Luchino Visconti's reputation precedes him, and it is slightly terrifying. There are few directors who require quite so deep an intake of breath before discussing — his relatively small filmography spans divergent impulses that can seem so unbridgeable as to be self-contradictory. How can one auteur rise to prominence as part of the Italian neo-realist movement, alongside contemporaries Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, but become most famous for wildly decadent, brocaded period melodramas, often so theatrical as to be operatic, and sometimes so stately as to be stultifying?
It is famously a paradox embodied by Visconti himself. Born a wealthy aristocrat (his official title was Count don Luchino Visconti di Modrone), he was friends with the likes of opera composer Puccini, conductor Toscanini, and writer Gabriele D'Annunzio (who would write Visconti's last film, "The Innocent"). Indeed, his entree into film (Visconti directed plays and operas prior, as...
