Senso (Criterion DVD)
Finally, Luchino Visconti’s 1954 Senso is available. Alas, it’s on DVD but, thank God, it’s from a newly remastered print that repairs those warped middle reels that distorted its exquisite images these past few decades. Without Senso regularly available, filmgoers don’t understand one of the most important aspects of film, as indicated by Visconti’s title. Yes, it’s that grand a movie.
Cinema sensuality—the visualization of emotional and erotic experience—is achieved by few directors, but Visconti mastered it. Senso’s illicit love story between Countess Livia (Alida Valli) and occupying Austrian playboy Lt. Franz Mahler (Farley Granger) nearly overshadows Italy’s 19th-century reunification, known as Risorgimento. The political drama is completed by its tumultuous amorous drama, which goes deeper into the personal motives that explain human events. Visconti heightens the import of the couple’s story—her strong obsession, his weak indifference—by impressing its historical and political context.
Senso is as rich in atmosphere and setting as it is detailed and saturated in emotion. In many ways, it is the ultimate romantic melodrama. Operatic is the term critics frequently use to describe its lavish, unrestrained storytelling and outpouring of feeling. Visconti creates an emotionally textured narrative tapestry. The dialogue (partly credited to Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles) recalls the tension of A Streetcar Named Desire, but this is on a grand scale. Passion is no small thing, and neither is suffering. The period setting helps to idealize romantic heartbreak that movies rarely acknowledge; Visconti makes it classical. Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris and Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H. would not have been possible without it.
Criterion’s supplemental booklet contains an essay by filmmaker Mark Rappaport, who sensibly writes, "With Senso, Visconti becomes the Visconti we know and are just now learning to appreciate—a perfectionist who couldn’t rest until each detail was in place… Today, when all the accountants are long forgotten and the heartaches of production no longer remembered, we are the happy beneficiaries of his efforts. Only Visconti’s glorious images remain on the screen to ravish us again and again with their sensuousness and precision." Rappaport is to be trusted but Criterion should have commissioned a video essay from him to match his extraordinary exegesis of Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, which was included in Rappaport’s superb film history, The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender.