THE WITCHES (Italy/France - 1967; US release 1969) Directed by Luchino Visconti, Mauro Bolognini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Rossi and Vittorio De Sica. Written by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Cesare Zavattini, Age-Scarpelli, Bernardino Zapponi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fabio Capri and Enzo Muzzi. Cast: Silvana Mangano, Clint Eastwood, Alberto Sordi, Toto, Annie Girardot, Francisco Rabal, Massimo Girotti, Ninetto Davoli, Veronique Vendell, Elsa Albani, Leslie French, Clara Calamai, Marilu Tolo, Dino Mele, Helmut Berger, Laura Betti. (Unrated, 111 mins; US version 104 mins)
Whether it was horror films like TALES OF TERROR, BLACK SABBATH, and DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS or international non-horror offerings like BOCCACCIO '70, YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW, WOMAN TIMES SEVEN, and SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, anthology films were popular box office draws throughout the 1960s. The concept was enthusiastically embraced by Italian and French directors, and these projects would often be a summit of legendary filmmaking talent: BOCCACCIO '70 featured segments from Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Mario Monicelli, ROGOPAG assembled Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and relative historical footnote Ugo Gregoretti, while SPIRITS OF THE DEAD drew Fellini, Louis Malle, and Roger Vadim. De Sica was a particular fan of the format, directing all three segments of the Oscar-winning YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW and all seven stories in the Shirley MacLaine-starring WOMAN TIMES SEVEN. Along with Visconti, Pasolini, Mauro Bolognini, and Franco Rossi, De Sica was also involved in the five-part anthology THE WITCHES, a Dino De Laurentiis production designed as a showcase for his wife, Italian actress Silvana Mangano. Making her mark when she was just 19 years old in Giuseppe De Santis' 1949 neo-realist classic BITTER RICE, Mangano was one of Italy's busiest actresses throughout the '50s and '60s, but she never broke out into international stardom like perceived rival Sophia Loren, the wife of Carlo Ponti, another big-time Italian mogul. Mangano starred in major Italian productions like 1959's TEMPEST and 1961's BARABBAS, but despite being married to one of the biggest producers in the world, she never appeared in a Hollywood movie until she emerged from a decade-long retirement in 1984 to play Reverend Mother Ramallo in David Lynch's DUNE.
THE WITCHES gives Mangano plenty of opportunities to show her range but ultimately, it's a disastrous vanity project with very little to recommend it, with the segments ranging from tolerable at best to excruciating endurance tests at worst. Visconti directs the first segment, "The Witch Burned Alive," a shrill and grating look at the trials and tribulations of stardom with Mangano as Gloria, a famous actress attending the ten-year anniversary party of her friend Valeria (Annie Girardot) and her philandering husband Paolo (Francisco Rabal). She gets drunk as the other partygoers revel in her embarrassing predicament, removing her makeup and some of her clothing while she's passed out and when she comes to, she's nearly seduced by Paolo before getting into an argument with her agent on the phone. Taking up an unacceptably indulgent 40 minutes (Visconti clashed with De Laurentiis over the segment and wanted to expand it to feature length), "The Witch Burned Alive" might be trying to say something about the sycophancy of fandom and the eagerness to take down celebrities, and as such, it's a potentially interesting precursor to the era of message boards and social media, but the execution is just painful. Bolognini directs the second segment, "Civic Spirit," with Mangano stuck in a traffic jam because of a car crash and offering to take the injured and profusely bleeding accident victim (Alberto Sordi) to the hospital. She passes several hospitals and clinics along the way and ultimately drops him off in the middle of the street when she arrives at her destination, having simply used him as an excuse to get where she was going a little quicker. The segment runs just five minutes and feels like a half-baked SNL skit, but it's amusing in a CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM sort of way, reminiscent of the episode where Larry picks up a prostitute in order to have the bare minimum number of passengers in his car to use the faster-moving carpool lane.
