A Place In Greece Brian & Andrew

Luchino Visconti, IL

Luchino Visconti was born in Milan a November 2, 1906, in the heart of an old aristocratic family. Loved theater and opera, his life elapses in extreme situations, such as having admired the fascist image dyed his youth, and he felt inclined aesthetic military paraphernalia such as large military parades and uniforms. To clean this shameful past and clear his conscience, he traveled to France. He was in Paris where he met Jean Cocteau and Jean Renoir for those who worked as his assistant director on the making of the film Une Partie de Campagne in 1936. Renoir was the teacher who pushed him to produce works of true social commitment allowing you to identify it among the directors of the orbit of the neorealist movement.


His film work runs between the passion for literature, the tables and the large representation bourgeois thought in the nineteenth century in the scenario: the opera. His interest in bringing to the screen several literary works manifests one of his first film version OSSESIONE (1943), based on the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice the American writer James Cain (who was not approved.)

In 1943 he was arrested for antifascist activities and return to work in film in 1948 with his La Terra Trema. After working in cold and raw representation of Italian society as identifiable as a social-pessimistic neorealist, deepened a study of German history through three films and the work of one of his literary authors favorites, Thomas Mann. Andres Caicedo harsh critiques of the work of Visconti, which, according Caicedo-will be influenced by the likes of the big film companies, especially the U.S., which will require that some of his works are fully bent English, or, at worst, or mutilated by the censors for being too long for the expectations and tastes of an audience degraded by the type of Hollywood film. For that reason, one of his masterpieces, "The Leopard, was reduced from 205 to 161 minutes.

can distinguish up to 3 periods of his work, a first of a true social commitment, a period in which they work often with actors professionals. A second term is the approach to melodrama, as he had done the opera. But it also shows a careful scenes (the scenery careful, balanced) in which the actors move and allow to understand more. Photo taken care of, work very fine soundtrack to ongoing cooperation with various actors and actresses that act to and through it in their films. We can speak of a third term, mature, foreshadowing his death. During this period his work Confidences films, work in which a teacher is laid bare and weakened their selfish bourgeois world and damaged (many called him the master of the decline) that depicts an intellectual class that failed in their participation underpin a better and decent. It's sort of bitter testament in which self-report, as it did in others in which society was complicit in crimes such as open Nazism, fascism and the exploitation of working class ignorant.

took an intense passion between the leftist ideas (despite his aristocratic background) and hid his homosexuality for a long time, maintaining an inveterate lover figure, but that was translucent in each of his works that were projected on the screen . Maintained a discreet relationship and Helmut Berger, who became a sort of fetish actor in some films of his such as Ludwig, The Fall of Gods and Chapman (Gruppo di Famiglia in an inmate). Although

suffered a stroke, he continued with his work and completed three more films, in which denoted an exquisite taste for the baroque, a situation that Caicedo criticized it as an exaggeration and unnecessary cramming, it felt very far from Visconti their first films. But reached maturity to certain proposals, some of which pose a disappointment with reality. And above all, left open to be resolved works by his followers as it should be any open work. Visconti

left this world a March 17, 1976 with his sister and listening to a Brahms symphony. Gloria Mundi.


