Luchino Visconti

8/5/04 to 8/29/04

  • The Leopard|August 14, 19|

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Past Films

  • Ludwig II: Free Screening!

    • Sunday, August 29 5:30pm

    Free tickets available at the PFA Theater starting at 4:30. Visconti gives the tragic life of the mad king of Bavaria an epic treatment, dazzling in its historical detail. "In Helmut Berger's Ludwig, Visconti's echt aestheticism finds its last champion, its Tristan, and also its supreme sacrificial victim, its Christ. Ludwig is a passion play: a mass."-Film Comment

  • The Innocent

    • Saturday, August 28 5pm

    Giancarlo Giannini in Visconti's final work, a sumptuous, sensuous adaptation of the d'Annunzio novel. "One of Visconti's most beautiful films [and] one of his most terse, most dramatically economical."-NY Times.

  • The Damned

    • Saturday, August 28 7:30pm

    Visconti pulls out all the stops in this sensational portrait of decadence in 1930s Germany, where the fates of an industrialist family parallel the Nazis' rise to power. With Dirk Bogarde, Charlotte Rampling, and Helmut Berger as a Dietrich impersonator.

  • The Innocent

    • Friday, August 27 9:30pm

    Giancarlo Giannini in Visconti's final work, a sumptuous, sensuous adaptation of the d'Annunzio novel. "One of Visconti's most beautiful films [and] one of his most terse, most dramatically economical."-NY Times. Repeated on Saturday, August 28.

  • Death in Venice

    • Friday, August 27 7:00pm

    A ravishing elegy to the mortality of all things: buildings, cities, art, and desire. Dirk Bogarde plays the hero of Thomas Mann's novella, a man enthralled by a young boy's beauty in a Venice consumed by disease.

  • Conversation Piece

    • Thursday, August 26 7:00pm

    When aging professor Burt Lancaster rents the upper flat of his palazzo to a Roman matron and her gigolo, his life's denouement is invaded by la dolce vita.

  • Vaghe stelle dell'orsa

    • Thursday, August 26 9:20pm

    Also known as Sandra, this somber mood piece is an Elektra story of madness and incestuous passions in a family haunted by secrets and the shadow of the Holocaust.

  • White Nights

    • Sunday, August 22 5:30pm

    Mastroianni stars in a romantic, sublimely artificial adaptation of the Dostoyevsky story about people drifting along crossing, doubling paths.

  • The Stranger

    • Sunday, August 22 7:35pm

    A rare opportunity to see this adaptation of the great existentialist novel, with Marcello Mastroianni as Camus's archetype of alienation. Visconti vividly re-creates 1930s colonial Algiers.

  • Vaghe stelle dell'orsa

    • Saturday, August 21 7:00pm

    Also known as Sandra, this somber mood piece is an Elektra story of madness and incestuous passions in a family haunted by secrets and the shadow of the Holocaust. Repeated on Thursday, August 26.

  • Conversation Piece

    • Saturday, August 21 9:05pm

    When aging professor Burt Lancaster rents the upper flat of his palazzo to a Roman matron and her gigolo, his life's denouement is invaded by la dolce vita. Repeated on Thursday, August 26.

  • White Nights

    • Friday, August 20 7:00pm

    Mastroianni stars in a romantic, sublimely artificial adaptation of the Dostoyevsky story about people drifting along crossing, doubling paths. Repeated on Sunday, August 22.

  • The Stranger

    • Friday, August 20 9:10pm

    A rare opportunity to see this adaptation of the great existentialist novel, with Marcello Mastroianni as Camus's archetype of alienation. Visconti vividly re-creates 1930s colonial Algiers. Repeated on Sunday, August 22.

  • The Leopard

    • Thursday, August 19 7:00pm

    "Anchored by Burt Lancaster's wonderful performance as a Sicilian nobleman who witnesses philosophically the transfer of power from his own aristocratic class to a grasping set of opportunistic parvenus, The Leopard is a mellow and melancholy feast."-NY Times. With Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale.

