Tribute to Suso Cecchi d’Amico

Over the course of a career that began at the time of the birth of neorealism and lasted more than 60 years, Suso Cecchi d’Amico worked on the screenplays of more than 120 films (mainly, but not exclusively, Italian) directed by both newcomers and established directors. Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023 presents a tribute to her, curated by her children, Masolino, Silvia and Caterina d’Amico. Suso Cecchi d’Amico's aim was never to impose her own ideas but to understand and support the projects and poetics of the authors with whom she worked. On the other hand, like any artist, she clearly possessed her own voice and personality, which this section proposes to trace through films that are very different in tone, genre and language. It is certainly a partial but undoubtedly fascinating selection, presenting significant works chosen from a rich and heterogeneous filmography that few other screenwriters can boast. For this post, Ivo Blom selected a series of postcards and stills of her films and wrote the text for this post for which he used an interview he had with her in 2004.


Italian postcard by Rotocalco Dagnino, Torino. Photo: Lux Film. Alida Valli as Countess Livia Serpieri and Farley Granger as Lt. Franz Mahler in Luchino Visconti's historical film Senso (1954).


German postcard. Photo Ufa. Sophia Loren in La fortuna di essere donna/What a Woman! (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956).


Publicity still used in Germany, distributed by Rank, the mark of the German censor FSK. Thomas Milian and Romy Schneider in Luchino Visconti's episode Il Lavoro in the episode film Boccaccio 70 (1962).

First screenplay

Suso Cecchi D’Amico, pseudonym of Giovanna Cecchi D'Amico, was born in Rome in 1914 to Tuscan parents: the writer Emilio Cecchi (from whom she took her birth name Cecchi) and the painter Leonetta Pieraccini. After finishing the Lycée Chateaubriand in Rome, she did not enrol at university, as she had not taken a diploma in Latin and Greek. 'To continue my studies I could only enrol in one or two faculties, such as botany, which frankly did not interest me'. After a stay abroad, in Switzerland and England, she decided to get a job. Thanks to the intervention of Minister Giuseppe Bottai, "the only hierarch who had any relationship with intellectuals", she was hired at the Ministry of Corporations, later the Ministry of Trade and Currency, where she worked for almost seven years as personal secretary to Eugenio Anzilotti, Director General of Foreign Trade.

In 1938 she married musicologist Fedele D'Amico, Silvio's son, by whom she had three children: Masolino, Silvia and Caterina, who all later on would have important careers in Italian culture. Alone or together with her father, she performed many translations from English and French, including Thomas Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure', 'Tobacco Road', 'Life with Father', 'Look Homeward, Angel', William Shakespeare’s 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' and 'Othello'. She abandoned this activity, in which she did not show the facility that her son Masolino would have when he began working for the cinema.

During the Second World War, while her husband, a member of the communist Catholics with Adriano Ossicini and Franco Rodano, led a clandestine life in Rome and directed the newspaper Voce Operaia, she moved for six to seven months to Poggibonsi, to the villa of her uncle Gaetano Pieraccini, a doctor and politician who would be the first mayor of Florence after the Liberation. At the end of the conflict, while her husband was hospitalised in Switzerland to recover from tuberculosis, she was "forced to scramble every which way to support herself, her first two children [...] and the house, populated by nannies and other women". Among the curious occupations of this period, she gave lessons in good manners to Maria Michi and English conversation to Giovanna Galletti, both of whom were actresses in Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta/Rome Open City (1945).

Suso Cecchi D’Amico worked on her first screenplay, Avatar, a romantic story set in Venice, inspired by a story by Théophile Gautier, with Ennio Flaiano, Renato Castellani and Alberto Moravia, for Carlo Ponti, then not yet a major producer. But the project was abandoned before even arriving at a proper screenplay, Castellani alone completing a treatment. Together with Castellani, she worked on a story based on a subject by playwright Aldo De Benedetti, Mio figlio professore (1946), directed by Castellani himself and starring Aldo Fabrizi and the Nava sisters. Together with Piero Tellini, she wrote Vivere in pace (1947) and L'onorevole Angelina (1947), both directed by Luigi Zampa and starring Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani respectively, with whom she began to associate assiduously, forging one of her rare friendships with actors. For the subject of Vivere in pace, also signed by Tellini and Zampa but essentially her own, she won the Nastro d'argento for the best subject.

Suso Cecchi participated with Federico Fellini, although almost always absent from meetings, in the screenplay for the film Il delitto di Giovanni Episcopo (1947), based on a novel by Gabriele D'Annunzio and directed by Alberto Lattuada. She wrote with Ennio Flaiano the screenplay for Roma città libera (1947), by Marcello Pagliero, based on La notte porta consiglio, a subject by Flaiano himself. The screenplay sessions with Flaiano passed 'between chats, criticisms and digressions on the subject. There was matter to be extracted to season ten films, and all would have been lost if it had been up to him to extract the juice'. She wrote the screenplays of Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette/Bicycle Thieves (1948) with Cesare Zavattini, proposing the finale with the attempted bicycle theft, of Le Mura di Malapaga (1949), directed by René Clément and Oscar winner for best foreign work, and also collaborated on the screenplay of De Sica’s Miracolo a Milano (1951). Her professional association with Zavattini was interrupted when he disowned the film È più facile che un cammello... directed by Zampa, for which he wrote the subject, while Cecchi D'Amico and Vitaliano Brancati edited the screenplay.