Even worse than Visconti's segment is Pasolini's "The Earth Seen From the Moon," with Mangano as a green-haired, deaf-mute beauty named Absurdity who becomes the object of affection for widower Ciancicato Miao (beloved Italian comic Toto in a Larry Fine wig/bald cap combo) and his orange-pompadoured son Baciu (Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli). Ciancicato and Absurdity eventually marry and he carries her off to his shack in the dilapidated shantytown he calls home. Pasolini seems to be going for a garish Fellini vibe here, but there's also a pronounced element of slapstick, with some sped-up Benny Hill-type running, the generally clownish performances and endless, shameless mugging of Toto and Davoli, along with a framed portrait of Chaplin that foreshadows Davoli's homage to the Little Tramp in Pasolini's 1972 film THE CANTERBURY TALES. Regardless of the intent, "The Earth Seen From the Moon" is Pasolini at his most insufferably self-indulgent. Things pick up with Rossi's "The Sicilian Belle," where Mangano has her heart broken, setting off a chain reaction of escalating revenge and shotgun deaths in her small village. It's basically a bunch of guys getting blown away, but like Bolognini's story, it benefits from running around five minutes, thus rendering it incapable of wearing out its welcome.
THE WITCHES was shot in late 1965 and early 1966 but wasn't released in Italy until 1967, and it would be another two years before it was picked up by United Artists, dubbed in English, and relegated to their short-lived foreign acquisition division Lopert for a very brief NYC run in the spring of 1969. It was quickly withdrawn and didn't resurface until 1979, when UA included the shortened English-dubbed version (104 minutes compared to the 111-minute European cut) in a late-night TV syndication package, but even then, it wasn't in regular rotation and remained extremely difficult to see. The only reason THE WITCHES is ever mentioned today is thanks to the unlikely appearance of Clint Eastwood in the final segment, the De Sica-directed "An Evening Like the Others." Eastwood is Carlo ("Charlie" in the US version), the buttoned-down, conservative bank executive husband of Mangano's bored housewife Giovanna. He's preoccupied with work and doesn't pay attention to her like he once did, and would rather stay in and go to sleep than take her to a movie. Giovanna drifts into Fellini-esque fantasy worlds where she's desired by other men and makes Carlo pay for not appreciating her. In the fantasy side of the segment, she ultimately leads a mob of men to a massive arena in Rome, where she does a striptease to emasculate a hapless Carlo. Other than the novelty of seeing Eastwood in such an unusual setting in the most obscure film of his career, the closing segment is another dud. Mangano is fine, but broad comedy is not Eastwood's specialty and he appears to be in physical pain stuck in a suit and black-rimmed reading glasses that serve as an unintentional early look at one of his FIREFOX disguises. Eastwood, who was paid $20,000 with a Ferrari thrown in, shot his segment in between FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. At this time, he was a major star in Europe, but when THE WITCHES was filmed, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was still over a year away from its belated 1967 US release. Eastwood was still a relative nobody stateside, best known as a TV star thanks to his time on RAWHIDE, which was cancelled in 1965. In Italy, however, he was already an established pop culture phenomenon, with De Sica poking fun at his "Man With No Name" image by having Carlo in gunslinger garb in one of Giovanna's fantasies and then sighing in disinterest at the meta notion of taking Giovanna to see A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.
Silvana Mangano (1930-1989)
Over 1967 and 1968, United Artists distributed all three of Eastwood's Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns in the States, as well as HANG 'EM HIGH, his American debut as a lead on the big screen. All were smash hits, and as a result, UA effectively (and understandably) buried THE WITCHES despite showing Eastwood in a cowboy hat on the US poster art. Eastwood doesn't even appear until around 80 minutes in, but as bad as this is is, at least the final segment serves as required viewing for Clint completists. Just out on Blu-ray from Arrow Video's "Arrow Academy" prestige line (with both the Italian-language European cut and the English-dubbed US version), THE WITCHES flopped hard in Italy, but that didn't deter De Laurentiis from producing another Mangano-focused anthology film--with returning directors Bolognini and Pasolini, and cast members Toto and Davoli joined by Italian comics Franco and Ciccio--with 1968's CAPRICCIO ALL'ITALIANA, which was an even bigger box office bomb, and without a Clint Eastwood onboard, was never even released in America. THE WITCHES and CAPRICCIO ALL'ITALIANA failed to make Mangano the international star that Sophia Loren was, and the colossal failure of both films effectively ended her career as a leading lady. Mangano stayed busy in supporting roles in Visconti's DEATH IN VENICE, LUDWIG, and CONVERSATION PIECE, but after ending her acting sabbatical with DUNE, she only appeared in one more film, the 1987 Marcello Mastroianni drama DARK EYES. She and De Laurentiis divorced in 1988 after he became involved with longtime producing partner Martha Schumacher (FIRESTARTER, CAT'S EYE, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE). The grandmother of popular celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis, Mangano was only 59 when she died of lung cancer in 1989, an iconic figure in Italian cinema who just never managed to find success outside of her homeland like the Sophia Lorens, the Gina Lollobrigidas, or the Claudia Cardinales of her day.
