Sightlines · reception
How Senso was received
1954 · Luchino Visconti · Senso on Sightlines
The arc
Booed and politicked over at Venice in 1954 — where its Golden Lion snub caused a genuine scandal — and attacked by leftist critics as Visconti's betrayal of neorealism, it's now canonized as the moment he became Visconti: the operatic Technicolor melodramatist of The Leopard.
What’s debated
The eternal Visconti debate starts here: was trading neorealist streets for velvet, opera boxes and doomed aristocrats a sell-out or the truest expression of what he'd always been?
Its footprint
The opening at Venice's La Fenice opera house — Il Trovatore spilling over into real political protest — is one of the most swooned-over opening sequences in cinema, and the whole film became the template for the lush, doomed period melodrama.
Where it stands
Essential Visconti and a cinephile rite of passage — the bridge between his neorealist years and The Leopard, adored by restoration-era converts who discovered how ravishing the Technicolor really is.
Did you know? Visconti wanted Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando for the leads; when he got Alida Valli and Farley Granger instead, Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles were brought in to write the English-language dialogue.