Italian postcard by Ed. Gel. Aldo Fabrizi and Gar Moore in Vivere in pace (Luigi Zampa, 1947).


Italian postcard by Ed. Gel, series Aldo Fabrizi. Poster/lobby card for Il delitto di Giovanni Episcopo/Flesh Will Surrender (Alberto Lattuada, 1947), based on the novel by D'Annunzio.


Postcard, reproduction of a French poster based on a classic still from Ladri di biciclette/Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948), with Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola.


Postcard, reproduction of Italian poster for Miracolo a Milano (Vittorio De Sica, 1951). Poster design by Ercole Brini for ENIC. Hardly recognisable are the leading actors Irma Gramatica, Francesco Golisano and Brunella Bovo.


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano (Milan), no. 466. Photo: Anna Maria Ferrero and Sandro Milani in Febbre di vivere/Eager to live (Claudio Gora, 1953).

Monicelli and Visconti

Suso Cecchi D’Amico worked with Mario Monicelli and the couple Age & Scarpelli on the writing of I soliti ignoti/Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958). Screenplay meetings often ended with arguments between Age and Scarpelli, which Monicelli and Cecchi D'Amico kept out of, so as not to give them importance. Uncredited she participated in the script of Alessandro Blasetti’s Fabiola (1940), and while credited she co-wrote the script for William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953). With Ennio Flaiano, she wrote the screenplays for the adorable comedies Peccato che sia una canaglia (1955), forcing Sophia Loren into the lead role, after seeing her in Cinecittà, "Beautiful, excessive, decorative as a Christmas Tree" as Cecchi said herself, and La fortuna di essere donna (1956), again starring Loren.

From ca. 1950, Suso Cecchi D’Amico became the regular (co-)screenwriter of Luchino Visconti. The first screenplay for Visconti was La carrozza del Santissimo Sacramento, which was not made because the producer feared the anticlerical stance in the film script, so the project passed to Jean Renoir. Then it was the turn of Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951), with Anna Magnani and Walter Chiari. The latter plays a major character who, barely hinted at in the first version of the screenplay, was later developed for reasons related to the film's distribution. Afterwards, she co-wrote the script of Visconti’s episode Anna of ‘the portmanteau film Siamo donne (1953). The screenplay for Visconti’s Senso (Luchino Visconti, 1954), based on a novella by Camillo Boito, was not entirely shot. D'Amico recounts: "I did not yet have much filming experience with Luchino and I did not foresee all the delays in the villa scenes, all the crossing of rooms to fetch something. At a certain point in the shoot, producer Gualino called me and asked me to tell Visconti that he was going to close. There was more footage than the length of the film and the budget had been greatly exceeded. So the scenes of Alida Valli crossing the battlefields in a carriage were never shot. The Countess Serpieri's journey is reduced to an apparition of the woman in the carriage that was supposed to pass through the bloody troops.” Also, the final scenes were shot in Rome instead, in Trastevere and in a ditch of Castel Sant-Angelo.

In 1957 Suso Cecchi with Visconti, producer Cristaldi and others raised a cooperative to make Le notti bianche (Luchino Visconti, 1957). Suso Cecchi collaborated with Vasco Pratolini on the subject of Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960). She wrote the screenplay with Pasquale Festa Campanile and Massimo Franciosa, both of whom, coming from the south of Italy, proved very useful for the psychology of the characters and the tone of the dialogues. In the screenplay for Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963), at Visconti's suggestion, she cut the entire final part of Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel to give in the ball scene the sense of the Prince's death and the collapse of the Gattopardi's aristocratic society. For the screenplay of the film Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa.../Sandra (Luchino Visconti, 1965), she took her cue from the tragedy of 'Electra'. For the film Lo straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967) she was obliged to faithfully transpose Camus' book. Before the editing phase of the film Ludwig (Luchino Visconti, 1973), she was with Visconti when the director suffered a stroke that half paralyzed him, and from which he only recovered with great difficulty. Suso Cecchi also worked on the scripts of Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, 1974) and L'innocente/The Innocent (Luchino Visconti, 1976).

As for the development of Senso (Luchino Visconti, 1954), Visconti and Suso had worked beforehand on a screenplay called Marcia nuziale. It was a script with many characters, which the state censors banned because it was about a divorce. There were demonstrations for divorces at the time and the censors did not want to get involved. Gualino instructed Visconti and Suso to come up with a new suggestion within days. Thus Boito's novella rolled out. Concerning the change of characters in the film, not only the introduction of Camillo Ussoni's character but also Franz's character changing from a bonehead to a devilish seducer, Suso remarked: “That had partly to do with the actors we wanted. Originally, Visconti wanted Marlon Brando and not Farley Granger but the producer, in view of foreign exports, wanted Granger, even though he was not at all well known in Italy at the time.