LUDWIG (Italy/France/West Germany - 1973) Directed by Luchino Visconti. Written by Luchino Visconti, Enrico Medioli and Suso Ceccho D'Amico. Cast: Helmut Berger, Romy Schneider, Trevor Howard, Silvana Mangano, Gert Frobe, Helmut Griem, Isabella Telezynska, Umberto Orsini, John Moulder Brown, Sonia Petrova, Folker Bohnet, Heinz Moog, Adriana Asti, Marc Porel, Nora Ricci, Mark Burns, Maurizio Bonuglia, Anne-Marie Hanschke, Gerard Herter, Henning Schluter, Eva Axen. (Unrated, 238 mins)
The most problematic work in the canon of the great Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti, LUDWIG, an epic chronicle of the 1864-1886 reign of Ludwig II, "the mad king of Bavaria," was regarded as a beautiful but costly and self-indulgent folly upon its release in 1973. With an original running time of just under four hours, distributors all over the world balked at the film's length--so extreme that it seemingly depicted Ludwig's 22-year reign in real time--which led to a plethora of differing versions from country to country. In Italy, it was cut from 238 minutes to 186. US distributor MGM took the 186-minute version and cut it down to 173 for its NYC premiere in March 1973. That R-rated version was quickly withdrawn and LUDWIG was relaunched in Chicago a few months later at 137 minutes and re-rated PG, and that's the version that went into general release in the US over the summer and fall of 1973, running a full 101 minutes shorter than Visconti's intended vision (the PG cut presumably nixed any references toward Ludwig's sexual tendencies and a few scattered instances of male frontal nudity--were they concerned that a Visconti epic needed to bring in a younger demographic?). British audiences got the same 137-minute cut when it finally bowed in the UK in 1978, German moviegoers got a 144-minute version, and the Australian cut was whittled down a bit more to 133 minutes. Visconti apparently oversaw the first initial cut to 186 minutes for Italy and, whether willlingly or under duress, signed off on it, but beyond that, he was not involved in any further tweaks and alterations. Visconti died in 1976--his health worsened by a stroke he suffered midway through the shooting of LUDWIG--and over the years as the film fell into relative obscurity as the black sheep of a legendary auteur's filmography, there were so many different versions prepared for each market around the world, with so many wildly disparate running times that it became a virtual impossibility for anyone to remember what Visconti's intended LUDWIG even looked like.
The complete version of LUDWIG was released on DVD by Koch Lorber Films in 2008, but it was a flawed presentation that only included the Italian dub as an audio option with accompanying English subtitles. Visconti shot the film with the cast speaking English (with the intent of dubbing some of the Italian, French, and German supporting actors who had thicker accents or were speaking phonetically), which is how it played in US theaters, but the English soundtrack was only put in place for the assembly of the 173-minute US cut, and that was presumed lost over the ensuing 35 years or, perhaps more likely, clearing the rights to the English soundtrack and creating an integrated English/Italian audio track required more money and time than Koch Lorber was willing to spend. Arrow Video, under their prestige "Arrow Academy" banner, have released a four-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo set of the complete 238-minute LUDWIG--along with a separate viewing option that breaks it down into a five-part miniseries as it later played on Italian television--that offers the Italian soundtrack as well as the long-MIA English soundtrack for the first time in America since its theatrical release in 1973. There is one caveat: MGM never had the full-length version and were only given the 186-minute Visconti compromise, so they only saved the English track for the footage they used to assemble the 173-minute version for that initial NYC premiere. That means 65 of the restored version's 238 minutes automatically switch to Italian with English subtitles at random times. Some may find it distracting that just over 70% of the film is in English, but it's the best it's ever going to get if you want to hear the main stars and the more fluent-in-English members of the supporting cast speaking with their own voices.
