Best movie of this year hands down!

Great Film overall

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Visconti's first film in colour and his first with a patrician 19th Century backdrop, 'Senso' is a squalid tale of base animal passion with an epic grandeur bestowed upon it that has seen it raised to the pantheon of Great Screen Romances by courtesy of Visconti having robed it in the trappings of the momentous historical backdrop of the Risorgimento of 1866, Venetian locations, plush interiors, immaculate costumes and Bruckner's Seventh Symphony (which wasn't actually composed until fifteen years later).The plot actually has marked similarities to Joseph Losey's 'The Sleeping Tiger', made concurrently in drab monochrome in postwar austerity Britain; in which refined Alexis Smith (married to decent but dull Alexander Knox) completely loses her head over delinquent Dirk Bogarde. Ten years earlier, Visconti himself made a much more unadorned treatment of greed and destructive passion with 'Ossessione' (1942) an adaptation of James M. Cain's sweaty tale of blue-collar adultery and murder, 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'.Maria Callas had been Visconti's first choice for the part of Countess Livia Serpieri - a society wife who becomes infatuated with good-looking creep Lieutenant Franz Mahler (played in a gleaming white uniform by an obviously dubbed Farley Granger) - but had too many theatre commitments (even at the projected three months that the film was expected to take to shoot, which eventually took nine months to complete). Ingrid Bergman was too wrapped up in the career of her husband Roberto Rossellini at the time to take up the offer; and the role eventually went to Alida Valli. Still stunning, but already perceptibly older and more leathery than during her late forties Hollywood sojourn, in the arms of Lt. Mahler Valli discovers an erotic fulfilment entirely new to her; but to Franz she's just another notch on his bedpost who he can sponge off.Marcella Mariani (who died in a plane crash aged 19, just six weeks after 'Senso's premiere) is rather sweet and vulnerable as the young prostitute Clara who is spitefully exploited by Franz to further rub Livia's nose in his rejection of her. Rina Morelli has an eye-catching cameo flitting about Livia's villa in Aldeno as her maid, who seems to be actively enjoying the thrill of her mistress's affair. But the most blackly comic element in the film is the way that as momentous historical events escalate around them, she and her idealistic cousin Roberto Ussoni (played by Massimo Girotti) are shown to be completely oblivious to what is making the other tick. Under the impression that Franz is waiting for her at an address to which she has been followed by her stuffy husband (Heinz Moog) she melodramatically declares with her back to the door that Yes She Has a Lover!, only to discover the place occupied by Roberto and his revolutionaries eagerly making plans; as oblivious of the turmoil raging inside Livia as she is by now indifferent to their cause. She commits treason by sheltering Franz from the Italians, and then gets even deeper in corruption by helping him to avoid combat by giving money meant for The Cause to him. (One of a number of loose ends in the plot is that we never find out what happens when the absence is discovered of the 200,000 florins she filches from the fund that is supposed to be helping to finance the revolution).As her grip on sanity loosens, Livia's wardrobe (the work of Marcel Escoffier & Piero Tosi) becomes more and more buttoned down and severe, the black dress she wears in her final scenes making her resemble some large, ferocious bird of prey. The distinguished Italian cameraman G.R.Aldo was killed in a car crash during the filming of this, his first colour production; and the opening scene in Venice's Fenice Theatre is the work of his successor Robert Krasker, who himself walked out on the production after falling out with Visconti, leaving the film to be completed by Giuseppe Rotunno. Whoever shot the amazing close-ups of Valli - her eyes wildly darting from side to side as she becomes more and more unhinged - merits particular kudos. During the final confrontation in the hotel you're expecting her to produce a gun and shoot Franz; but she achieves the same end by more deliciously vindictive means, and he ends up in front of a firing squad assembled at remarkably short notice while she careens into the night to a very uncertain fate.Having ended with a bang, the final credits still have one more surprise to serve up when the first two names we see after Visconti's turn out to be those of the future directors (on this occasion humble assistants), Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli.'Senso' was shot in English, and there are a couple of excerpts on YouTube from the truncated 94 minute English-language version, 'The Wanton Countess' which enable you to hear Granger in his own voice speaking dialogue written by no less than Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles (thus confirming suspicions that we are witnessing a Venetian variation on 'A Streetcar Named Desire'). By the 1970s Visconti could finally make a film truer to his own inclinations in 'Death in Venice' (1971), with Dirk Bogarde - once the object of infatuation himself in 'The Sleeping Tiger', but now the one smitten - in a production again dressed up to the nines, handsomely set in period, again using beautiful Venetian locations and this time almost entirely dispensing with dialogue in favour of Mahler, his favourite composer; whose name he had co-opted for the young officer in 'Senso' (who had been called Remigio Ruz in Camillo Boito's original novella).