A notable change in production happened after the death of the director of photography, Aldo (Aldo Graziati alias G.R. Aldò). Visconti was used to discussing every shot at length with Aldo, who was a creative genius. They both enjoyed it and learned from each other. Robert Krasker replaced Aldo after his death in a car crash. Krasker was a highly respected cameraman, who had done the colour film Henry V with Laurence Olivier. Krasker asked Visconti why the shoot had to be discussed so extensively beforehand, and from then on, there was no discussion of the shoots at all, much to Visconti's disappointment.” When asked about the reason for changing the title of Boito's Senso to Uragano d'estate and eventually back to Senso, Suso responded: “We had a whole page of titles at one point, not just Uragano d'estate. We spent a whole day making up titles. There was little reasoning for that, the only thing was that sometimes in films people protested like in Rocco because their name was used and they were the only ones with that name (in Rocco, Pafundi became Parondi). In Senso, the Count is first called Pietromarchi, then Serpieri, and Franz Mahler was originally called Hans Weil”. (Interview by Ivo Blom with Suso Cecchi D’Amico, 11 May 2004.)


Postcard, reproduction. Danish poster by Atlantic Film for the film Fabiola (Alessandro Blasetti, 1949), starring Michèle Morgan and Henri Vidal.


Reproduction of press photo. Photo by Paul Ronald. Anna Magnani in Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951). Collection Ivo Blom, ex-collection Egbert Barten.


Dutch postcard by Takken / 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. 1469. Photo: Paramount. Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953).


Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 7. Photo: Farley Granger in Senso (1954).


Italian postcard by Coop. soc. Archivio immagini cinema. Card made for exhibition on Marcello Mastroianni. Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni and Carlo Pisacane in I soliti ignoti/Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli, 1958).

Visconti, Antonioni, Rosi and Monicelli

Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) officially employed five screenwriters: Luchino Visconti, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Enrico Medioli (who was just starting out at the time and was a protege of Suso and Visconti) and two men added on behalf of the Titanus production company, Massimo Franciosa and Pasquale Festa Campanile. The latter two had also collaborated on Rocco and His Brothers, with each writer writing one act. Suso Cecchi D’Amico said in an interview with Ivo Blom in 2004: “At first, Visconti was sour about the imposed addition of Franciosa and Festa Campanile, but the two turned out to be intelligent and sympathetic and Visconti thawed. In the end, everyone wrote one part, Visconti part one: The ‘Rosario’, I did part two: the villeggiatura, and the war scenes (then still in the middle of the villeggiatura scene), Festa Campanile part three: the plebiscite, Medioli part four: the attics and the meeting with Chevalley, and Franciosa part five: the ball."

This did not mean that you still recognise the signature of each individual writer in the film. Each written part was talked through and edited with the whole group. The screenplay had a huge number of versions and expanded so much, because the authors wanted to explain so much about Italian history, especially for the international market, that the screenplay became endlessly long. Suso Cecchi D’Amico: "At some point, it was decided: back to the novel and if people abroad don't understand everything, so be it. Huge scenes were either cut out or condensed, which is a common process. You first grow to absurd proportions and then you cut back."

It was not just because of length that scenes were cut out. Suso Cecchi D’Amico: "The cut of the scene of the fusillade at the end was a deliberate choice by Visconti, to prevent that scene from becoming the climax of the film, rather than the Proustian ball with its slowing down of time and its image of decline of don Fabrizio and of his class. It would become too explanatory. Of Salina's daughters, there is now only one, Concetta, who has real form and dialogue; the others have become sort of extras. This was a conscious choice; you can't give too many people body and it has to do with identification with the audience. Incidentally, many characters in the film were based on characters from the screenwriters' environment; character traits were borrowed from contemporary acquaintances.” (Interview by Ivo Blom with Suso Cecchi D’Amico, 11 May 2004.)

With Michelangelo Antonioni, Suso Cecchi made I vinti (1952), inspired by news events, carrying out investigations and collecting material found in the press and court documents, La signora senza camelie (1953) and Le amiche (1955), winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. She collaborated on the screenplay for the film Camicie rosse (Anita Garibaldi) (1952), directed by Francesco Rosi and Goffredo Alessandrini, starring Anna Magnani, but the film was defined by Cecchi d'Amico as a "senseless adventure". With Francesco Rosi she worked on three other films: La sfida (1957), I magliari (1959) and Salvatore Giuliano (1962). With Luigi Comencini she worked on the films Proibito rubare (1948), La finestra sul Luna Park (1956), Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972), written for television, Cuore (1984) and Infanzia, vocazione e primi esperienze di Giacomo Casanova, veneziano (1969). In her later life, Suso Cecchi often collaborated with her good friend Mario Monicelli, with whom she worked for the first time on Proibito (1954), followed by I soliti ignoti (1958), Risate di gioia (1960), and 14 other films, the last time for Le rose del deserto (2010). Other memorable films on which she co-wrote were Cielo sulla palude (Augusto Genina, 1949), Prima comunione (Blasetti, 1950), Il mondo le condanna (Gianni Franciolini, 1953), Nella città l'inferno (Renato Castellani, 1959), Estate violenta (Valerio Zurlini, 1959), Gli indifferenti (Francesco Maselli, 1964), Metello (Mauro Bolognini, 1970), etc.