But it's these switches to the Italian soundtrack that tell a bigger story: there's a lot of plot and exposition that gets spelled out in the Italian-language scenes, and if these were nixed for American audiences, it had to be pretty impossible to keep up with the narrative and have even the slightest idea what was going on, and even more so when it was chopped down further from 173 to 137 minutes. By the time Roger Ebert reviewed the 137-minute re-edit for the Chicago Sun-Times in June 1973, awarding it one star out of four, it was apparently an incoherent dumpster fire that lost all but one of the periodic cutaways to Ludwig underlings giving testimony directly to the camera. These bits happen a lot in the complete version and help provide some context as to what was going on in Bavaria during this time. I say "some context" because even at 238 minutes, LUDWIG remains a meandering, unwieldy mess that requires keeping access to Wikipedia at the ready if you want to know how most of the characters relate to one another or what purpose they serve in Ludwig's orbit, because much of that is information that Visconti is simply not interested in providing.
The film opens in 1864, the day that 19-year-old man-child Ludwig (played by Visconti's muse and longtime partner Helmut Berger) assumes the throne with the intent of being a caring and humble leader despite little working knowledge of being a ruler. He's incapable of comprehending how the Bavarian government operates and shows little interest in learning, but he loves the lavish life and all the pomp and circumstance, immediately portending a mix of oblivious naivete and stubbornness that strongly suggests he's in way over his head and that if he had to campaign for the job, his slogan would've been "Make Bavaria Great Again." Ludwig would be termed "The Mad King" as time went on, but Visconti is sympathetic to his subject. Far from being "mad," Ludwig is painted more as a tragic figure, one who was taken advantage of by those closest to him and one who would be continually frustrated by his inability to find true love and happiness. Historians have always questioned the claim that he was "insane," and now generally agree that it was an excuse used by his opponents to remove him from the throne. The conclusion these days is that he was a distant, awkward person who probably never wanted to be king in the first place, and his frequent instances of erratic psychological instability may have been the result of increasing isolation and loneliness and even royal inbreeding. For much of his reign, Ludwig wants nothing more than to marry his cousin, Countess Elisabeth of Austria (Romy Schneider), but she continually rejects him, even unsuccessfully trying to arrange a marriage for him with her younger sister Sophie (Sonia Petrova).
Far from being a "mad" tyrant, he tries to compensate for his ignorance as a leader and the repeated rejections by Elisabeth by pouring himself into the arts, architecture, and other grandiose displays of extravagance. He views art as "the antidote for evil and corruption in society," and becomes the primary benefactor of disgraced composer Richard Wagner (Trevor Howard), who arrives in Bavaria with his conductor Alan von Bulow (Mark Burns) and his wife Cosima (Silvana Mangano), with whom Wagner is having an affair. Wagner and Cosima view Ludwig as a useful idiot, bilking and hustling everything they can out of the young king ("This half-witted boy," Wagner chuckles to Cosima), who is more than happy to give them everything they desire, including a palatial residence and a personal opera house designed exclusively for the staging of Wagner operas. Ludwig drains his personal fortune and exhausts any available credit through the Bavarian treasury to order the construction of one castle after another throughout his kingdom, many of which are exact copies of ones that already exist in France. He's informed by everyone--from Elisabeth to close advisers like Count von Holnstein (Umberto Orsini, who's definitely dubbed) and Count Durckheim (Helmut Griem)--that he's being used, that he's reckless and irresponsible in his spending, that Wagner is squandering taxpayer money, and that the Von Bulows are shameless opportunists looking for a free ride. Elisabeth lays into him most harshly, telling Ludwig point-blank that "Your pathetic friendship with Wagner gives you the illusion of creating something...just as I give you the illusion of love." Ouch.
