What's your favorite Visconti film?

Rocco and His Brothers

The Gardens of he Finzi-Continis is the best Visconti movie not made by Visconti.

Rocco

The Damned. It's like the odour of rotten fruit.

But the detail in Ludwig is incredible.

So many, “senso”, “0ssessione” - such a sexy film because of massimo girotti, “Rocco”. I also enjoyed “the innocent”. His films really appeal to me, the only one I didn’t really care for was “conversation piece”.

The Damned!

First if for nothing else to gaze upon Helmut Griem, but also because Visconti uses mechanics of deliriously stylized melodrama to show Nazism’s total corruption of the soul.

I knew someone who knew Visconti. They said he liked to have sex on trains because it reminded him of his youth. Presumably not in the lav, but in a first class appointed cabin. I love the story in one of the biographies about him that in a villa by the sea he owned he had its pinewood underplanted with blue hydrangeas, so it was one long vista of blue from the villa to the water.

There's also that great anecdote about The Damned where the film was running overbudget because he insisted on perfection, and the execs at MGM were sweating. He'd had the floor of the set of the Kruppesque villa in the film laid with marble, and arrived in his limo with his entourage to inspect the result. He tapped the floor with his silver cane and said "I think not", went back to his limo and whirled back to his mountainside retreat. Word was sent down that the marble was to ripped up and replaced by parquet.

Helmut Griem is a puzzle to me; very attractive in is youth and as grown man, but never married nor even bred children. Not much about him dating or otherwise carrying on with women in general it seems.

HG is buried alone in a German cemetery with no mention of family, nor does it seem anyone (other than fans or perhaps friends) bother to visit and or attend his grave.

R9 according to IMDb he was married to Helga Koehler. I’m intrigued by this good looking actor too. I’d love to learn more about him.

R8 Can you recommend one of his biographies?

Visconti based von Essenbeck family in film "The Damned" in whole or part on the Krupp family.

Friedrich Alfred Krupp was apparently gay and was caught up in a huge scandal involving his villa in Capri, Italy and goings on there.

More...

R10

Thank you for that bit of information. Seems so very odd that haven't been able to find obituary listing Helga Koehler as Helmut Griem's wife, this despite IMDb claiming she survived her husband. More to point no mention is made of the child also claimed by IMDb. It could be it died in infancy or something, but still it is a puzzle.

The Damned is phenomenal—operatic, really. However, it is not an easy film to sink into. It's not that it's hard to follow, per se, but it is structured in a way that is unusual and it does demand a lot from the audience. I'd still probably consider it my favorite of his movies, although Death in Venice is a close contender; that film much more interior-focused and centered on Dirk Bogarde's singular character. It's also profoundly depressing (and beautiful).

An aristocrat who’s a Marxist

R8 was pasted from an old thread.

R17 This was also pasted from the last thread—

Luchino Visconti talking about his masterpiece Ludwig:

"Being hemiplegic and in a hospital is strong motivation for the arrest of many professional lives, but I had work to finish. Ludwig was yet to be edited and the sound needed synchroniza-tion: ‘the will to work even more than the will to live’, as he would say, ‘...The fear of not finishing Ludwig ...I couldn’t stop worrying about Ludwig, not a minute. To the contrary, I must say that it is this worry which gave me the strength to fight the disease, the strength to make strenuous physical exercises every day.... That is why Ludwig is the film I love the most.’

I found Ludwig too long honestly. While it looked sumptuous I guess I have to rewatch it to try and get it.

Ludwig was meant as TV series over 5 or 5 episodes.

But I agree, ALL of Visconti would improve with 33% of the flabby footage removed.

There is, sadly, no good authoritative biography of Visconti. Many were either written at a time when real candor about his sexuality was not allowed. And most were not written originally in English making for awkward reads/translations. There are some good studies of his films, and a couple of good documentaries (mainly the BBC one that is available on youtube but nowhere else) but not a well-researched, juicy biography of a man who lived a fabulous and fascinating life.

My vote for fave of his films is Ludwig. I think he made greater movies (like The Leopard), but Ludwig is this sui-generis, slow-moving, hypnotic, homoerotic fantasia of all his obsessions. For the Visconti-obsessed, it's nirvana.

As much as I enjoy The Damned, I think Death In Venice is better.

Does "Visconti Triplets Vs Mangiatti Twins" count?

Like Godard, his films are more interesting to talk about than to sit through.

"Certain things are not done halfway...."

Hauptsturmführer Aschenbach utters no more than the truth. That interview with his cousin Sofie carefully and clearly spells out (if one would but listen) the power struggle that went on in Nazi Germany between not only SS and SA, but within families of leading industrialists of the period; Kirdorfs (coal), Thyssens (steel), Voeglers (steel), Schnitzlers (I.G.Farben chemical cartel), Rostergs and Diehns (potash), Schröders (bankers).

Essen region of Germany is from where Krupp family hails, so "von Essenbeck" wasn't lost upon Germans or anyone else who understood Visconti's film, this no matter how many (often forced) declarations to contrary the man put out.

[quote] As much as I enjoy The Damned, I think Death In Venice is better.

So you think 'Death In Venice' is more enjoyable?

Arndt von Bohlen und Halbach, the last scion Krupp was gay as a goose, just like his great grandfather, but overall lead a sad life despite his immense wealth.

To say the Arndt was made up of some nasty pieces of work would be putting it mildly.

His wife was an S&M dyke. Ain't love grand!

R24 I do not agree at all with you about Godard (pre-1968, which are his best films.) Breathless, Pierrot le Fou, Band of Outsiders etc. are all very engaging and fun movies, way more entertaining than some of the dreck American studios were pumping out in the early 1960s. It's only following his extreme left turn he got too cerebral. Visconti is all about visuals and atmosphere in a much slower paced way than Godard ever was.

"Death in Venice" is a masterpiece.