Suso Cecchi d’Amico shared several Italian awards with her co-writers for various films and was co-nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay for Mario Monicelli’s Casanova 70, in 1980 she received lifetime career David di Donatello. In 1988, the University of Bari awarded her an honorary degree in Foreign Languages and Literature with the following motivation: “Her fierce technique and vast culture were invaluable in the literary work of film ... She reworked the original subjects with profound literary insight and extraordinary cinematographic sense". In 1994 the Venice Film Festival awarded her the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Since 2012, the city of Rosignano Marittimo awards the Premio Suso Cecchi D'Amico Castiglioncello per la sceneggiatura, for the best original screenplay for an Italian film.


Small Czech collectors card by Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), 1965, no. S 101/5. Photo: Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon, Max Cartier and Renato Salvatori in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960).


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 198, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Vintage press photo. Publicity still for Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa/ Sandra (Luchino Visconti, 1965), depicting Michael Craig, Claudia Cardinale and Jean Sorel. Photo by Mario Tursi. Collection: Ivo Blom, ex-collection Egbert Barten.


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CI 16, 1996. Photo: Mario Tursi. Helmut Berger and Romy Schneider in Ludwig (Luchino Visconti, 1972).


Italian press photo. Photo: Mario Tursi. Giancarlo Giannini in L'Innocente/The Innocent (Luchino Visconti, 1976). Collection: Ivo Blom.

Sources: Wikipedia (Italian, French and English), IMDb, and an unpublished interview by Ivo Blom with Suso Cecchi D’Amico, 11 May 2004.

Helmut Berger (1944-2023)

Today, 18 May 2023, Austrian film and television actor Helmut Berger (1944) passed away. He is famous for his work with Italian director Luchino Visconti. For his performance as King Ludwig II of Bavaria in the modern classic Ludwig (1972), he received a special David di Donatello award. Berger was 78.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.


French postcard by Sofraneme, Levallois Perret, no. CF 335. Photo: Helmut Berger in La caduta degli dei/Götterdämmmerung/The Damned (Luchino Visconti, 1969).


American or British publicity still. Photo: Warner. Ingrid Thulin and Helmut Berger in The Damned/La caduta degli dei (Luchino Visconti, 1969).


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CI 16, 1996. Photo: Mario Tursi. Helmut Berger and Romy Schneider in Ludwig (Luchino Visconti, 1972).


French postcard by Ed. Sofraneme, Levallois Perret, no. CP 312. Helmut Berger in The Romantic Englishwoman (Joseph Losey, 1975).

A demonic, insane and sexually perverted man

Helmut Berger was born Helmut Steinberger in Bad Ischl, Austria in 1944. There, his parents ran a humble pub after World War II. His father was held prisoner of war by the Russians and didn’t return until three years after the war was over. Young Helmut’s wish to be an actor caused much argument with his parents who wanted him to go into the hotel business. He had to help serve beer and to study for a hotel diploma. At age eighteen, he moved to London, England, where he worked as a waiter to pay his way through drama school, and also joined a small theatre.

With the aim of becoming an international actor, he joined Perugia University to learn Italian, English, and French. He spent some time in France, where his acting career began in commercials and a bit role in La Ronde (Roger Vadim, 1964) with Anna Karina.

Berger then moved to Rome, at that time the film capital of Europe. He was noticed by Luchino Visconti during the shooting of Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa/Sandra (Luchino Visconti, 1964) featuring Claudia Cardinale. Berger was shivering in the cold and Visconti told an assistant to offer a cashmere muffler. The next day Visconti invited Berger for lunch, and so began their relationship. They stayed ‘longtime companions’ till Visconti’s death, twelve years later.

Berger got his first real role opposite Silvana Mangano in the episode La Strega Bruciata Viva/The Witch Burned Alive (Luchino Visconti, 1967) of the anthology film Le streghe/The Witches (1967). He had his international breakthrough as the young heir Martin von Essenbeck in La caduta degli dei/Götterdämmmerung/The Damned (Luchino Visconti, 1969) starring Dirk Bogarde and Ingrid Thulin. This drama tells about the collapse of a wealthy, industrialist family during the reign of the Third Reich. In what is perhaps his best-known scene, Berger mimics Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola in Der blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930). Berger was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his role.

In Ludwig (Luchino Visconti, 1972), Berger portrays Ludwig II of Bavaria from his blooming youth to his dissolute final years. In 1973, he won a David di Donatello – the Italian equivalent of an Academy Award – for this amazing performance. Berger also starred with Burt Lancaster in Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, 1974). Berger often portrayed anguished souls and sinister villains and Visconti is said to view Berger as the very image of his idea of a "demonic, insane and sexually perverted" man.


Vintage photo.


Vintage publicity still. Photo: Warner. Helmut Berger and Florinda Bolkan in The Damned/La caduta degli dei/Götterdämmerung (Luchino Visconti, 1969).