This all sounds like compelling drama, but Visconti isn't concerned with things like narrative and story construction. Sure, these story elements are there, but it's dramatically inert and told with much emotional distance, as if he wants to make the audience feel as isolated and closed-off as his subject. It's an experiment that doesn't really make for compelling cinematic storytelling, and LUDWIG is often as dry and clinical as those educational history films that one-time fellow neo-realist Roberto Rossellini was making for Italian television around the same time. Granted, LUDWIG is much more opulent and visually stunning, with very few exteriors and almost all of the scenes shot in the actual castles and palaces that Ludwig had constructed during his reign. Even when Bavaria goes to war with Austria against Prussia, we see not a single battle that would seem to be a requirement in such a massive historical epic. Ludwig simply decides to side with Austria and is eventually told that they've lost the war. On one hand, you get what Visconti is doing: by seeing nothing whatsoever of the war, the audience is in the same mindset as Ludwig, who was utterly unconcerned with it and was completely unaffected by it win or lose. But telling the story in this manner gives the film a choppy and incomplete feel even at four hours. Even with Ludwig's interactions with Elisabeth and Wagner and his gradual retreat into proto-Howard Hughes seclusion even to those closest to him (it's also feasible that he suffered from social anxiety disorder), it's still nearly three hours before Visconti gets anything resembling dramatic momentum going, when Count Durckheim is called in for an inquiry with top-ranking Bavarian officials at the behest of the duplicitous Count von Holnstein (the closest thing LUDWIG has to an outright villain). This secret group is conspiring to have Ludwig declared insane, which would force him to abdicate and give power to his uncle Prince Luitpold (Gerard Herter), as the next in line of succession is Ludwig's schizophrenic younger brother Prince Otto (John Moulder Brown), who's already been deemed even less capable of assuming the throne than his elder sibling. This long sequence--where Durckheim angers the rebellious government officials and defiantly professes his loyalty to Ludwig, refusing to have any part in the coup--plays out in Italian, meaning it was completely absent from the US cut. Again, how could anyone watching this movie in an American cinema in 1973 have even a hint of a clue as to what was happening?
LUDWIG was Visconti's most personal and ambitious film, and it's in many ways a summation of all of his obsessions and fixations. You can draw a straight line from Burt Lancaster's Prince of Salina in 1963's THE LEOPARD through Dirk Bogarde's Gustav von Aschenbach in 1971's DEATH IN VENICE and Berger's Ludwig through Lancaster's aging, nameless Professor in 1974's underrated CONVERSATION PIECE: lost men out of their time, living in the past, obsessed with beauty, art, decadence, and decay, sheltering themselves by hiding away in opulent mansions and/or dilapidated palazzi from a changing society they no longer understand in a world that's left them behind. From 1965 until his death in 1976, the openly gay Visconti was romantically involved with the much-younger Berger, who made his mark in Marlene Dietrich drag in Visconti's THE DAMNED but always seemed overtly androgynous even when he was playing tough guys in Eurotrash thrillers like 1975's ORDER TO KILL and 1977's MAD DOG KILLER. Visconti's and Berger's relationship (now 72, the bisexual Berger eventually married Italian actress Francesca Guidata but still refers to Visconti as the one great love of his life) is reflected throughout the director's later years, particularly with von Aschenbach's obsession with a teenage boy in DEATH IN VENICE and in Ludwig's fixations on attractive young men like officer Hornig (Marc Porel) and actor Joseph Kainz (Folker Bohnet). He spies on another young officer skinny-dipping and is also seen in a state of depressed malaise, in a decadent hideaway surrounded by nude young men lounging about the premises (I'm guessing that scene wasn't in the PG version). Watching Ludwig's decline and fall hastened by his commitment to an unattainable artistic vision at odds with everyday practicality, LUDWIG is as much about the Bavarian king as it is about Visconti himself.
But in lieu of anything to really drive the narrative for the first three hours, Visconti instead opts to make LUDWIG one of the most stunningly beautiful films you'll ever see. The location shooting in the castles, coupled with the art direction, the cinematography by Armando Nannuzzi (who would infamously lose his right eye in 1985 in an on-set accident during the making of Stephen King's MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE) and Piero Tosi's Oscar-nominated costume design make it a thoroughly captivating visual experience, especially on Blu-ray. As far as the performances go, Berger commits, looking haggard and thinner by the end, with greasy hair and augmented with convincingly rotted-looking teeth. He gets an enraged outburst every few scenes (if you watch with the Italian track, he's dubbed by Giancarlo Giannini), but when the film never lets you get into the heart and mind of Ludwig, what's the point? Faring much better is Howard, who benefits most from the recovery of the English soundtrack. The veteran British character actor (Visconti's second choice after Laurence Olivier turned it down) is just superb here, a larger-than-life presence stealing every scene he's in as the self-serving and subtly manipulative Wagner, who seems to genuinely like "this half-witted boy" but still puts himself first before all. Howard is so good here that had critical and commercial response to LUDWIG not been so toxic, he probably could've gotten a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
