"Senso" opens at an opera house in Venice. A production of Giuseppe Verdi's "Il trovatore" is on display, director Luchino Visconti hinting that his film will likewise be a sumptuous opera, with big emotions, unashamed melodrama and lavish costumes.
The opera is then interrupted by a demonstration, a group of radical "Italian Patriots" protesting the occupying Austrian army. What follows is an allegorical plot which may baffle those unfamiliar with Italian history. On the surface, the story is about an Italian woman called Livia who finds herself growing apart from her complacent husband (an aristocratic opportunist) and drawn toward an Austrian character called Franz Mahler, but what Visconti is really interested in is demythologising the Italian Risorgimento, the political and social movement which led to the unification of Italy's states.
One must remember that Visconti was influenced by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Both Marxists, Visconti and Gramsci believed history to be the most powerful ideological tool at the disposal of Italy and Austria's ruling elites, and both believed in creating, not just an organised working class led by grass-roots intellectuals who could challenge hegemonic ideals, but an art form which assisted or transmuted these challenges.
And so when the performers in the opera that opens the film chant "All'armi, all'armi!" ("To arms, to arms!"), it's no surprise that the patriots in the audience and the Italian aristocrats in the boxes take up the chant and unfurl the Italian flag, much to the fright of occupying Austrian officers. During this period of history (roughly the 1860s), the Italian hero Giuseppe Garibaldi and his partisan patriots were busy battling the Austro-Hungarian Empire for Italian independence. It was an extremely volatile period.
But Visconti is not interested in proletariat uprisings. He seems more interested in exploring the myths underlying the unification stories of the Risorgimento in the years leading up to the removal of the Austrian Empire. He shows how the popular movement was, in actuality, denied by those in command of the Italian forces (several key scenes clearly showing this were removed for being too inflammatory) and shows the complicity, compromises, collusion and various other processes which were taking place amongst the fractured ruling elites.
But the film also shows the utter indifference the aristocrats and many members of Italy's poor had toward unification. History, the film implies, unfolds regardless of public opinion. More than this, the film uses the romantic decline and decay between a pair of lovers (one Italian, one Austrian) to show how identities shift. The character of Franz, for example, is no longer appealing to our heroine when he is exempted from the military and loses his position. Not only is this romantic love based in a materiality which is income based and class based, but nationalistic love is itself a kind of parasitic thing, Franz and Livia's selfish romance, collapse and separation echoing Italy's love affair with and rejection of the Austrian Empire.
Of course, the film is also implicitly about the era in which it was made. After WW2, Italy was busy trying to distance itself from Nazi Germany, and was in the process of making sense of the literal and psychic rubble of the war and in search of a new national identity.
So what's most interesting about the film is the way it fits in with "The Damned", "Ludwig", "Death In Venice" and "The Leopard", other films by Visconti about European nationalism, and all of which form a clear "progression". It is clear that Visconti believes that nationalism can still be seen as progressive in the Marxist sense of modernity, ushering in a more dynamic social order. However, films like "The Damned" also show that Visconti was interested in the limits of nationalism and the dead end which it ultimately leads to at a structural level within society.
8/10 – The melodramatic romance at the heart of "Senso" does not work unless one approaches it from an allegorical perspective. Stylistically, though Visconti loves his rich cinematography, his lavish rooms and costumes, the film is very stiff, very dialogue based. Like many of Visconti's colour films, "Senso" plays like a glorified stage production or Victorian novel.
Worth one viewing.
The opera is then interrupted by a demonstration, a group of radical "Italian Patriots" protesting the occupying Austrian army. What follows is an allegorical plot which may baffle those unfamiliar with Italian history. On the surface, the story is about an Italian woman called Livia who finds herself growing apart from her complacent husband (an aristocratic opportunist) and drawn toward an Austrian character called Franz Mahler, but what Visconti is really interested in is demythologising the Italian Risorgimento, the political and social movement which led to the unification of Italy's states.
One must remember that Visconti was influenced by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Both Marxists, Visconti and Gramsci believed history to be the most powerful ideological tool at the disposal of Italy and Austria's ruling elites, and both believed in creating, not just an organised working class led by grass-roots intellectuals who could challenge hegemonic ideals, but an art form which assisted or transmuted these challenges.
And so when the performers in the opera that opens the film chant "All'armi, all'armi!" ("To arms, to arms!"), it's no surprise that the patriots in the audience and the Italian aristocrats in the boxes take up the chant and unfurl the Italian flag, much to the fright of occupying Austrian officers. During this period of history (roughly the 1860s), the Italian hero Giuseppe Garibaldi and his partisan patriots were busy battling the Austro-Hungarian Empire for Italian independence. It was an extremely volatile period.
But Visconti is not interested in proletariat uprisings. He seems more interested in exploring the myths underlying the unification stories of the Risorgimento in the years leading up to the removal of the Austrian Empire. He shows how the popular movement was, in actuality, denied by those in command of the Italian forces (several key scenes clearly showing this were removed for being too inflammatory) and shows the complicity, compromises, collusion and various other processes which were taking place amongst the fractured ruling elites.
But the film also shows the utter indifference the aristocrats and many members of Italy's poor had toward unification. History, the film implies, unfolds regardless of public opinion. More than this, the film uses the romantic decline and decay between a pair of lovers (one Italian, one Austrian) to show how identities shift. The character of Franz, for example, is no longer appealing to our heroine when he is exempted from the military and loses his position. Not only is this romantic love based in a materiality which is income based and class based, but nationalistic love is itself a kind of parasitic thing, Franz and Livia's selfish romance, collapse and separation echoing Italy's love affair with and rejection of the Austrian Empire.
Of course, the film is also implicitly about the era in which it was made. After WW2, Italy was busy trying to distance itself from Nazi Germany, and was in the process of making sense of the literal and psychic rubble of the war and in search of a new national identity.
So what's most interesting about the film is the way it fits in with "The Damned", "Ludwig", "Death In Venice" and "The Leopard", other films by Visconti about European nationalism, and all of which form a clear "progression". It is clear that Visconti believes that nationalism can still be seen as progressive in the Marxist sense of modernity, ushering in a more dynamic social order. However, films like "The Damned" also show that Visconti was interested in the limits of nationalism and the dead end which it ultimately leads to at a structural level within society.
8/10 – The melodramatic romance at the heart of "Senso" does not work unless one approaches it from an allegorical perspective. Stylistically, though Visconti loves his rich cinematography, his lavish rooms and costumes, the film is very stiff, very dialogue based. Like many of Visconti's colour films, "Senso" plays like a glorified stage production or Victorian novel.
Worth one viewing.