Vintage publicity still. Photo: Warner. Helmut Berger and Ingrid Thulin in The Damned/La caduta degli dei/Götterdämmerung (Luchino Visconti, 1969).


Hungarian collector's card by A képes film Híradó, 1975. Photo: Atheneum.


French postcard. Photo: Helmut Berger in the TV film Fantomas: l'échafaud magique/Fantomas - The magic scaffold (Claude Chabrol, 1979). This is the first episode in a four-part series originally broadcast on French TV in 1979; two episodes were directed by Claude Chabrol (this is one), and the other two were directed by Juan Luis Bunuel.

The most sought-after young actor of his time

On his 30th birthday, Helmut Berger was the most sought-after young actor of his time, and not only was he young and extraordinarily beautiful, but he was also a uniquely gifted actor. Although his private and professional relationships with Visconti had brought him to the attention of the press and had made him a star, his career counted other highlights and continued after the maestro’s death in 1976. In between the Visconti films, he also starred in the horror-thriller Dorian Gray (Massimo Dallamano, 1970) with Richard Todd, Un beau monstre/A Strange Love Affair (Sergio Gobbi, 1971) opposite Virna Lisi, and Ash Wednesday (Larry Peerce, 1973) starring Elizabeth Taylor.

He also worked with such noted directors as Vittorio De Sica at the Academy Award-winning Il giardino dei Finzi Contini/The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) playing the consumptive brother of Dominique Sanda, Duccio Tessari at the thriller Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate/The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971), and Joseph Losey at The Romantic Englishwoman (1975) with Glenda Jackson and Michael Caine. After Visconti’s death, he appeared throughout the 1970s in films such as Salon Kitty (Tinto Brass, 1975) with Ingrid Thulin, the action drama Victory at Entebbe (Marvin J. Chomsky, 1976) and Das fünfte Gebot/The Fifth Commandment (Duccio Tessari, 1978).

His film career was temporarily broken up in the early 1980s when he battled an alcohol problem. Earlier, he tried to commit suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills on 14 March 1977. Berger has also worked in television, most notably in the role of Peter De Vilbis in the 1983-1984 season of the soap opera Dynasty, opposite Joan Collins. He confessed he did it only for the money: "crying on the way to the set but laughing on the way to the bank". This was not his last appearance in a television series, as English Wikipedia claims. Later, he appeared in the TV mini-series I promessi sposi/The Betrothed (Salvatore Nocita, 1989) and he had a supporting part in The Godfather: Part III (Francis Coppola, 1990).

He returned as King Ludwig II in Ludwig 1881 (Donatello Dubini, Fosco Dubini, 1993). According to IMDb reviewer dmk2, Berger added “subtlety and experience to the role he played in the original film Ludwig (1972). It's not often an actor gets to play the same role in a different film. Helmut Berger's portrayal of Ludwig was good in Ludwig (1972). In Ludwig 1881, he plays Ludwig again with all the experience he has gathered since the original film. Donatello Dubini and Fosco Dubini have produced a wonderful script, managing to tempt Helmut Berger back to play Ludwig again. The result is a King Ludwig II of more depth and subtlety and a poignant film with beautiful scenes of the Swiss lake.”

Numerous French, Italian, and German films followed, but few directors used his gifts with the same skill as Visconti had. Berger had affairs with both men and women. In 1994 he married Italian writer and model Francesca Guidato, but they later separated. His autobiography 'Ich' (Me) was published in 1998. In this memoir, he referred to his relationship with Visconti as a ‘marriage’ and wrote he was the director's widow. He also very modestly attributed his acting achievements to Visconti's directing. In 2004, he returned to his hometown Salzburg. Three years later, he received a special Teddy Award at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival (2007) for his overall professional achievements, and in 2011, he received a Kristián Award at the Czech film festival Febiofest ‘for Contributions to World Cinema’.

Helmut Berger kept appearing in films regularly. In the British thriller Iron Cross (Joshua Newton, 2009) starring Roy Scheider, he played Shrager, an ageing character believed to be an old SS commander responsible for murdering Jews during World War II. Berger also starred in two films directed by Peter Kern – Blutsfreundschaft/Initiation (2009), and Mörderschwestern/Killer Sisters (2011). In 2016, he appeared as the elder Yves Saint-Laurent in the biopic Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello, 2014) with Gaspard Ulliel and Jérémie Renier.

In 2018, Helmut Berger finally made his stage debut in Albert Serra's play, 'Liberté', opposite Ingrid Caven at the Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. In 2019, another documentary film Helmut Berger, meine Mutter und ich/Helmut Berger, My Mother and I was released, dealing with his personality and an attempted comeback. After suffering several lung infections, Berger announced his retirement from acting in November 2019 and that he wanted to live his eventide away from the public. His final film was the German production Revolution! by Alexander Tuschinski, which is still in production. Berger passed away in Salzburg, Austria at the age of 78. Berger died “peacefully but nevertheless unexpectedly”, according to his agent, “he enjoyed his motto ‘La Dolce Vita’ to the full all his life.” He quoted Berger as saying many years ago: “I have lived three lives and in four languages! Je ne regrette rien!”


German autograph card.