  • The Witch Burned Alive

    • Sunday, August 15 5:30pm

    Visconti's contribution to the omnibus film The Witches, showcasing Silvana Mangano, is a biting fable on the perils of celebrity. With Anna Magnani, a portrait of the actress.

  • The Job

    • Sunday, August 15 4:15pm

    Special Added Screening! Visconti's episode from the legendary anthology film Boccaccio '70 stars Romy Schneider as a contessa who decides to charge her wayward husband a fee for her marital services.

  • Ossessione

    • Sunday, August 15 7:00pm

    With a deft mixture of authenticity, narrative suspense, and ambiguous passions, Visconti transposes James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice to a Po Valley trattoria.

  • The Leopard

    • Saturday, August 14 7:00pm

    "Anchored by Burt Lancaster's wonderful performance as a Sicilian nobleman who witnesses philosophically the transfer of power from his own aristocratic class to a grasping set of opportunistic parvenus, The Leopard is a mellow and melancholy feast."-NY Times. With Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale. Repeated on Thursday, August 19.

  • Ossessione

    • Friday, August 13 7:00pm

    With a deft mixture of authenticity, narrative suspense, and ambiguous passions, Visconti transposes James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice to a Po Valley trattoria. Repeated on Sunday, August 15.

  • The Witch Burned Alive

    • Friday, August 13 9:35pm

    Visconti's contribution to the omnibus film The Witches, showcasing Silvana Mangano, is a biting fable on the perils of celebrity. With Anna Magnani, a portrait of the actress. Repeated on Sunday, August 15.

  • Senso

    • Thursday, August 12 7:00pm

    Farley Granger and Alida Valli in an operatic, meticulously detailed, "densely layered story set in the Garibaldi period of Italian nationalism, as much about the bitter lessons of history (idealism yielding to the status quo) as it is about erotic passion."-NY Times.

  • Bellissima

    • Thursday, August 12 9:20pm

    Visconti is in an unusually comic mode for this satire on urban life and movieland ambition. The incomparable Anna Magnani plays a mother trying to launch her young daughter in show business.

  • La Terra Trema

    • Sunday, August 8 5:30pm

    Following the struggles of impoverished Sicilian fisherfolk, Visconti "makes compositions of the most down-to-earth reality as if they were scenes from an opera or a classical tragedy."-André Bazin

  • Days of Glory

    • Sunday, August 8 4:00pm

    Special Added Screening! Rarely seen outside of Italy, this extremely important work was the first documentary on the German occupation of Rome, and depicts various key episodes in the work of the Italian Resistance from September 1943 until the liberation of the North in the spring of 1945.

  • Bellissima

    • Saturday, August 7 7:00pm

    Visconti is in an unusually comic mode for this satire on urban life and movieland ambition. The incomparable Anna Magnani plays a mother trying to launch her young daughter in show business. Repeated on Thursday, August 12.

  • Senso

    • Saturday, August 7 9:15pm

    Farley Granger and Alida Valli in an operatic, meticulously detailed, "densely layered story set in the Garibaldi period of Italian nationalism, as much about the bitter lessons of history (idealism yielding to the status quo) as it is about erotic passion."-NY Times. Repeated on Thursday, August 12.

  • Days of Glory

    • Saturday, August 7 5:30pm

    Special Added Screening! Rarely seen outside of Italy, this extremely important work was the first documentary on the German occupation of Rome, and depicts various key episodes in the work of the Italian Resistance from September 1943 until the liberation of the North in the spring of 1945.

  • Rocco and His Brothers

    • Friday, August 6 7:30pm

    The experiences of a southern Italian family seeking a better life in Milan mirror the transformation of postwar Italian society in this Visconti masterwork starring Alain Delon. "With the emotional sweep of a Verdi opera and the narrative density of a 19th-century novel, Rocco and His Brothers represents the artistic apotheosis of Italian neo-realism."-NY Times

  • La Terra Trema

    • Thursday, August 5 7:30pm

    Following the struggles of impoverished Sicilian fisherfolk, Visconti "makes compositions of the most down-to-earth reality as if they were scenes from an opera or a classical tragedy."-André Bazin. Repeated on Sunday, August 8.