Berger and Visconti on the set
But man, this is a horse-pill. It's easy to draw comparisons between LUDWIG and another visually intoxicating but impenetrable and alienating epic that was a little further on the horizon: Michael Cimino's 1980 western HEAVEN'S GATE. Like that film, LUDWIG is a breathtaking sight to behold but its storytelling mechanics leave a lot to be desired. Both films were chopped down to more accessible, commercial lengths that rendered them incomprehensible, and now both are available in their intended versions (Visconti's estate gave its approval to Arrow's restoration). And both films essentially destroyed the careers of the filmmakers who lovingly crafted them, auteurs whose single-minded focus is exhaustingly precise, but caused them to lose sight of the bigger picture. Cimino is so concerned with nailing the accuracy of the time period in HEAVEN'S GATE, right down to whatever the most barely visible extra in the background is doing, that he forgets important details that lead to such questions as "Why are Jeff Bridges and John Hurt even in this movie?" Likewise, Visconti was so zeroed in on the atmosphere and the look of Ludwig's era, shooting in as many actual locations as possible, and getting the decor and the sets and the clothing down perfectly that he forgot to write a complete script with a beginning, middle, and end. Characters appear and disappear with baffling suddenness, you don't know who they are, the motivations of some are really fuzzy, and you may find yourself asking such questions as "Why is Gert Frobe even in this movie?" Visconti battled back as best he could after his stroke and would still make two more films--1974's CONVERSATION PIECE and 1976's THE INNOCENT--but LUDWIG would be the last one he'd see released in America in his lifetime. It was a huge flop and made him a pariah to the major studios. Visconti died in March 1976 at the age of 69, and CONVERSATION PIECE, even with a screen legend like Burt Lancaster starring, didn't hit American theaters until it was picked up by a fledgling New Line Cinema in 1977, while THE INNOCENT remained unseen in the US until the small arthouse outfit Analysis Films released it in 1979.
The 137-minute, PG-rated version of LUDWIG
opening in Toledo, OH on September 7, 1973.
It lasted one week.
CONVERSATION PIECE aka GRUPPO DI FAMIGLIA IN UN INTERNO (Italy/France - 1974)
Directed by Luchino Visconti. Written by Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Enrico Medioli, Luchino Visconti. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano, Romolo Valli, Dominique Sanda, Claudia Cardinale, Claudia Marsani, Stefano Patrizi, Elvira Cortese, Guy Trejan, Umberto Raho, Enzo Fiermonte. (Unrated, 121 mins)
The penultimate film by legendary Italian director Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) has been derided as one of his worst and most pretentious works for nearly 40 years. It was shot in English, with much of the Italian supporting cast dubbed, and despite acclaim in Italy, film festival screenings abroad resulted in such bad word-of-mouth that it took three years to find a US distributor. When then-fledgling New Line Cinema released it in the US in 1977, a year after Visconti's death (his final film, 1976's THE INNOCENT, wasn't released in the US until 1979), they released a version dubbed in Italian with English subtitles, which most agreed played a little better. Raro USA's new DVD release only has the original English-language audio, and that was the way Visconti intended it to be shown (Raro's Blu-ray, due out in April, will have both audio options). CONVERSATION PIECE has remained relatively obscure in comparison to Visconti classics like THE LEOPARD (1963), but its reputation has improved since its original release, and the essay in the package's accompanying booklet by film historian Mark Rappaport makes a pretty strong case for it being considered essential Visconti.
1974 Italian poster
Watching the film and with the benefit of perspective, CONVERSATION PIECE is, in hindsight, a hauntingly personal, elegiac baring of Visconti's soul. Visconti suffered a debilitating stroke shortly after completing 1973's LUDWIG and was partially paralyzed from then on. CONVERSATION PIECE was his next film, and it's clearly the work of a man who knows he's facing the end, and it's all there on the screen. Rappaport even goes so far as to write that the film itself is Visconti's Last Will and Testament. Admittedly, it's uneven at times, the English dubbing of the supporting cast is an ill fit, and there's some pointless shoehorning of Italy's then-volatile political situation into the crucial final sequences, but, with the passage of time, and years of film students studying Visconti and others of the Italian neo-realist movement, perhaps it's easier to focus on what does work in CONVERSATION PIECE, which is most of the film. It's not without flaws and problems, but what it gets right is too powerful to simply dismiss.
