Senso (1954)
by Luchino Visconti
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alida Valli, Christian Marquand, Farley Granger, Heinz Moog, Rina MorelliDirector: Luchino Visconti
Writer: Luchino Visconti
Writer: Camillo Boito
Writer: Carlo Alianello
Writer: Giorgio Bassani
Writer: Giorgio Prosperi
Writer: Paul Bowles
Writer: Suso Cecchi D'Amico
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Subtitled); Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 118 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-11-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Senso (1954)
Movie Review: The expected consequences of a passion!
Summary: 5 Stars
Tragic drama around a noblewoman who sacrifices her marriage when she loves a handsome but cowardly young officer. Lavishly produced and superbly photographed.
When many people expected Visconti continued his variants about the Neo Realist tendency (La terra trema, Bellisima) the director withdrew deliberately to face a work epoch, placed in the War between Italy and Austrian, with the Venetian territory in dispute(1866). The three points of support for Senso will be then, the Great Italian Opera, the historic novel(in the same line of Parma ` s Nun `s Stendhal) and a visible intention of social critic, clearly Marxist. The intrigue is centered around three well definite characters: The Italian and idealist patriot Usoni (Massimo Giroti), the cynic Austrian officer Franz Mahler (Farley Grainger) and the Italian Countess Livia (Alida Valli), who finally betrays her cause, falling in love with Franz and becomes humiliated.
The multiple problems Visconti had to face embraced twenty years. Initially he wanted to Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando as central couple. In the middle of the filming the photograph died in an accident and was substituted by Robert Krasker, because he needed an expert in Technicolor. The planed title was Custozza, that alludes to a lost battle by Italians (Jun 24 1866) but this idea was immediately rejected by the Producer Empress, the Italian Government and the censure. The final was changed , when Mahler is declared deserter instead of shot, as well the cut of a sequence in which a drunk soldier cries: "Long live to Austria."
After having been presented in Venice Festival the film suffered other additional cuts. Finally the film was exhibited in 1968 in new York with a running time of 125 min.
Alida Valli as you know has been the greatest actress Italian has produced ever, and in spite of the close similitude with its Russian homologue, Anna Karenina, the picture is provided with a dignity at the same level that his director.
Do not miss this jewel of the Italian Cinema.
Summary of Senso (1954)
It is 1855, and the Austrian military has occupied Italy. Countess Livia Serpieri (Alida Valli) falls deeply in love with Franz Mahler (Farley Granger), an Austrian lieutenant. She betrays her country by stealing funds collected to aid the resistance and giving them to Franz so that he can bribe his way out of service. When she rendezvous with the lieutenant, she finds a drunken, ungrateful rogue who has used her only for her money, in what is perhaps among the most psychologically disturbing scenes ever filmed. Her revenge is swift and decisive, and though severe, quite believable. This 1954 film from Luchino Visconti (The Damned, Death in Venice) is a complex depiction of human passions and the destruction they can wreak, set against the larger destruction of war. A simple story told against the backdrop of countries at war, it belongs to the same genre as Reds and Doctor Zhivago, and is definitely worth viewing. --James McGrathSimilar DVD Movies
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