Luchino Visconti and the Fabric of Cinema

Luchino Visconti and the Fabric of Cinema

Author: Joe McElhaney

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0814343090

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Unveils the metaphoric and theoretical possibilities of fabric in the films of Luchino Visconti. In Luchino Visconti and the Fabric of Cinema, Joe McElhaney situates Visconti's films as privileged and deeply expressive instances of a trope that McElhaney identifies as the "cinema of fabric": a reoccurrence in film in which textiles—clothing, curtains, tablecloths, bedsheets—determine the filming process. An Italian neorealist, Visconti emerges out of a movement immediately following WWII wherein fabric assumes crucial functions, yet Visconti's use of fabric surpasses his colleagues in many ways, including its fluid, multifaceted articulations of space and time. Visconti's homosexuality is central to this theory in that it assumes metaphoric potential in addressing "forbidden" sexual desires that are made visible in the films. Visconti's cinema of fabric gives voice to desires not simply for human bodies draped in fabric but also for entire environments, a world of the senses in which fabric becomes a crucial method for giving form to such desires. McElhaney examines Visconti's neorealist origins in Ossessione, La terra trema, and Rocco and His Brothers, particularly through fabric's function within literary realism and naturalism. Neorealist revisionism through the extravagant drapings of the diva film is examined in Bellissima and Senso whereas White Nights and The Strangerare examined for the theatricalizing through fabric of their literary sources. Visconti's interest in German culture vis-à-vis The Damned, Death in Venice, and Ludwig, is articulated through a complex intertwining of fabric, aesthetics, politics, and transgressive sexual desire. Finally, Visconti's final two films, Conversation Piece and The Innocent, assess through fabric both the origins of Italian fascism and the political tensions contemporaneous with the films' productions. Fabric in Visconti is often tied to the aesthetic impulse itself in a world of visionaries attempting to dominate their surrounding environments and where a single piece of fabric may come to represent the raw material for creation. This book will tantalize any reader with a keen eye and strong interest in film and queer studies.


Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti

Author: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1838716971

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Aristocrat and Marxist, master equally of harsh realism and sublime melodrama, Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) was without question one of the greatest European film directors. His career as a film-maker began in the 1930s when he escaped the stifling culture of Fascist Italy to work with Jean Renoir in the France of the Popular Front. Back in his native country in the 40s he was one of the founders of the neo-realist movement. In 1954, with Senso, he turned his hand to a historical spectacular. The result was both glorious to look at and a profound reinterpretation of history. In Rocco and His Brothers (1960) he returned to his neo-realist roots and in The Leopard (1963), with Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon, he made the first truly international film. He scored a further success with Death in Venice (1971), a sensitive adaptation of Thomas Mann's story about a writer (in the film, a musician) whose world is devastated when he falls in love with a young boy. A similar homo-erotic theme haunts Ludwig (1973), a bio-pic about the King of Bavaria who prefers art to politics and the company of stableboys to the princess he is supposed to marry. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith's classic study of the director was first published in 1967 and revised in 1973. It is now updated to include the last three films that Visconti made before his death, together with some reflections on the 'auteur' theory of which the original edition was a key example.


Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti

Author: Claretta Tonetti

Publisher: Boston : Twayne Publishers

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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Biography of Luchino Visconti, an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter.


Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti

Author: Joan Ramon Resina

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-02-10

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1350185795

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Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) was one of Europe's most prestigious filmmakers, who rose to prominence as part of the Italian neo-realist movement, alongside contemporaries Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. Famous for his elegant lifestyle, as friend of Jean Renoir and Coco Chanel amongst others, his vibrant technicolour dramas are also known for their decadence and stunning display of aesthetic mastery and sensory pleasure. Looking beyond this colourful façade, however, Resina explores the philosophical implications of decadence with a particular focus on three films from the late phase in Visconti's production, Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), and Ludwig (1972). From the incestuous relationship between decadence and power to decadence as an outcome of straining toward formal perfection, Resina uncovers the unity and philosophical cohesiveness of these films that deal with different subjects and historical periods. Reading these films and their decadence in light of the time of filming and Visconti's own sense of cultural doom, Resina further demonstrates the relevance of Visconti's philosophy today and how much they still have to say to our contemporary situation.


Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti

Author: Laurence Schifano

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13:

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Winner of the French Academy's prize for biography in 1988, this book describes the passionate life of the great opera, theatre and film director. He was both a reactionary and a rebel, a Catholic and an iconoclast, a homosexual Don Juan and friend of a galaxy of international figures.


Visconti

Visconti

Author: Henry Bacon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998-03-28

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780521599603

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The first thorough study of the Italian filmmaker, Luchino Visconti.


Luchino Visconti, a Biography

Luchino Visconti, a Biography

Author: Gaia Servadio

Publisher: Franklin Watts

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9780531098103

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Recounts the life of the Italian theater, opera, and film director and discusses his approach to film making