Visconti, Luchino (1906-1976), an Italian motion-picture director, was noted for his realistic, highly detailed treatments of individuals caught up in the conflicts of modern life. He was hailed as the father of the Neorealistic (new realism) movement in Italian filmmaking. His films powerfully influenced other Italian directors, including Roberto Rossellini (see Rossellini, Roberto ).
Visconti’s first film was Obsession (1942), an adaptation of the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, by the American writer James M. Cain. This thriller showed Visconti’s originality through the use of documentary-style traveling camera shots and his mixture of actors and local residents at the film’s location. He also achieved a new realism by using hidden cameras, thus allowing his actors to give uninhibited, natural performances. Italy’s Fascist government, led by Benito Mussolini, banned the film because of its radical content. The film’s realistic portraits of life among the common people strongly influenced the Neorealistic movement of the middle and late 1940’s.
In 1948, Visconti directed The Earth Trembles, a documentary-like film about the lives of Sicilian fishermen. It won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Visconti’s films The Most Beautiful (1951) and We the Women (1953) starred the Italian actress Anna Magnani. These films continued the director’s beautifully observed, naturalistic approach combined with his interest in highlighting social problems. Visconti established his international reputation in 1960 with Rocco and His Brothers, which explored the moral disintegration of a family. He followed this success with The Leopard (1963), The Stranger (1967), and The Damned (1969). Death in Venice (1971), his film adaptation of the novel by the German writer Thomas Mann, with its haunting use of music from the Bohemian-born composer Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 was hailed as a masterpiece. The Innocent, based on a novel by the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, was unfinished at Visconti’s death on March 17, 1976.
Luchino Visconti, Conte di Modrone, was born on Nov. 6, 1906, in Milan into an aristocratic and highly cultured family of northern Italy. His father owned a private theater, and Visconti studied music and the cello and worked as a stage set designer. His interest in set designing led him into filmmaking and, in 1935, he became an assistant to the French film director Jean Renoir (see Renoir, Jean ). Renoir stimulated Visconti’s passionate interest in social issues and helped turn him into a Marxist. Apart from making films, Visconti also directed stage plays and operas. He introduced the work of several French and American playwrights to Italian audiences. He was also famous for his realistic productions of operas in the 1950’s featuring the Greek American soprano Maria Callas, and is credited with advancing Callas’s career.