Poster for the film's 1977 US release
A retired American science professor (Burt Lancaster) lives alone in a grand, opulent Rome palazzo filled with the books, music, and art he's collected over a lifetime. He has a maid and his only acquaintances seem to be art dealers with whom he occasionally does business, collecting "conversation piece" portraits of informal family or group gatherings. The professor's solitary existance is disrupted by the Marchesa Bianca Brumonti (Silvana Mangano), a pushy, demanding woman of high social stature, who wants to rent the upper level of the palazzo for her daughter Lietta (Claudia Marsani) and her fiance Stefano (Stefano Patrizi). The professor repeatedly explains that the upstairs is not for rent and that he planned on moving his library up there at some point in the future. The Marchesa refuses to take no for an answer and before he even realizes what's going on, the Professor has signed a one-year lease for Lietta, Stefano, and a third boarder, the Marchesa's flamboyant, much-younger boy-toy and drug-dealing gigolo Konrad (Helmut Berger). The three tenants invade the Professor's life in a variety of ways, including knocking down walls and causing a water leak, loud music at all hours, barging in unannounced, and not to mention the Professor walking in on them in a threesome (Berger and Patrizi do frontal nudity in this scene, but Visconti is careful with how he films 1973 Miss Teen Italy winner Marsani, who was only 15 at the time), but their presence gives an unexpected spark to the Professor's lonely life. He surprises himself by bonding with Konrad, who loathes being the Marchesa's kept man and demonstrates intelligence and refined musical and literary tastes the Professor didn't think possible. The Professor begins to lament all the lost years spent alone and is soon "adopted" by this bizarre trio as the father in their makeshift dysfunctional "family."
Deciding three's already a crowd, the Professor (Burt
Lancaster) declines an invitation from the
free-spirited Lietta (Claudia Marsani,
who's probably doubled in this shot)
Lancaster's Professor (he's never given a name) is a character cut from the same cloth as the aging prince the actor portrayed 11 years earlier for Visconti in THE LEOPARD. Both are old men nearing the end, both filled with regret over roads not taken and societal changes they can't control, and both feel like relics in their own worlds. But Visconti's declining health adds a different level of poignancy to CONVERSATION PIECE. The Professor essentially is Visconti, and it's no coincidence that Konrad is played by Helmut Berger. No one else could've played this role. Berger became Visconti's lover and protege after working together on 1969's THE DAMNED. So much of their reportedly rocky relationship is incorporated into CONVERSATION PIECE, and though a romantic angle is never consummated, it is mentioned when the Marchesa accuses the Professor of having designs on Konrad. It's possible that the Professor feels a romantic desire for Konrad. He walks into the bathroom while Konrad is showering and seems to be in no rush to leave, only excusing himself when someone knocks at the main door. We know the Professor was married once upon a time (Claudia Cardinale plays his wife in a brief flashback), but all he says is "It didn't work." For what reasons, we never know. Visconti was bisexual, so perhaps the Professor is as well.
Burt Lancaster and Helmut Berger
But beyond any possible romantic scenarios, the Professor and Konrad first and foremost demonstrate a father-son relationship more than anything, which probably has parallels to Visconti and Berger's instructor-protege working relationship. Rappaport's essay cites Berger's memoirs and other information to paint a picture of Visconti as someone who preferred a quiet evening at home and who was often frustrated with the much-younger Berger's hard-partying, stay-out-until-dawn ways, which is what happens with the Professor and Konrad. What keeps CONVERSATION PIECE from reaching the level of Visconti masterpiece is the bizarre political tangent that gets introduced in the last part of the film, almost as if Visconti was obliged to say something simply because he came from the school of neo-realism and there was a lot of political tumult in Italy at the time. It doesn't really gel, and in fact, it's a bit of a momentum killer. But it's something that can be overlooked, and while CONVERSATION PIECE isn't on the level of THE LEOPARD, I think Rappaport's arguments are convincing enough to elevate it to the status of essential Visconti. It's also a very beautiful film (the DVD is remastered, 2.35:1 anamorphic), taking place almost entirely inside the Professor's stunningly-decorated, colorful palazzo, a DePaolis interior that looks like it could've been (and probably was) used for several gialli of the period. And while bleak and mournful most of the way, it also has a lot of dark humor, be it an occasional bit of inspired overacting from Berger or the three tenants giving the Professor a parrot that only says "They're killing me!" with Lietta explaining "It'll remind you of us." With Raro USA's release of CONVERSATION PIECE, the time seems right for a reconsideration of this neglected and very deeply personal late-period Visconti work.
Somewhat misleading artwork for the film's
1980s VHS release in the US.