Trailer La caduta degli dei/Götterdämmmerung/The Damned (1969). Source: Troz2000 (YouTube).


Trailer Ludwig (1972). Source: Elinne 3230 (YouTube).


Trailer Ludwig 1881 (1993). Source: Prosito 1 (YouTube).

Sources: Alexander von Schönburg (032c - now defunct), Mike Petrovaz (IMDb), abc News, Circa-club.com (now defunct), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Il Gattopardo (1963)

On 18 August 2024, French film star Alain Delon (1935) died at the age of 88. The breathtakingly good-looking James Dean of European cinema in the late 1950s proved in such films as Plein soleil/Purple Noon (1960), Visconti's Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (1960) and Antonioni's L'eclisse/The Eclipse (1962) that he was also a magnificent actor. Luchino Visconti also directed him in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) which had extraordinary success and was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival of 1963. Recently, the film was shown in a large Visconti retrospective in Paris and again it amazed audiences as a timeless masterpiece.


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 198, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, and Burt Lancaster in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 199, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Czech postcard by UPTF / Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. C 200, 1965. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


American publicity photo. Photo: G.B. Poletto / Titanus / 20th Century Fox, used in Dutch cinemas (a Dutch censorship stamp is visible in the upper-right corner). Alain Delon in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


American publicity photo. Photo: G.B. Poletto / Titanus / 20th Century Fox, used in Dutch cinemas (a Dutch censorship stamp is visible in the upper-right corner). Alain Delon in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963). The man seen in the back may be Giuliano Gemma.

A ticket of admittance to the high-class soirées of the nobility

Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) is based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's 1958 bestseller 'Il Gattopardo' about an aristocratic Sicilian family's adjustment to a changing way of life during the Risorgimento. After the premiere, the long epic received mixed reviews but it is now seen as one of the greatest classics of Italian cinema.

In Sicily in 1860, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster) enjoys the customary comforts and privileges of an ancient and noble name. War has broken out between the armies of Francis II of the Two Sicilies and the insurgent volunteer redshirts of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Among the rebels is the Prince's remarkably handsome and dashing nephew, Tancredi (Alain Delon), with whose romantic politics the Prince shares some whimsical sympathy. Moved by the uprising, the Prince departs for nearby Palermo. Garibaldi's army conquers the city and Sicily from the Bourbons. The Prince muses upon the inevitability of change, with the middle class displacing the hereditary ruling class while on the surface everything remains the same.

Refusing to bend to the tide of necessity, the Prince departs for his summer palace at Donnafugata. A new national assembly has called a plebiscite which the nationalists win 512-0, thanks to the corruption of the town's leading citizen, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa), who sees his daughter, the exquisitely beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), as a ticket of admittance to the high-class soirées of the nobility. Bringing her with him to the villa of the Salinas, he watches as both the Prince and Tancredi fall abjectly in love with her. Realising his chance, he effectively pimps his daughter to the aristocracy, and Tancredi offers his hand. The Prince sees the wisdom of the match because he knows his nephew's vaulting ambition and his need for ready cash, which Angelica's father, greedy for familial prestige, will happily make available. With the mutual blessing of the Prince of Salina and Don Calogero, Tancredi and Angelica become engaged.

A visitor from the constituent assembly comes to the villa. He begs the great scholar and nobleman to join the senate and help direct the ship of state; he hopes that the Prince's great compassion and wisdom will help alleviate the poverty and ignorance to be seen everywhere on the streets of Sicily. However, the Prince demurs and refuses this invitation, claiming that Sicily prefers its sleep to the agitations of modernity because its people are proud of who they are. He sees a future when the leopards and the lions, along with the sheep and the jackals, will all live according to the same law, but he does not want to be a part of this democratic vision. He notes that Tancredi has shifted allegiances from the insurgent Garibaldi to the king's army, and wistfully recognises that his nephew is the kind of opportunist and time-server who will flourish in the new Italy.

A great ball is held at the villa of a neighbouring Prince, and the Salinas and Tancredi attend. Afflicted by a combination of melancholia, the ridiculousness of the nouveau riche, and age, the Prince wanders forlornly from chamber to chamber, increasingly disaffected by the entire edifice of the society he so gallantly represents – until Angelica approaches and asks him to dance. Stirred and momentarily released from his cares, the Prince accepts, and once more he resembles the elegant and dashing figure of his past. Disenchanted, he leaves the ball alone, asks Tancredi to arrange a carriage for his family, and walks with a heavy heart to a dark alley that symbolises Italy's inordinate and fading past, which he inhabits.



Small Czech collectors card by Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), 1965, no. S 101/6. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa, and Alain Delon in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Vintage card. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Claudia Cardinale in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).

One of the most spectacular sequences in film history

For the leading role in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard, the producers chose Hollywood star Burt Lancaster without consulting director Luchino Visconti. This insulted the director and caused tension on the set. However, Visconti and Lancaster ended up working well together, and their resulting friendship lasted the rest of their lives.

