Four of the most acclaimed films by the great Italian director Luchino Visconti will be screened in Timișoara as part of a tribute retrospective, organized by the Ceau, Cinema! Festival and the Italian Cultural Institute.
Included in the monthly screening series Ceau, Cineclub!, the Luchino Visconti Retrospective, subtitled ”Splendor and Decadence of the 19th Century”, will take place in the second half of May and the first half of June. It features four films that chronologically span the filmmaker’s entire career: ”Senso” (1954), ”Il gattopardo” (”The Leopard”, 1963), ”Ludwig” (1973), and ”L’innocente” (”The Innocent”, 1976).
The screenings will take place at Cinema Timiş and Cinema Studio, once a week, and tickets can be purchased on the websites or at the box offices of the two cinemas. Details about the schedule and films can be found on the Ceau, Cinema! website and on the festival’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
”This four-film tribute to Luchino Visconti gives us the opportunity to rediscover the work of one of the most influential and celebrated filmmakers of the 20th century: a communist prince, man of the theatre and of opera, he gave Italian cinema a series of memorable films – 14 from 1943-1976. His work has somewhat been frozen in the image of a refined aestheticism, cultivating historical reconstructions with a sense of grandeur that, in fact, served as sumptuous settings for tormented subjectivities and irremediable solitudes. Often called a filmmaker of decadence, Visconti used the respectability of society as a screen for the most unspeakable acts and impulses. His cinema speaks of human weakness and in this sense, it has still an incredible relevance today. I hope the audience in Timisoara will seize the opportunity, for which my thanks go to Ceau Cinema!”, says Laura Napolitano, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute of Bucharest.
”We have long wished for a retrospective dedicated to Luchino Visconti, such a fascinating filmmaker. His splendid films are best revisited or discovered on a big cinema screen and in restored digital versions. We have chosen films set in the 19th century, a period so important for the history of Italy and Europe. These are intense films, where major historical transformations intertwine with destabilizing human passions. We thank the Italian Cultural Institute for their support and for the strong and long-standing partnership”, says Ceau, Cinema!’s artistic director, Ionuț Mareș.
The series will open on Saturday, May 24, at 7:00 PM at Cinema Timiș with ”The Leopard”, the absolute masterpiece of Luchino Visconti, which won him the Palme d’Or at Cannes and will be presented in its restored 4K version. The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860s Sicily. The film stars Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale.
After the opening, the retrospective will move to Cinema Studio and continue on Saturday, May 31, at 8:00 PM with ”Senso”, which was part of the official selection at the Venice Film Festival in 1954. During the Third Italian War of Independence, a married Italian Countess (Alida Valli) is allied with Nationalists during the Italian-Austrian war of unification. However, she risks betraying their cause when she falls in love with an Austrian lieutenant.
„Ludwig”, a monumental four-hour drama, portrays the life of Ludwig II of Bavaria, a ruler with a tragic fate whose interests lay more in the arts than in the stakes of power. Starring Helmut Berger and Romy Schneider, ”Ludwig” won three David di Donatello awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. The film will be screened on Sunday, June 9, at 4:00 PM at Cinema Studio.
The retrospective will conclude on Saturday, June 14, at 5:30 PM with Luchino Visconti’s final film, ”The Innocent”, which was part of the official selection at the Cannes, Toronto, and San Sebastián festivals. Tullio Hermill (Giancarlo Giannini) is a chauvinistic aristocrat who flaunts his mistress in front of his wife, but when he believes she has been unfaithful, he falls in love with her again.
Born in 1906 in Milan and passing away in 1976 in Rome, Luchino Visconti was nicknamed ”the Red Count” due to his aristocratic lineage and communist sympathies. These two theoretically incompatible facets of his personality shape both the style and substance of his artistic approach, which seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable: the truth of life (viewed through the lens of neorealism) with the spectacle of fiction (in its most artificial form—the opera). The splendor of his work lies precisely in what the artist attempts to suppress but continuously affirms: his aristocratic spirit. Nostalgia for the past, the poetry of failure, the fascination with decay and dissolution, the temptation of perversion, and the obsession with death are all enveloped in flawless visual beauty, rich in form and color” (”The World of Film: A Dictionary of Filmmakers”, 2005).
The Luchino Visconti Retrospective is organized by Ceau, Cinema! and the Italian Cultural Institute of Bucharest and is part of the Ceau, Cineclub! screening series.
Partners: Cinema Timiş, Cinema Studio
Funded by the Municipality of Timișoara through the Center for Projects.
Sponsors: Groupama Insurance, Vitas Romania