Luchino Visconti was first of all an opera director, and this was his most opera-like film. Another opera director, Franco Zeffirelli, was one of the co-directors with Francesco Rosi. The film actually begins with an opera performance at the Phoenix Theatre in Venice 1866 with the dramatic climax of Verdi's "Il trovatore", which sets the film flourishing from the start - the opening scenes are cinematographically the best of the whole film, but the realism is absolute all the way in every detail and just worth seeing over and over again for that. At the same time, it's a typical Visconti film, unmasking every human illusion on the way down the abyss of human self-deceit, self-degradation and decay. You can't really sympathize with any of the two leading characters, as they both lose control completely almost from the very beginning and don't hesitate to at every possible moment making it worse. The consequential outrageously brutal reality is horrendously shocking in its totally unemotional outcome. But the players are excellent, and it's no easy parts they are playing. To this comes the gorgeous use of Bruckner's music, particularly his seventh symphony, the second movement, and I don't think Bruckner's music has been used in any other film. Here it is the more perfect, sumptuously illustrating the opera-like melodrama by adding weight and pathos to the doomed romance. This would have been Visconti's most accomplished masterpiece, if he hadn't ten years later made the even finer "The Leopard".