The epic cost production company Titanus $5 million. Visconti's first cut was 205 minutes long and was shortened to 195 minutes for its 1963 Cannes Film Festival premiere, where it won the Golden Palm for best picture. Visconti then cut the film further to 185 minutes for its official release and considered this version to be his preferred one. The picture was subsequently distributed by 20th Century Fox in a poorly dubbed, 165-min. English-language version, using an inferior colour process.

The film was a box office hit in Italy and other European countries, but international critics were mixed about the film. The restored Italian-language version, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, appeared in 1990. Through the years, more and more people started to love the film. Martin Scorsese considers the film to be one of the greatest ever made, and in 2010, his Film Heritage Foundation restored the film to its original splendour.

Yuri German at AllMovie: "The closing section, an almost hour-long ball, is often cited as one of the most spectacular sequences in film history. Burt Lancaster is magnificent in the first of his patriarchal roles, and the rest of the cast, especially Delon and Cardinale, become almost perfect incarnations of the novel's characters. Filmed in glorious Techniscope and rich in period detail, the film is a remarkable cinematic achievement in all departments."

Ivo Blom in 'Visconti and the Visual Arts': "In Il Gattopardo, painting performs an important part in the sets of the film. A famous example is the painting Don Fabrizio sees when entering a library during the ball to escape the crowd, a painting which reminds him of his own nearing death. A memento mori, so to say. The painting is a copy of Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s moralistic and sentimental work 'Le mauvais fils puni' (1778), today one of the masterpieces of the Louvre; a prodigal son returns too late, his father has died. (...)

Note also in Il Gattopardo the decaying old paintings in the attics of the palace, which Tancredi and Angelica see. They are not only indicators of the location but also comment on the protagonists. Angelica’s old rose dress, though a bit old-fashioned for the period, stands out against the faded enormous battle scene she sees. Lampedusa already indicates it in the novel as Arturo Corbera at the Battle of Antioch, a battle scene between Crusaders and Muslims, but the painting in the film — an imitation made by Mario Brondi — is clearly a variation on Rubens’ 'Battle of the Amazons'. The painting is emblematical of the situation. Old glories of the aristocracy fade away, and the freshness and sensuality of Angelica is what counts."

Roger Ebert on his website: "Finally the prince dances with Angelica. Watch them as they dance, each aware of the other in a way simultaneously sexual and political. Watch how they hold their heads. How they look without seeing. How they are seen and know they are seen. And sense that, for the prince, his dance is an acknowledgement of mortality. He could have had this woman, would have known what to do with her, would have made her his wife and the mother of his children and heard her cries of passion, if not for the accident of 25 years or so that slipped in between them. But he knows that, and she knows that. And yet of course, if they were the same age, he would not have married her, because he is Prince Don Fabrizio and she is the mayor's daughter. That Visconti can convey all of that in a ballroom scene is miraculous and emotionally devastating, and it is what his movie is about."


Romanian minicard. Photo: G.B. Poletto. Alain Delon as Tancredi Falconieri in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard, (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Vintage film still by G.B. Poletto. Mario Girotti as Count Cavriaghi and Lucilla Morlacchi as Concetta in Il Gattopardo (Luchino Visconti, 1963).


Source: Film Heritage Foundation (YouTube). A clip from Il Gattopardo/The Leopard, restored in association with Cineteca di Bologna, L'Immagine Ritrovata, The Film Foundation, Pathé, Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Twentieth Century Fox and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale - restoration funded by Gucci and the Film Foundation.


Cover of Ivo Blom's study 'Reframing Luchino Visconti'. Photo: Burt Lancaster in Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963).

Sources: Ivo Blom (Visconti and the Visual Arts), Roger Ebert, Yuri German (AllMovie), Julian Sanction (Vanity Fair), Sorrisi (Italian), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

RIP Björn Andrésen (1955-2025)

Björn Andrésen (1955-2025) was a Swedish actor, musician and singer who rose to fame for his role as the fifteen-year-old Tadzio in Luchino Visconti's film Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (1971), based on the 1912 novella 'Der Tod in Venedig' by Thomas Mann. Andresen died on 25 October in Stockholm.


French publicity leaflet. Silvana Mangano and Björn Andrésen in Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice / Mort à Venise (Luchino Visconti, 1971). Dress designed by Piero Tosi.


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), starring Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach, Björn Andrésen as Tadzio and Nora Ricci as the governess, seen on the back, during the first meeting in the lobby of Hotel des Bains.


Dutch postcard, using the original poster, for a Dutch rerelease of the film. Björn Andrésen and Dirk Bogarde in Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971).


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971). Silvana Mangano as Tadzio's mother in the lobby of Des Bains. Watermark of the Dutch Central Committee for Film Censorship.

The object of attention of older men

Björn Johan Andrésen was born in Stockholm in 1955. Andrésen never knew his father, and his mother, Barbro Elisabeth Andrésen, committed suicide when he was 10. Andrésen attended Adolf Fredrik's Music School in Stockholm. His maternal grandparents raised him and his grandmother encouraged him to do extracurricular work like theatre, motivated by a personal ambition to have a famous grandchild.

Andrésen was 15 (some sources write fourteen) and had only played a small part in one film, En kärlekshistoria / A Swedish Love Story (Roy Andersson, 1970), when he was cast in Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971). The film brought him worldwide fame.

