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Luchino Visconti |
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Director / Screenwriter |
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1906 - 1976 |
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Born November 2,
Milan, Lombardy, Italy |
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Key
Production Countries: Italy, France |
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Key Genres: Drama,
Family Drama, Psychological Drama, Period Film, Melodrama, Romantic Drama |
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Key
Collaborators: Suso Cecchi D'Amico (Screenwriter), Mario
Serandrei (Editor), Enrico Medioli
(Screenwriter), Mario Garbuglia (Production Designer), Ruggero Mastroianni (Editor), Pasqualino De Santis (Cinematographer), Helmut Berger (Leading Player), Silvana Mangano
(Leading Player), Massimo Girotti (Leading Player), Franco Mannino
(Composer) |
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Highly Recommended:
La Terra trema (1948)*, Senso
(1954)* |
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Recommended:
Ossessione
(1942)*, Rocco and His Brothers (1960)*, The Leopard (1963)*,
Of a Thousand Delights
(1965), Ludwig (1972)* |
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Worth a Look:
Bellissima (1951)*, White Nights (1957), Death in Venice (1971)*,
Conversation Piece (1974), L'Innocente (1976) |
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Approach with Caution:
The Damned (1969)* |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links: [
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ]
[
BFI
Feature ]
[
Derek
Malcolm's Century of Films: The Leopard ] [GLBTQ
Biography ] [
Guardian
Unlimited Article ] |
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Books:
[
Visconti: Insights into Flesh and Blood ] [
Visconti:
Explorations of Beauty and Decay ] [
Luchino
Visconti ] [
Luchino Visconti (Twayne's Filmmakers Series)
] |
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"This
Italian director offered strong, stern, unremitting portraits of
societies, often high, and veneers crumbling under exterior
pressures. Most of them are impressive, and beautifully
decorated with all the visual elegance of a man who was both set
designer and costume designer early in his career. However,
after 1960, they have progressively less to offer in terms of
entertainment. A trip to a late Visconti film became
increasingly an occasion for admiration rather than enjoyment."
-
David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"A Marxist aristocrat, Count Don Luchino Visconti di Morone was
widely praised for both the realism and vaguely politicised tone
of his early films, and the operatic sumptuousness of his later
historical costume dramas. Throughout his career, however, style
dominated content; all too often, the result was camp,
decorative melodrama disguised as solemn, socially significant
art." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) |
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"The
films of Luchino Visconti are among the most stylistically and
intellectually influential of postwar Italian cinema. Born a
scion of ancient nobility, Visconti integrated the most
heterogeneous elements of aristocratic sensibility and taste
with a committed Marxist political consciousness, backed by a
firm knowledge of Italian class structure...Visconti turned out
films steadily but rather slowly from 1942 to 1976. His
obsessive care with narrative and filmic materials is apparent
in the majority of his films." -
Joel Kanoff (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) |
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"A director of intense, frequently opulent dramas, Visconti
began his career as one of the purveyors of Italian neorealism (La
Terra trema, 48) of a heavy, surging kind. Later he
was more grandiose, cutting to the depths of human emotions in
decadent atmospheres." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include The Stranger (1967). |
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8- |
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"Visconti
was a major theater director, and his films flaunted
sumptuous costumes and settings, florid acting, and
overpowering music...
La Terra trema, Senso,
Rocco and His Brothers,
The Leopard,
The Damned, Ludwig,
and
Conversation Piece
all trace the decline of a family in a period
of drastic historical upheaval. Visconti evokes the
lifestyles of the rich, but he also usually reveals the
class conflict that those lifestyles conceal. Foreign powers
conspire with the
ruling class to oppress the populace
(Senso);
the aristocrats must give way
to democracy
(The Leopard);
a bourgeoisie
collapses through its own
corruption
(The Damned)." -
Kristin Thompson & David Bordwell,
Film History: An Introduction |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
Fringe
Benefits |
| ●
100 Essential Directors (Pop
Matters) |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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Michelangelo Antonioni |
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Liliana Cavani |
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Vittorio De Sica |
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Federico Fellini |
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Pietro Germi |
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James Ivory |
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David Lean |
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Max Ophüls |
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Pier Paolo Pasolini |
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Roberto Rossellini |
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Raúl Ruiz |
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Martin Scorsese |
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Luchino Visconti's Favourites |
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Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Sergei Eisenstein,
Les Enfants du paradis (1945)
Marcel Carné,
La Grande illusion (1937)
Jean Renoir,
Greed (1924)
Erich von Stroheim,
Hallelujah! (1929)
King Vidor,
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Billy Wilder,
Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Charles Chaplin,
Que viva Mexico! (1932)
Sergei Eisenstein,
Stagecoach (1939)
John Ford,
Tabu (1931)
F.W. Murnau.
Source: Cinematheque Belgique (1952) |
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