The Life and Times of Count Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti was and is one of the most influential cultural figures of his generation, but Adam Low (the director of this thing) allows the stronger voice to be Helmut Berger's! How can it be? What a missed opportunity! We come out of this ordeal knowing less of what made the Master great and more about the things one shouldn't care at all. The beautiful images belong to Visconti's world, the embarrassing interviews to the likes of Berger and Zeffirelli to Adam Low's tiny little world. A must to avoid!

This two-hour documentary scarcely has time to explore the multiple facets of Count Luchino Visconti di Modrone: aristocrat, Marxist, soldier, homosexual, painter, opera director, horse trainer. Amazingly, he even found time to direct a few films - at least half of them masterpieces, and none of them less than intriguing. His most cherished themes were the Decay of Beauty and the Beauty of Decay. No surprise then, if - in interviews with his surviving friends, lovers and colleagues - we see a vicious circle of Decayed Beauties, who delight in dissing each other now the Great Man is safely out of earshot.

Hence a bloated Helmut Berger - actor, protege and live-in lover - as he reminisces about a black Afghan hound named Rocco. "I hated that dog," Berger hisses. "It reminded me of Alain Delon." The French actor was his predecessor in Visconti's films and (so it is strongly hinted) Visconti's bed, although nobody can say so directly for legal reasons. As if to put Berger in his place, a haggard Charlotte Rampling purrs cattily: "Helmut had no style. He had no culture. He was just a skiing waiter with a big bum." Another ex-lover, the director and notorious right-winger Franco Zeffirelli, growls and grumbles about the number of Communists who attended Visconti's funeral in 1976. A stark contrast, no doubt, to the Forza Italia goons who will turn out in droves when Zeffirelli goes to meet his maker.

In the midst of all this unlovely sniping, the genius of Visconti can still emerge untarnished. We see spectacular clips from his better-known films, but no mention at all of his more obscure ones. OK, I'd just as soon forget Bellissima and The Stranger, but as for Sandra, which may be his great unexplored masterwork...it hurt to see it left out yet again! His opera and theatre work get similarly short shrift (no clips, you see) apart from an ancient archive interview with Maria Callas. Given this film's limited appeal (i.e. purely for sad Visconti obsessives like me) I wonder that director Adam Low did not take an extra hour and cover Il Maestro in greater depth.

David Melville

How dare you? Adam Low, without apparent shame, puts his name to this fake tribute. It's not even a serious study or analysis or commentary of the great Visconti's work. Yes it's long and portentous, yes we do have some wonderful clips from the films that, most people interested on the subject, have already seen. But what resounds the longest leaving the most lasting impression is the gossip. The last and loudest voice comes from a third rate German actor, ranting and raving. The appropriately named Mr.Low directed this, hoping, I imagine, to get better ratings than his previous, more to the point, but deadly boring documentary on Kurosawa. Well I have news for you Mr Low and your cohorts. You missed a great opportunity and I for one, won't give you another.

Luchino Visconti, the artist with the sword. Courage should be the first word associated with his entire opus. Film. Theater. Music. Revolutions, artistic, cultural, personal. A legacy with powerful consequences and endless ramifications. He introduced the neorealism through the work of an American novelist James Cain in "Ossesione" He gave Anna Magnani the most extraordinarily beautiful close ups of her career. He gave us Alain Delon and Maria Callas. But the last word about his life and work rests on the talents of a certain Adam Low and the voice of Helmut Berger. What a terrible fate.

For those interested, there is a 61 minute documentary by director Carlo Lizzani (a man who really knew Visconti) titled LUCHINO VISCONTI A PORTRAIT. It is out on DVD distributed by Image Entertainment

One of portraits of a great director. Explored sides of his personality in a chain of testimonies of colaborators, reminding his masterpieces, origins, roots of gestures and attitudes.

A hommage, no doubts, but one maybe too personal.

I am very indulgent about second part ( the first being maybe enough for be the documentary itself ) for my faibless for Helmut Berger. But his subjective comentaries , the feeling, in few moments, to be him the star of film is not always just nice.

The result - a travel , maybe in too hurry steps, across an univers familiar for his admirers.

The sketch of a credo, reconstructed in some measure, defining the life and work to a circle of impressive events defining biography and films, his tirany and his art of persuasion, his interesting details and the axis of relation with two colaborators.

A noble Italian as master of a luxurious univers.

It is the thing who real matters in this case.