Senso (film)
Encyclopedia
Senso is a 1954 melodrama
film, an adaptation of Camillo Boito
's Italian novella
Senso
by the Italian
director
Luchino Visconti
, with Alida Valli
as Livia and Farley Granger
as Lieutenant Franz Mahler.
Originally, Visconti wanted Ingrid Bergman
and Marlon Brando
for the starring roles but the producer denied it. Both Franco Zeffirelli
and Franco Rosi, later well-known film directors in the their own right, worked as Visconti's Assistant Directors.
around 1866, when the Italian-Austrian war of unification
was coming to its end. The film opens in the La Fenice
opera house in Venice with a performance of Il Trovatore
. At the close of Manrico's rousing aria
Di quella pira
, the opera is interrupted by a major protest of Italian Nationalists against the occupying Austrian troops present in the theatre. Livia, an Italian Countess who is unhappily married to a stuffy old aristocrat, bears witness to this and tries to conceal the fact that her own cousin Marquis Roberto Ussoni organized the protest. During the commotion, she meets a dashing young Austrian Officer named Franz Mahler, and is instantly smitten by him. The two begin a secretive and highly forbidden love affair. Despite the obvious fact that Franz was responsible for sending Roberto into exile because of his radical behavior, Livia vainly pretends not to be aware of it.
Although he is obviously using her for her money and social status, Livia throws herself into an affair of complete sexual abandon with Franz, giving away all her money and not caring what the high society thinks about her. But soon, Franz begins failing to show up for their trysts and Livia is slowly consumed with jealousy and paranoia. The war finally forces the lovers apart, with Livia's husband making her move away to their villa in the country in order to avoid the carnage. Late one night, Franz sneaks his way into Livia's bedroom, where he asks her for more money in order to bribe the army doctors to have him stay away from the battle field; Livia complies, giving away all of the money she was holding for Roberto, who intended to supply with it the partisans who were fighting the Austrians.
Livia's betrayal leads to tragic consequences; the Austrians brutally slaughter the under-equipped Italians.
Eventually, Livia is almost driven mad by the fact that she is unable to see Franz and rejoices when a letter from him finally arrives. In it, he tells her how much he loves and misses her and that the money she gave him helped him stay away from the front. He advises Livia not to look for him, but she does not listen. As soon as possible, Livia, still grasping the letter, boards a carriage and hurries to Verona to find her lover, where she soon discovers what her indiscretion has caused, amidst the chaos of corpses and gloating Austrian soldiers. Once there, Livia makes her way through the carnage to the apartment, which she herself had bought for Franz. But all she finds is a drunken, self-loathing rogue in the company of a prostitute, who openly mocks Livia for accepting his abuse.
Franz brutally throws Livia out of his apartment, and she finds herself in streets full of drunk, sleazy soldiers. Livia realizes that she has Franz's letter. Nothing remains now but mutual self-destruction. Her sanity slipping, Livia heads to the headquarters
of the Austrian Army, where she hands Franz's letter to a General
, thereby convicting Franz of treason. Although the General sees that Livia is acting out of spite for being cuckolded, he is forced to comply and Franz is executed by firing squad.
Livia, now insane, runs off into the night, crying out her lover's name.
cousin
, Roberto Ussoni, who leads a rebellion against the Austrians
. In the film, Livia gives his money to her lover, leading to a dramatic massacre of the Italian partisans, an episode not in Boito's original story. Visconti strayed so far away from the original source, that at one point he thought of renaming the film Custoza
, after the big battle that occurs during the climax, but was denied due to legal reasons.
The character of Franz Mahler is named Remigio Ruz in the novella; Visconti changed the name as a tribute to Gustav Mahler
, one of his favourite composers, whose music features in the later Death in Venice
. There's also a thematic connection with the film's opening, set in an opera
; the scene does not feature in Boito's novella, where the protagonists first meet at a swimming bath.
Visconti's original ending where Livia wanders through the ransacked Verona in a nearly catatonic state while being accosted by drunken Italian soldiers was banned by Italian censors
because it was regarded as an outrage to the Italian army. The final scene that closes the film was shot later, in order to wrap up Senso in a more-or-less positive light. Farley Granger
was unavailable for the reshoot, so a body double was used, shot only from wide angles with the face obscured.
A truncated English version, recut to 94 minutes, was released with the title The Wanton Contessa and contains dialogue rewritten by Tennessee Williams
and Paul Bowles
.
award at the 1954 Venice Film Festival
.
remade the story as Senso '45 (retitled Black Angel for the international release) in 2002 when he read the novella and found himself unsatisfied with Visconti's version. The film starred Anna Galiena
as Livia and Gabriel Garko
as her lover. The story of the film is much more faithful to Camillo Boito's work than the earlier adaptation in terms of tone and story, but the action was transported from the War of Unification to the end of World War II
, with Remigio becoming a Nazi Lieutenant and Livia updated to being the wife of a high ranking Fascist official. Brass later explained that the change in time was made because he couldn't possibly bring himself to compete with Visconti's vision of Risorgimento-era Italy.
