Senso · reception & legacy

How Senso has been received, argued over, and remembered.

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 canonised 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.