161 - Senso, 1954, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

161 - Senso, 1954, Italy.  Dir. Luchino Visconti.

Do not let a foreign soldier escort you past the curfew.

It might not turn out very well.

We have not seen colors like this sense Jean Renoir's later films.

The Countess Livia Serpieri, played by Alida Valli of The Third Man, is at the opera.

She is at the La Fenise opera house with her husband, the Count Serpieri.

They are participating in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore.

Austrian soldiers are watching the opera from the seats below, while the Italian aristocracy is watching from the high wall of box seats above.

It is the 1860s, and Austria is occupying Venice.  Prussia has joined Venice and the rest of Italy in resisting Austria.

As the opera plays, the Italian nationalists begin to shout and throw down confetti in the colors of their flag.  They demand that the Austrians leave.

An Austrian soldier, Franz Mahler--played by American actor Farley Granger from Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and Strangers on a Train--insults an Italian nationalist, Roberto Ussoni, and the two set up a duel for the next day.

Ussoni is Livia's cousin, and she admires him more than anyone else in the world.  He is a good and brave man.

She is now terrified that he has exposed himself by speaking openly and that he may die tomorrow in the duel.

She meets with Mahler to appeal to him not to duel with her cousin.

And as Verdi's opera ends, our opera begins.

Mahler will offer to escort Livia through the streets past the curfew, and despite her protests, she complies.

And her acquiescence will begin a chain of events that will lead to the destruction of many people.

If only she had not walked with him.

At least he was charming.

Visconti's movies are grand.  They are filled with lavish set pieces, expensive fabrics, magnificent clothing, rich colors, and expansive music.

Sources tell us that at the time it was released, Senso was the most expensive movie ever made in Italy.  It benefits from this distinction.  As far as our eyes and ears can tell, the money was not wasted but ended up fully realized on the screen and in the speakers.

With Senso we get a romantic melodrama of operatic proportions.

And in the end, all hearts are broken.

Including ours.