Senso

A pretty good story, a bit too simple here and there but nicely dramatic. It's the directing I give a 100. It's no less than a directorial masterpiece; the Risorgimento period is brought to life spectacularly, the visual style is breathtakingly beautiful, with meticulous attention paid to every compositional and chromatic detail, to movement and to positioning. Between that and the understated melodrama, I will bet my left nut Fassbinder dug this movie.

I liked it a lot, but couldn't help being a little underwhelmed. It's a beautiful picture but compared to Visconti's later films the visuals aren't quite as stunning. The love story and intrigue is well developed from start to end, but some tighter pacing would have helped. The patriotism angle is interesting but a bit underdeveloped. The performances are largely wonderful, though, and the flaws simply make it not quite great but still very good.

The cinematography is okay and the period detail is excellent. But there wasn't much else about this film I liked. I hate the character of Livia. It's hard to believe in anyone going so ridiculously ga-ga over boring old Farley Granger. Of course Granger is dubbed, quite badly, in Italian for this movie, with plenty of overacting. But if you really want to see some overacting, look no further than Valli, who chews the scenery like it's made out of Twizzlers.

# 276

So stuffy and dreary, in spite of how great the film looks (and the period detail is magnificent). It takes a tragedy about a woman being duped by a man and plays it up as this incredibly romantic drama with the music swelling at every opportunity it can find just to remind us how romantic it all is. Um...sorry, but I see nothing romantic about a woman being swindled like that. Also Farley Ginger isn't that good an actor and I totally didn't buy into a woman going that head over heels for him.

This one bored the pants off of me! Characters are pretty fake. To be honest, I hate this kind of upper class love stories. You know some classy people wonder around whining, whining and whining.

Expert direction from Visconti, a great performance by Valli and pretty good work by Farley Granger. The beginning of the film, featuring a pro-nationalist "Verdi" riot, is wonderful.

262

fantastic melodrama from visconti. beautifully shot with many scenes remeniscent of treasured paintings from the past (that come to life)....

Costumed 19th century period melodrama at its best.

Star Rating: ★★★★1/2

Worth a watch for the absurdly opulent production design and technicolor photography as well as a great score, but the script manages to be simultaneously over-the-top melodramatic and pretty dull.

Excellent as historic documentary. Marvellous attention to the scenography and costumes details. Bad melodrama for the rest, even if i understand what Visconti was trying to say about his class (he was a count-duke, if you don't know that): The final decline of the noble class and of its world, its values, its contradictions. The first italian historic kolossal, after the first after-war age of pure (and poor) neorealism cinema.

colour, image, music, direction. all wonderful. 5 stars. also, all completely wasted on yet another absurd bourgeois melodrama. here luchino encapsulates everything i hate about them. they chuck in a bunch of vapid, whining paper dolls they call 'characters', dress them up in ridiculous puffy things they call 'costumes', get them to speak pompous, meaningless blather they call 'dialogue', and set it all to some Important Historical Event. oh, but it's so romantic! honestly? it's disgusting.

Picturesque and with impressive interiors and costume design. However, couldn't help but regard the dialogue and characters with ridicule which dramatically lessens it's worth. More is needed for a successful opera-on-screen.

A bit more of the sly self-awareness of the film's melodramatic nature that it flirts with at the beginning would have been nice, because on a whole Visconti plays this disappointingly straight (no pun intended), especially compared to his fellow queer melodramatists like Fassbinder or Almodovar. Neither of the two leads are really compelling enough to sell the self-destructive romance at face value (he's too transparently slimy and she's too passive). It's pretty but it's no Ophuls.

249

Handsomely made melodrama with great sets and costumes and a very good score. Like Visconti's later The Damned (but not to quite the same extent), the melodrama can border on soap opera at times, but it works pretty well if you are okay with this type of movie. I thought the ending made it far more interesting than a more traditional love story would have been. I probably would have rated it much lower if it didn't go in that direction. Valli overacts a bit and Granger is nothing special.

Outside of the photography, I am out on this one. It's always easy on the eyes, as there's a lush-ness to Visconti's camera. However, I care nothing for either of these leads. This is like Romeo and Juliet without the actual love. She is profoundly stupid; he, heartless. I kept hoping it would take an interesting turn, but no. It just continued to sink into the mire that was obvious from the jump.

#251