Lucino Visconti

Born in Milan, Italy, on November 2, 1906, Luchino Visconti di Modrone, was the son of Count Lonate Pozzolo, a title he would later inherit. He grew up in a refined environment, between artistic works and opera attendances, and received a good education, especially in the musical field. His parents had “brown beasts” as friends such as the musician Arturo Toscanini, the composer Giacomo Puccini or the writer Gabriele D’Annunzio .

Thus, the opinion that a critic from the Village Voice would publish about him is somewhat exaggerated: “Count Luchino Visconti’s main passion was raising horses, until Coco Chanel introduced him to Jean Renoir .” Although it is true that he was dazzled by the talent of the French director, since he moved to Paris to work as his assistant director in Una partida de campo .

When he had learned the trade, he made his big debut with the well-rounded Obsession (1943) , which supposedly inaugurated neorealism according to some Marxist historian – a current of thought to which Visconti himself belonged. And although it is a fundamental piece in the genesis of the movement, there is still a long way to go to reach the aesthetic and thematic postulates of Rome, open city , a true initial neorealist work. The director’s debut feature was an apocryphal version of James M. Cain ‘s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice , although the action was set in Italy.

Following the emergence of this type of cinema, Visconti shoots the moving Earth Tremble in Sicily , a veritable masterpiece with non-professional actors about a fisherman who is barely trying to establish himself on his own. Partially financed by the Communist Party, it was part of an ambitious project that was to consist of three installments, which were never shot, about other struggling workers waiting for the revolution. To the social theme of the cinema of Rossellini, De Sica and other masters, Visconti contributed his aesthetic delicacy.

The neorealism fever was so great that Visconti portrayed the phenomenon in the impeccable Bellísima , about the obsession with fame generated because non-professional actors succeeded in the cinema. Anna Magnani embodied a mother determined that her daughter work in the cinema. The neorealist cycle closes with the legendary Rocco and his brothers , with a young Alain Delon and an almost debutante Claudia Cardinale in a very minor role, about a southern family from the countryside that emigrates to the city.

Before the latter, he had shot Senso , which marks a new path, since it adapts a novel by Camilo Boito about an Italian aristocrat, who falls in love with a rival officer, as he belongs to the Austrian army. It already showed what would become its most recurring theme, the decline as the ruling class of the aristocracy, which here appeared greedy, unsupportive and collaborating with the enemy.

Possibly his greatest masterpiece on this subject is The Leopard , an impeccable adaptation of the famous novel by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa , about a prince bent on marrying his nephew to a rich heiress for convenience. It took two years to finish shooting, but it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. In this film, Visconti proves to be one of the great masters of cinema, with an impeccable production that reaches its peak in the final waltz sequence with its long shot, and an incomparable direction of actors. He opened up new horizons for the veteran Burt Lancaster – at a time in his career when he was dealing with complex characters – and once again brought Delon and Cardinale to their advantage.

In 1964 Visconti met a decisive figure in his life, the Austrian Helmut Berger , then a language student and aspiring actor. After becoming his lover, Visconti gives her one of the most important roles in The Fall of the Gods , about a wealthy German family whose members almost all support Nazism. Berger embroidered an unpleasant character, a Nazi and a pedophile. The film also had an exceptional Dirk Bogarde as an entrepreneur.

Berger also starred with Visconti Ludwig (Louis II of Bavaria) , a biopic of the monarch Ludwig II of Bavaria with whom the director felt identified because of his homosexuality, and who was obsessed with the composer Richard Wagner . The film also featured another of Visconti’s love conquests, Romy Schneider , in a realistic incarnation of her best-remembered character, Empress Sissy.

Apparently Berger, now an official lover of the director, was obsessed with playing the protagonist of Death in Venice , an adaptation of the great novel by Thomas Mann . The actor went so far as to ask the filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli to intercede for him, but Visconti was a man with a great personality who was extremely irritated that they tried to impose anything on him, so he finally opted again for Bogarde, who did one of his best jobs as Professor Gustav von Aschenbach, dazzled by an extraordinarily beautiful teenager in the Italian city.

Visconti also stood out as a theater director and especially as an opera director. He directed great figures such as Maria Callas –with whom he maintained a relationship–, and was responsible for elaborate productions of “La Traviata”, “Iphigenia en Táuride”, and “Don Carlos”, in Paris, London and especially in La Scala, from his hometown.

A stroke left the director partially paralyzed. Despite everything, thanks to the help of his collaborators, he was able to shoot two films, Confidences (again with Burt Lancaster and Helmut Berger, about a retiree who lodges some private tenants in his luxurious palace) and The Innocent (1976) ( adaptation of the homonymous work by Gabriele D’Annunzio, about two young lovers).

Shortly before the premiere of this latest film, Luchino Visconti died in Rome on March 17, 1976. The man of contradictions had a Catholic funeral, but red flags were waving in the square of the church of San Ignacio. His regular collaborator, the cinematographer Pasqualino de Santis, said after his death: “With Visconti, a cinema that only he knew how to make also dies.”