Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti born 2 November 1906 (d. 1976)

Luchino Visconti, Duke of Modrone was an Italian theatre and cinema director and writer.

Born into a noble and wealthy family (one of the richest of northern Italy) in Milan. His father was the Duke of Modrone, and Visconti had six siblings. Due to his upbringing, Visconti was able to be exposed to art, music and theatre, and meet some of the forerunners in each, such as the composer Giacomo Puccini, the conductor Arturo Toscanini, and the writer Gabriele D'Annunzio.

In 1936, at the age of 30, he went to Paris and began his film making career as third assistant director in Jean Renoir's Une partie de campagne (1936), thanks to the intercession of a common friend, Coco Chanel. After a short tour to the US, where he visited Hollywood, he returned to Italy to be Renoir's assistant again, this time for La Tosca (1939), a production that was interrupted and later completed by German director Karl Koch because of the war.

Together with Roberto Rossellini, Visconti joined the salotto of Vittorio Mussolini (the son of Benito, at the time the national arbitrator for cinema and other arts) and here presumably met also 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 Neo-realist movie and an adaptation of the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Visconti was one Neo-realist director who was able to continue working throughout the 1950s, although he veered away from the Neo-realist path with his 1954 film, Senso, which was also filmed in Technicolor. This film takes place in 1866, in Austrian-occupied Venice and is based on the novella by Camillo Boito. Visconti combines realism and romanticism as a way to break away from Neo-realism.

Visconti was also a celebrated theatre director. During the years 1946-1960 he directed many performances of the Rina Morelli-Paolo Stoppa Company, with Vittorio Gassmann, and several operas, including a famous revival of Donizetti's Anna Bolena at La Scala in 1957 with Maria Callas.

Throughout the 1960s, Visconti’s films became more personal. The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), made in 1963, and based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel about the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy. It starred American actor Burt Lancaster in the role of Prince Don Fabrizio.

This film was distributed throughout America and England as well, but in the process Twentieth-Century Fox scaled it down, with important scenes completely deleted. These cuts and the poor dubbing quality ensured that the essence of the film was lost in this version. Visconti repudiated it, and took no responsibility for it whatsoever.

He told an American reporter in 1961, “I believe in life, that is the central point ... I believe in organized society. I think it has a chance.” Even when not focusing on sending a message to his audience about war or poverty, Visconti was still dealing with life and all its glory and hardships.

It was not until his 1969 film, The Damned, that Visconti received a nomination for an Academy Award, for Best Screenplay. However, he did not win the award. The film, one of Visconti's best-known works, is about a German industrialist family that slowly begins to disintegrate during World War II. The decadence and lavish beauty were archetypes of Visconti's aesthetic.

In 1971 Visconti directed an acclaimed version of Thomas Mann's Death In Venice starring Dirk Bogarde.

Visconti's final film was The Innocent (1976), which has the reoccurring theme of infidelity and betrayal.

Visconti made no secret of his homosexuality. His last partner was the Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who played Martin in The Damned [pictured above]. Berger also appeared in Visconti's Ludwig in 1972 and Conversation Piece in 1974 along with Burt Lancaster.

Other lovers included Franco Zeffirelli.

Visconti died in Rome of a stroke at the age of 69.