Luchino Visconti

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Luchino Visconti (1906–1976)

Luchino Visconti (born November 2, 1906 as Conte Don Luchino Visconti di Modrone in Milan , † March 17, 1976 in Rome ) was an Italian theater, opera and film director and screenwriter . He is considered one of the most important directors in European cinema. Coming from an Italian aristocratic family, Visconti was one of the founders of Italian neorealism in the 1940s . Later, his films were mainly devoted to topics such as beauty, decadence and death, in particular the decline of the European nobility and bourgeoisie was repeatedly taken up in his films.

life and work

Palazzo Visconti di Modrone in Milan

Luchino Visconti was the third son (fourth child) of Count Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone (1879-1941), who was raised in 1937 as the first Duke of Grazzano Visconti . The Counts Visconti di Modrone, in Primogenitur since 1813 (by Napoleon I) Dukes of Modrone, are a younger branch of the Visconti Dukes, who died in 1447 . His mother was the industrial heiress Carla Erba (1880-1939) from a Milanese chemical dynasty. Visconti grew up at the family seat, the Palazzo Visconti di Modrone in Milan, and at Grazzano Visconti Castle near Vigolzone . After his parents separated in the early 1920s, his mother and the younger children, including him, moved to their own palace in Milan and the Villa Erba in Cernobbio .

In 1936 Visconti went to Paris and began his career as an assistant to Jean Renoir . After a short trip to America, on which he also visited Hollywood , he returned to Italy to work again as Renoir's assistant on the film La Tosca in 1939. The production had to be interrupted due to the war; it was later ended by the German director Carl Koch . Together with Roberto Rossellini , Visconti joined the salotto of Vittorio Mussolini , the son of Benito Mussolini and at the time a national cultural censor, where he probably met Federico Fellini . With Gianni Puccini, Antonio Pietrangeli and Giuseppe De Santis , he wrote the screenplay for his first film as a director, Obsession (1943), a work that established a new style, neorealism , which gave Italian post-war film significant impulses.

In 1948 he wrote and directed The Earth quakes based on the novel I Malavoglia by Giovanni Verga . Visconti had developed sympathy for communism during his time in Paris. He was arrested in 1944 for resisting fascism. After the war, he publicly stood up for the KPI . The conflict that arose from this worldview and his origins in an important Italian aristocratic family can be felt in his works. He himself, always financially independent, traditionally educated and comprehensively educated, considered himself to belong to a past world, that of the 19th century. In the film The Leopard (1963) he addressed the decline of an old social order and the rise of “modern times”. He was hostile to the 1968 movement .

By turning away from neorealism, Visconti succeeded in creating an unmistakable visual language in his films of the 1960s. Due to the unique mixture of aristocratic origins, political communist convictions and brilliant social analysis, he created alongside Der Leopard (1963) with Die Verdammten (1969), Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig II. (1972) masterpieces of film history.

After Visconti had recovered from the effects of a severe stroke (July 27, 1972), he managed to make two films: In Violence and Passion (1974) he analyzed contemporary Italy, which is characterized by fascist tendencies. With his last film The Innocence (1976) he brought the novel L'innocente by Gabriele D'Annunzio to the screen. It is about the eternal game between man and woman and between good and bad.

Visconti was also a celebrated theater director. From 1946 to 1960 he realized many performances by the Rina-Morelli - Paolo-Stoppa -compagnie with Vittorio Gassman and worked for spoken theater until the 1970s. His work as an opera director was also significant . a. to the Milan Scala , the Vienna State Opera and the London Covent Garden Opera , where he mainly performed operas by Giuseppe Verdi - including a famous Traviata at La Scala in 1953 (conductor Carlo Maria Giulini ) and in 1966 the much-praised Falstaff (conductor Leonard Bernstein ) the Vienna State Opera - but also staged works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss .

The church funeral for Visconti took place on March 19, 1976 in Sant'Ignazio di Loyola in Campo Marzio in Rome. In addition to the Visconti family, the Italian President Giovanni Leone and the actors Burt Lancaster , Claudia Cardinale , Laura Antonelli , Vittorio Gassman and Helmut Berger were present.

Private

Visconti was homosexual . He did not shy away from showing himself in public with his friends and companions, such as the director Franco Zeffirelli and the German actor Udo Kier . Visconti's last long life partner was the Austrian actor Helmut Berger from 1964 .

His nephew Eriprando Visconti also worked as a film director (including Una spirale di nebbia ) .

Filmography

Opera productions (selection)

Awards

In the course of his career, Visconti has received numerous film awards; the most important honors include:

In 1963 Visconti was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize .

literature

  • Henry Bacon: Visconti, Explorations of Beauty and Decay; Cambridge University Press, 1998

documentary

  • Luchino Visconti, obsessed with film. (OT: Luchino Visconti - Entre vérité et passion. ) Documentary film, France, 2015, 58:24 min., Script and direction: Elisabeth Kapnist and Christian Dumais-Lvowski, production: arte France, Bel Air Media, INA , Avrotos, ORF , First broadcast: December 11, 2016 by arte, table of contents by ARD .

Web links

Commons : Luchino Visconti  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Luchino Visconti . In: KINO . ( kino.de [accessed on March 15, 2018]).
  2. ^ Programm.ARD.de - ARD Play-Out-Center Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany: Luchino Visconti, obsessed with film. Retrieved March 15, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Luchino Visconti - Biography. In: www.luchinovisconti.net. Retrieved July 2, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Visconti, Luchino
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Luchino Visconti, Count of Modrone (title)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer, theater and film director
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan , Italy
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1976
Place of death Rome , Italy