MARR LA TERRA (The Earth Trembles) (1948) Based on the literary works of Giovanni Verga, the work that is limited between the individual neorealist authors (some works in this movement were not charged with a social realism but an ideal world - an example of this in Miracolo A Milano (Miracle in Milan), Vittorio De Sica - and therefore reflect the more stark verismo work and pessimistic). For the realization of it was supported by a small fishing village, Acci Trezza in Catania, Sicily Island, even filmed in local dialect, which forced the film to be shown in Italy has subtitles . It is a work that shows the harsh exploitation of the rich to the poor and ignorant, in that condition, threaten and marginalize (a history of exploitation that persists in society today, especially like ours where the social gaps are growing more pronounced). And often the same people trying to make a change, to become independent in this case, to improve their social group, is among the people in your class to bitter enemies, either by wanting to maintain the status quo, or in many Sometimes it happens, have enrolled in the circles of power (like the mafia of smugglers) and become blood enemies. Both cases are seen in the film: old conservatives trying to maintain industrial relations (And cultural) of society for a thousand years, on the other hand, is young desperate hunger or lack of work that are easily recruited by people from the underworld to become his henchmen. The action gesture, wanting to boating and fishing on its own, ending in failure due to a wreck, but the seeds of discontent and a basic principle of solidarity to mobilize other young fishermen. It is a masterpiece of social observation, a sort of laboratory of human patterns (culture, economic relations as a means of labor and workforce) in which each of the inexperienced players have managed to get its luster naivete and inexperience. Was widely accepted in Italian society, which was almost on the verge of a civil war to prevent the rise of a strong left (Communist Party) to power.

BELLISSIMA (BEAUTIFUL) (1951) This is an extraordinary study of poverty in all its cruelty and human misery. A woman Ceccini Maddalena (Anna Magnani), dreams about her daughter turned into a child star of the film. Obsessed and against the will of the father, invested their savings in torturing the girl singing lessons, dance, fashion, anything that allows several people to exploit the desperation and stupidity that could have a person to fulfill dreams unworkable. In the rugged path to stardom, she is cheated, humiliated by the unscrupulous who take advantage of their innocence, when the dream of stardom come suddenly sees his daughter harassed by scouts willing to swallow whole these new figures to exploit them their "useful step" and then discard them (as in "showbiz" today). It is a study of this kind no class above that between those who aspire to more without scruples (here resorts to bribery, the recommendation - as the famous Peruvian or the inevitable tarjetazo sponsors - to the intrigue and slander) .

EI Suoi FRATELLI ROCCO (ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS) (1960) Another hard film of the Italian reality, in this case, we see the migration of people from south to north more developed in all economic respects, not so much in human and in this field which will generate the small tragedies of this Southern family with a widowed mother in the head. For these people the job prospects are hard and sporadic, but it is in boxing where they find the victory first and then Rocco Simone. But some solid training Simone, brawling, gambler and womanizer, is carrying a series of problems to result in any tragedy, not before seeing jealousy, envy, rivalry and all the components that will cause the deterioration of families. For many critics of the film, the "orchestration" of this film is more related to the opera, a melodrama in which actors fall prey to a certain destination, leitmotiv, which we witness on screen. And indeed, the story leads inexorably to understand that social laws are above men, and that means trying to modify a serious challenge to the established: the divine moral, morality, the legitimacy of the establishment.

MORTE A VENEZIA (DEATH IN VENICE) (1971) This film is not very appreciated by film critics, although made with extraordinary delicacy and have been a fair interpreter of one of his favorite writers: Thomas Mann. It is the story of personal conflict von Aschenbach, a musician who falls for a young man barely known during his last and fatal holiday in Venice. In the play we see a dominant aesthetic reflection in central Europe. Although many see this film a statement about aesthetics and pedophilia, is a profound reflection on art, beauty, youth and death. In the construction of the film, uses the techniques employed by another great writer of his admiration, Marcel Proust. He also works with musicians of the era such as Gustav Mahler and some Nietzschean conceptions. As was previously explained, Visconti loved the idea of \u200b\u200bliterary works to film, one of its dream but Rush was born in Search of Lost Time, a movie, but did not dare to do so knowing how huge this event and was afraid of not being up to it. The same happened with the book The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann.


Sources:

Diccionaire des Films - Bernard Rapp, Jean-Claude Lamy, Larousse, 1995.


Hablemos de Cine - No 71, Year XV, April 1980.


Ojo Cinema - Andrés Caicedo, NORMA Group, 1999.


Luchino Visconti: Marxist aesthetics noble - Julio Cesar Moran, http://www.psiconet.com/tiempo/historias/visconti.htm