After a search all over Northern Europe, documented on film in Alla ricerca di Tadzio (1970), Andrésen was chosen by Luchino Visconti to play Tadzio. Tadzio is a beautiful Polish boy with whom the film's older protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde), becomes obsessed. The film is situated in Venice, an elite tourist city, gradually falling prey to a cholera plague. Film historian Lawrence J. Quirk commented that some images of Andrésen “could be taken from the film and hung in the halls of the Louvre or the Vatican”.

When the film was released in the United States, rumours circulated that Andrésen was homosexual. In the film, he exchanges glances that could ambiguously be interpreted as romantic with the protagonist. Tadzio is the object of his desire. Andrésen emphatically denied these rumours. In 2003, Björn Andrésen recounted in an interview for The Guardian, attending the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival: "I was just 16 and Visconti and the team took me to a gay nightclub. Almost all the crew were gay. The waiters at the club made me feel very uncomfortable. They looked at me uncompromisingly as if I was a nice meaty dish...it was the first of many such encounters".

Visconti himself protected him throughout the production and paid him a one-year contract afterwards. Costume designer Piero Tosi told us once the anecdote that Andrésen had a female Swedish private tutor in order to keep to ensure that he did not fall too far behind at school. However, the two got sexually involved, as a result of which the young ephebe's body started to change.


Vintage lobby card for Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), starring Silvana Mangano as Tadzio's mother at Piazza San Marco.


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), with Björn Andrésen as Tadzio and Silvana Mangano as Tadzio's mother in the hotel lobby.


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), the family in the breakfast room, with Björn Andrésen as Tadzio, Silvana Mangano as Tadzio's mother and Nora Ricci as the governess.


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), starring Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach and Björn Andrésen as Tadzio.

Big in Japan

Death in Venice made Björn Andrésen famous overnight. He went to Japan, where his arrival in Tokyo was met with mass hysteria, as if he were a hugely popular pop star. In Japan, he achieved great success as a fashion model, acted in commercials and recorded two pop songs. His commercial activity in Japan cemented his status as a key figure in the popular 'Bishōnen' (beautiful boy) aesthetic. Manga author Riyoko Ikeda was inspired by his face when she created the androgynous character of Lady Oscar.

Andrésen sank into depression and alcohol as a result of the focus on his looks, but he later gained some distance from it all. During the 1980s, he attended drama school in Stockholm. He was also the keyboardist in the dance band Sven-Erics. He became angry when feminist writer Germaine Greer used a photograph of him by David Bailey on the cover of her book 'The Beautiful Boy' (2003) without asking his permission. Eager to dispel rumours about his homosexuality and to shake off his image as a 'pretty boy', Andrésen subsequently avoided gay roles or those he felt would be based solely on his good looks.

Between 1977 and 2021, Andrésen appeared as a supporting actor or cameo player in 22 Scandinavian films and TV series such as Den enfaldige mördaren / The Simple-Minded Murderer (Hans Alfredson, 1982), starring Stellan Skarsgård, Smugglarkungen / The Smuggler King (Sune Lund-Sørensen, 1985), the Finnish fantasy film Pelikaanimies / Pelicanman (Liisa Helminen, 2004), and the TV film Wallander – Arvet / Wallander - The Heritage (2010). Late in life, he finally got a leading role in the little-seen Danish drama The Lost Ones (Dariusz Steiness, 2016). He played Rolf, who is forgotten but still going forward with boundless love and courage. He also played the ageing Dan in the internationally renowned Swedish-American Horror film Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019), starring Florence Pugh as Dani and Jack Reynor as Christian.

In 2021, the 50th anniversary of Visconti's film, Andrésen returned to the spotlight as the protagonist of the Swedish documentary film Världens vackraste pojke / The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (Kristian Petri, Kristina Lindström, 2021), which was presented at the Sundance Film Festival and awarded the Prix Europa 2022 for best European television documentary. "One good thing is that it has sparked a debate about how children are abused in the film world, which is often grotesquely brutal. You use them and cuddle them, then just throw them to the wolves," said Björn Andrésen in 2021. The documentary stressed his exploitation by other men from Death in Venice onward. However, during a live talk in Amsterdam, when presenting the documentary, Andrésen also admitted that he had had a lot of fun while shooting Death in Venice.

In 1983, Björn Andrésen was married to poet and scriptwriter Suzanna Roman (Susanna Román), but they divorced in 1987. The couple had two children. One of whom died of cot death, which caused Andresen a new depression. He also had two grandchildren. The cause of his death is unknown.


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), with Björn Andrésen and Antonio Apicella.


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia / Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), starring Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach, who imagines that he is warning Tadzio's family against the plague (Mangano, Andrésen and Nora Ricci as the governess), at the veranda of Hotel Des Bains.


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia/ Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971), with Björn Andrésen and Sergio Garfagnoli. Watermark of the Dutch Central Committee for Film Censorship.


Vintage still for Morte a Venezia/ Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971). The death of Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde).

Sources: Wikipedia (English and Italian), IMDb, the documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World and an unpublished interview by Ivo Blom with Piero Tosi.