Unlike the 1954 version, Senso '45 did not romanticize the affair between Livia and Mahler (Helmut Schultz in the 2002 film), the film showed it as a clinical study of vanity and lust. The film went on to win Italian cinema's "Silver Ribbon
" Award for best costume design.
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
film, an adaptation of Camillo Boito
Camillo Boito
Camillo Boito was an Italian architect and engineer, and a noted art critic, art historian and novelist.-Biography:...
's Italian novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Senso
Senso (book)
Senso is an Italian novella by Camillo Boito, a famous Italian author and architect. He wrote it around 1882. The novella develops a disturbing account of indiscriminate indulgence in selfish sensuality. The word "senso" is Italian for "sense," "feeling," or "sentiment." The title refers to the...
by the Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
, with Alida Valli
Alida Valli
Alida Valli , sometimes simply credited as Valli, was an Italian actress who appeared in more than 100 films, including Mario Soldati's Piccolo mondo antico, Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case, Carol Reed's The Third Man, Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido, Luchino Visconti's Senso, Bernardo...
as Livia and Farley Granger
Farley Granger
Farley Earle Granger was an American actor. In a career spanning several decades, he was perhaps best known for his two collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Rope in 1948 and Strangers on a Train in 1951.-Early life:...
as Lieutenant Franz Mahler.
Originally, Visconti wanted Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
and Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
for the starring roles but the producer denied it. Both Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....
and Franco Rosi, later well-known film directors in the their own right, worked as Visconti's Assistant Directors.
Plot
Senso is set in ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
around 1866, when the Italian-Austrian war of unification
Third Italian War of Independence
The Third Italian War of Independence was a conflict which paralleled the Austro-Prussian War, and was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire.-Background:...
was coming to its end. The film opens in the La Fenice
La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
opera house in Venice with a performance of Il Trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
. At the close of Manrico's rousing aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
Di quella pira
Di quella pira
Di quella pira is a popular tenor aria sung by Manrico in Act 3, Scene 2 of Giuseppe Verdi's opera, Il trovatore.-Setting:...
, the opera is interrupted by a major protest of Italian Nationalists against the occupying Austrian troops present in the theatre. Livia, an Italian Countess who is unhappily married to a stuffy old aristocrat, bears witness to this and tries to conceal the fact that her own cousin Marquis Roberto Ussoni organized the protest. During the commotion, she meets a dashing young Austrian Officer named Franz Mahler, and is instantly smitten by him. The two begin a secretive and highly forbidden love affair. Despite the obvious fact that Franz was responsible for sending Roberto into exile because of his radical behavior, Livia vainly pretends not to be aware of it.
Although he is obviously using her for her money and social status, Livia throws herself into an affair of complete sexual abandon with Franz, giving away all her money and not caring what the high society thinks about her. But soon, Franz begins failing to show up for their trysts and Livia is slowly consumed with jealousy and paranoia. The war finally forces the lovers apart, with Livia's husband making her move away to their villa in the country in order to avoid the carnage. Late one night, Franz sneaks his way into Livia's bedroom, where he asks her for more money in order to bribe the army doctors to have him stay away from the battle field; Livia complies, giving away all of the money she was holding for Roberto, who intended to supply with it the partisans who were fighting the Austrians.
Livia's betrayal leads to tragic consequences; the Austrians brutally slaughter the under-equipped Italians.
Eventually, Livia is almost driven mad by the fact that she is unable to see Franz and rejoices when a letter from him finally arrives. In it, he tells her how much he loves and misses her and that the money she gave him helped him stay away from the front. He advises Livia not to look for him, but she does not listen. As soon as possible, Livia, still grasping the letter, boards a carriage and hurries to Verona to find her lover, where she soon discovers what her indiscretion has caused, amidst the chaos of corpses and gloating Austrian soldiers. Once there, Livia makes her way through the carnage to the apartment, which she herself had bought for Franz. But all she finds is a drunken, self-loathing rogue in the company of a prostitute, who openly mocks Livia for accepting his abuse.
Franz brutally throws Livia out of his apartment, and she finds herself in streets full of drunk, sleazy soldiers. Livia realizes that she has Franz's letter. Nothing remains now but mutual self-destruction. Her sanity slipping, Livia heads to the headquarters
Headquarters
Headquarters denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the top of a corporation taking full responsibility managing all business activities...
of the Austrian Army, where she hands Franz's letter to a General
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
, thereby convicting Franz of treason. Although the General sees that Livia is acting out of spite for being cuckolded, he is forced to comply and Franz is executed by firing squad.