But not a love treason. Treason of ideals, treason of your country and treason of the military duty. It's 1866 in northern Italy occupied by the Austrian armed forces. The Italian patriots fight to free their country and unite Italy, supported by French and Prusssian armies. Countess Serpieri (Alida Valli), a Venetian aristocrat married to an older man, falls suddenly deeply in love with an Austrian army officer, Franz Mahler (Farley Granger) who is however nothing more than a philanderer, a crook and a coward who ends up by deserting his army based on a fake and obtained through bribery medical report stating that he is physically unfit for the army. A large sum of money was given to him for that purpose by the Countess. But she had been trusted with that money by the revolutionaries and it was to be used for their cause. When she realizes that he is nothing else than an unscrupulous scoundrel it's already too late and the story ends up tragically. The director Luchino Visconti is above all an aesthetician and this movie has got wonderful images and sceneries both in exteriors and interiors. The critics have already classified his movies as opera cinema. Although he is himself descended from an aristocratic Lombard family, his ideology is much closer to Marxism and in this movie, like in his other beautiful movie, "Il Gattopardo", he depicts the moral and social decadence of the till then dominating aristocracy and the rising to power of another class, the bourgeoisie, like it occurred with most revolutions in Europe during 19th century. So as an aristocrat, Visconti is an aesthetician and that's why his movies are always rich and beautiful in visual terms. But terms of ideology and of his movies message he is closer to Marxism. The only flaw of this movie in my opinion is the performance of Farley Granger a wrong choice for the role of Franz Mahler. He is much inadequate to the character of an elegant, seductive, unscrupulous and libertine officer. In fact he is not very talented and anyway goes better in an American detective movie than in the atmosphere of the Italian Risorgimento. He looks very unrefined for that. On the contrary the beautiful Alida Valli is brilliant as Countess Serpieri. If it weren't for that flaw I'd have rated this movie with an 8 instead of a 7.

I looked for this film after seeing scenes in Martin Scorcese's "My voyage to Italy". Unfortunately, the video I watched was taken from a badly faded print, so bad in fact, that I had to turn off the color in order to watch it. This magnificent operatic drama deserves being restored to full color and released on DVD.Warning - spoiler ahead.From the beginning, at a performance of Il Trovatore, the film follows a grande passionate story of love, betrayal and revenge. It's dramatic conclusion scored points with everyone who has ever wanted to get even with someone who had it coming. Not since "I Claudius" and "The Godfather" have I see such determined cold blooded revenge.Thankfully, this move was not made for a US audience or we would have had the cosy Hollywood ending with a kiss and make up as the happy lovers ride away into the sunset.

Whatever Anton Bruckner had in mind when writing his majestic Seventh Symphony, it probably wasn't as the score to a postwar Italian love story set during the Italian-Austrian conflicts of the Risorgiamento. Though the use of pre-existing classical music as backdrop for films is to be discouraged, here it works in surprising ways. Alida Valli is the Countess Livia Serpieri, in a loveless marriage to an older, collaborationist official. At the opera (Venice's La Fenice during Il Trovatore!) she meets up with a dashing young Austrian officer, Farley Granger. (Digression: After a handful of American films -- They Live by Night, Rope, Side Street, Strangers on a Train -- Granger journeyed to Italy to work with Visconti then fell off the screen for years, only to resurface in a few schlock films in the late 60s and early 70s. What happened to him?) They kindle up a clandestine and dangerous affair -- the wealthy older woman and the manipulative wastrel. After wheedling a small fortune out of her to bribe a doctor who declares him unfit to serve, he dumps her. But hell hath no fury....Luchino Visconti, assisted by the young Franco Zeffirelli -- both were opera directors, too -- pulls out all the stops, ending with a finale reminiscent of Tosca (but with a twist). Senso is a shameless and unforgettable wallow in Italianate passion -- unabashed verismo translated to the silver screen.