Visconti Explorations of Beauty and Decay

The first thorough study of the Italian filmmaker, Luchino Visconti.

In this study, the first to consider Luchino Visconti's entire works, Henry Bacon examines the films of one of Italy's pre-eminent filmmakers against the cultural, historical, and biographical contexts in which they were made. Through analysis of his achievements, Visconti also emerges as a twentieth-century inheritor and renewer of the nineteenth-century narrative tradition, especially that of the novel and the opera.

Introduction; Part I. Visconti and neorealism: 1. Ossessione; 2. The background, theory, and practice of neorealism; 3. La Terra Trema; 4. Bellissima; 5. Our Women; Part II. The Risorgimento Films: 6. Senso; 7. The Leopard; Part III. The Family and Modern Italian Society: 8. Visconti's two families; 9. Rocco and his brothers; 10. Sandra; 11. The Witch Burned Alive; 12. Conversation piece; Part IV. Visconti and Germany: 13. Visconti, Thomas Mann and two aspects of Europe; 14. The Job; 15. The Damned; 16. Death in Venice; 17. Ludwig; Part V. Visconti as an interpreter of European literature: 18. Experiencing literature and cinema; 19. White Nights; 20. The Stranger 21; Remembrance of things past; 22. The Innocent; Filmography; Stage productions; Unrealised film projects; Bibliography.

In this study, the first to examine Luchino Visconti's entire works, Henry Bacon examines the films of one of Italy's pre-eminent filmmakers. Through analysis of his achievements, Visconti also emerges as a twentieth-century inheritor and renewer of the nineteenth-century narrative tradition, especially that of the novel and the opera.