Livia, now insane, runs off into the night, crying out her lover's name.
Production
The novella is written in the form of a private diary, narrated in first person by Countess Livia. At the present time she is courted on and off by a lawyer, Gino, whom she constantly rebuffs. Narration switches back and forth between this subplot and the main plot, which take place 16 years apart (1865). As Livia recollects her story, it's very much like Visconti's film adaptation. Visconti focused on the main plot, deleting the diary subplot and the character of Gino entirely. The film pushes Livia's story into the background and gives more detail to the war itself while introduding a new subplot about Livia's nationalistNationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
cousin
Cousin
In kinship terminology, a cousin is a relative with whom one shares one or more common ancestors. The term is rarely used when referring to a relative in one's immediate family where there is a more specific term . The term "blood relative" can be used synonymously and establishes the existence of...
, Roberto Ussoni, who leads a rebellion against the Austrians
Austrians
Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....
. In the film, Livia gives his money to her lover, leading to a dramatic massacre of the Italian partisans, an episode not in Boito's original story. Visconti strayed so far away from the original source, that at one point he thought of renaming the film Custoza
Battle of Custoza (1866)
The Battle of Custoza took place on June 24, 1866 during the Third Italian Independence War in the Italian unification process.The Austrian Imperial army with the old Venetian Army, led by Archduke Albert of Habsburg, defeated the Italian army led by Alfonso Ferrero la Marmora and Enrico Cialdini,...
, after the big battle that occurs during the climax, but was denied due to legal reasons.
The character of Franz Mahler is named Remigio Ruz in the novella; Visconti changed the name as a tribute to Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
, one of his favourite composers, whose music features in the later Death in Venice
Death in Venice (film)
Death in Venice is a 1971 film directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde and Björn Andrésen. The film is based on the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann.-Plot:...
. There's also a thematic connection with the film's opening, set in an opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
; the scene does not feature in Boito's novella, where the protagonists first meet at a swimming bath.
Visconti's original ending where Livia wanders through the ransacked Verona in a nearly catatonic state while being accosted by drunken Italian soldiers was banned by Italian censors
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
because it was regarded as an outrage to the Italian army. The final scene that closes the film was shot later, in order to wrap up Senso in a more-or-less positive light. Farley Granger
Farley Granger
Farley Earle Granger was an American actor. In a career spanning several decades, he was perhaps best known for his two collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Rope in 1948 and Strangers on a Train in 1951.-Early life:...
was unavailable for the reshoot, so a body double was used, shot only from wide angles with the face obscured.
A truncated English version, recut to 94 minutes, was released with the title The Wanton Contessa and contains dialogue rewritten by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
and Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
.
Reception
Aldo Graziati's cinematography for the film received the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists' award. Visconti was nominated for the Golden LionGolden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
award at the 1954 Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
.
2002 Remake
Tinto BrassTinto Brass
Giovanni Brass , better known as Tinto Brass, is an Italian filmmaker. He is noted especially for his work in the erotic genre, with films such as Così fan tutte , Paprika, Monella and Trasgredire...
remade the story as Senso '45 (retitled Black Angel for the international release) in 2002 when he read the novella and found himself unsatisfied with Visconti's version. The film starred Anna Galiena
Anna Galiena
Anna Galiena is an Italian actress, best known to English-speaking audiences for her appearances in Le Mari de la coiffeuse, Jamón, jamón and Being Human.-Movie career:...
as Livia and Gabriel Garko
Gabriel Garko
Dario Gabriel Oliviero , better known by his stage name Gabriel Garko, is an Italian actor and former fashion model. His film credits include Callas Forever and L'Onore and il Rispetto a television mini-series where he portrayed a ruthless fictitious Mafia boss "Tonio Fortebracci"...
as her lover. The story of the film is much more faithful to Camillo Boito's work than the earlier adaptation in terms of tone and story, but the action was transported from the War of Unification to the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, with Remigio becoming a Nazi Lieutenant and Livia updated to being the wife of a high ranking Fascist official. Brass later explained that the change in time was made because he couldn't possibly bring himself to compete with Visconti's vision of Risorgimento-era Italy.
Unlike the 1954 version, Senso '45 did not romanticize the affair between Livia and Mahler (Helmut Schultz in the 2002 film), the film showed it as a clinical study of vanity and lust. The film went on to win Italian cinema's "Silver Ribbon
Nastro d'Argento
The Nastro d'Argento is a movie award assigned each year, since 1946, for cinematic performances and production by Sindacato Nazionale dei Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani, the association of Italian film critics...
" Award for best costume design.