NEWS
A brief biography by Richard Dunkley
The great Italian film director Luchino Visconti (Count of Lonate Pozzolo), was born into high aristocracy and had a life as grand and complex as many of his film characters, from his noble birth living in Palaces and Villas, to resistance war hero, to revered theatre, opera and film director. Visconti was a devout catholic and committed communist, who hated Mussolini’s Fascist regime and was imprisoned by the Nazis, narrowly escaping death; his life was like an epic movie in itself!
It is extraordinary that a nobleman of Visconti’s standing, (after starting as Jean Renoir’s assistant), should virtually invent the Italian Neo Realist film movement in 1943 with his first feature, ‘Obsessione’. This was an adaptation of James M Caine’s book ‘The Postman always rings Twice’, transposed to the poverty stricken Po Valley. The film was banned by the Fascist regime for its depiction of the Italian proletariat, ‘reeking of deprivation, lust and violence’, and was not seen in Italy until after the war.
Visconti in his early work, along with De Sica and Rossellini, used real locations and local people as actors, and shot in gritty black and white. Their style was hugely influential on the film Industry worldwide, and Neo Realism was a precursor of the French New Wave. Even now Realist directors like Scorsese, Coppola, Ken Loach and Chloe Zhao (Hamnet) acknowledge its influence on them.
Post war, Visconti’s career flourished dividing his time between Films, Theatre and Opera, winning awards and acclaim in all three mediums. His cinema evolved over fourteen films from his early neorealist work studying poverty and workers, to themes of aristocratic life and decadence and the decay of the bourgeoisie. Visually they ranged from the almost documentary early films to the lavish, opulent details, colour palates and sumptuous cinematography of the later work, like The Innocent and The Leopard.
Visconti had a vast vision and is without doubt one of the great Cinema Geniuses