristic of Visconti's aesthetic.
Filmography[edit]
Feature films[edit]
| Year | Original title | International English title | Awards |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1943 | Ossessione | Obsession | |
| 1948 | La terra trema | The Earth Will Tremble | Won – Special International Award (Venice Film Festival) Nominated – Grand International Prize of Venice |
| 1951 | Bellissima | Bellissima | |
| 1954 | Senso | Senso or The Wanton Countess | Nominated – Golden Lion |
| 1957 | Le notti bianche | White Nights | Won – Silver Lion Nominated – Golden Lion |
| 1960 | Rocco e i suoi fratelli | Rocco and His Brothers | Won – Special Prize (Venice Film Festival) Won – FIPRESCI Prize (Venice Film Festival) Nominated – Golden Lion |
| 1963 | Il gattopardo | The Leopard | Won – Palme d'Or |
| 1965 | Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa | Sandra | Won – Golden Lion |
| 1967 | Lo straniero | The Stranger | Nominated – Golden Lion |
| 1969 | La caduta degli dei | The Damned | Nominated – Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay |
| 1971 | Morte a Venezia |
Death in Venice
Plot[edit]
The protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach, travels to Venice for health reasons. There, he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido as Aschenbach.
While the character Aschenbach in the novella is an author, Visconti changed his profession from writer to composer. This allows the musical score, in particular the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony by Gustav Mahler, which opens and closes the film, and sections from Mahler's Third Symphony, to represent Aschenbach's writing. Apart from this change, the film is relatively faithful to the book, but with added scenes where Aschenbach and a musician friend debate the degraded aesthetics of his music.
While Aschenbach attempts to find peace and quiet, the rest of the city is gripped by a cholera epidemic, and the city authorities do not inform the holiday-makers of the problem for fear that they will leave. As Aschenbach and the other guests make day-trips into the city centre, they begin to realize that something is seriously wrong. Aschenbach decides to leave, but in a moment of impulse decides to stay. However, he himself is dying from heart disease.
Rejuvenated by the presence of Tadzio—though they never actually converse—he visits the barber who, in his words, "returns to you merely what has been lost", dyeing his grey hair black and whitening his face and reddening his lips to try to make him look younger. As he leaves the barber's shop the barber exclaims: "And now Sir is ready to fall in love as soon as he pleases". Aschenbach continues to gaze at Tadzio from afar, the latter more aware that he is being gazed at. In the climactic scene, Aschenbach sees Tadzio being beaten up on the beach by an older boy. When released, Tadzio walks away from him alone towards the horizon. He suddenly turns back to look at Aschenbach, then turns away to face the sun, and stretches his arm out towards it. Aschenbach too, stretches his hand as if to reach Tadzio, and at that very moment—heightened by the crescendo in Mahler's Adagietto—he dies from a heart attack. A few people notice him collapsed on his chair and alert the hotel staff. They carry Aschenbach's body away.
|
Won – 25th Anniversary Prize (Cannes Film Festival) Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Direction, Best Actor Dirk Bogarde Nominated - Academy Award for Best Costume Design |
| 1973 | Ludwig | Ludwig | |
| 1974 | Gruppo di famiglia in un interno | Conversation Piece | |
| 1976 | L'innocente | The Innocent |
Other films[edit]
- Giorni di gloria, documentary, 1945
- Appunti su un fatto di cronaca, short film, 1951
- Siamo donne (We, the Women), 1953, episode Anna Magnani
- Boccaccio '70, 1962, based on the episode Il lavoro in Boccaccio's Decameron
- Le streghe (The Witches), 1967, episode La strega bruciata viva
- Alla ricerca di Tadzio, TV movie, 1970
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