When the introduction of a half-dozen complimentary six-foot subs from Milano Market into the Schapiro Hall lounge created a natural setting for a symposium, Spectator film critics Ben Letzler and Franklin Laviola lost track of time and soon realized it would be impossible to catch our screening of L'Anglaise et le duc, the new costume drama (digitally superimposed on painted sets) from Eric Rohmer, who at 82 still holds up the right wing of the nouvelle vague. Franklin and Ben resolved to watch Luchino Visconti's 1954 Senso and have a dialogue on the film, which like Rohmer's tells the story of political turmoil from a unpopular literary point of view: that of the aristocrat--and of the aesthete--in the midst of a revolution, the French for Rohmer, the Risorgimento for Visconti.
FL: With Pasolini's infamous Salo unavailable for video or DVD consumption, Senso was the only proper alternative to Rohmer, wouldn't you say, Ben?
BL: Senso is certainly among our most erotic films, Franklin. It provokes longing both for the luminous Alida Valli, as the Contessa Livia, and for the vanished polyglot civilization of the Hapsburgs, consumed by the vulgar enthusiasms of nationalism. It was the first color film made in Italy. And though SalÚ exhibits exemplary dialogue in Italian translation from Roland Barthes and Pierre Klossowski, Senso matches with dialogue in Italian translation from Paul Bowles and Tennessee Williams. And Senso even anticipates Pasolini by alluding to the city of SalÚ --where we learn Garibaldi is staying!--and is distinguished by the absence of any depiction of feasting on human dung. I'm thrilled we got to see this film tonight.
FL: So Visconti involves himself with the dialectics of passion and prudence and the individual against history, rather than the Pasolini feedback loop of mind and anus?
BL: I couldn't have said it better. Now when we were watching the picture, Franklin, I know you were very interested in Visconti's use of reds. Can you speak to that?
FL: When I first saw the Gangs of New York trailer, the reds reminded me instantly of Senso. Then I found out that not only has Scorsese been influenced by Senso, which he discusses in his Italian documentary Il Mio Viaggio in Italia, which is at Anthology Film Archives right now, but he actually screened Senso on one of the Saturday nights on the production of Gangs of New York. So I'm betting Gangs of New York bears quite a resemblance both visually and thematically to Senso, since it's also about illicit romance in a time of upheaval--though from a working class perspective. I hear Scorsese ordered his cinematographer Michael Ballhaus to use red filters comparable to the ones Robert Krasker used here in Senso.
BL: The red really was stunning. Like the "vision of red" that Bergman said inspired Cries and Whispers. Visconti's reds are so tactile, with those drawing rooms of all red brocade curtains and crimson satin sofas, like a crescendo of red building to that symphonic close of clay earth, red bricks, and red torches. Red has so much resonance. I remember Gautier insisted that he had worn pink silk, not red, to the premiere of Hugo's Hernani, since a red waistcoat would have been Republican, but he only wanted to be medieval. The old unities of the sciences fused optics and politics.
FL: And red figures prominently in Goethe's color theory--it's prioritized. Do you think it's a part of Visconti's architectural constructions?
BL: There are those red stones of Venice, freshly reflective in the rain. They're square stones composed in that overhead shot against the circles of the lady's lace parasols. Visconti has a painter's eye for the geometrical arrangements.
FL: I thought the architecture all worked towards framing devices: the obsession with mirrors, the canopy beds, picture windows, archways and doors, the groined vaulting, the Renaissance painting on every wall.
BL: Definitely. In the shots from above the barn rafters and the landscape pans of haystacks in perfect rows, I could swear it was the centrifugal grid. "The staircase to the universal," Rosalind Krauss calls it.
FL: This movie should renew her interest in narrative art, just because of the grid.
BL: That shot of romantic interest Farley Granger's bobbing buttocks and architecturally curled hair, contained in three concentric doorways--amazing. A flawless composition. And speaking of characters who bob, the peasant prostitute, Clara, she was like a young Kate Winslet--
FL: I know, with an Italian mouth!
BL: Exactly. I know you work a lot with actors, Franklin; do you want to say anything about the performances before we wrap up?
FL: More some other time, Ben. Granger turns in an unusually good physical performance. He's dubbed, and Visconti really wanted Brando for the role. Whatever. Visconti slept with all his leading men and then used them for mise en scËne. Valli and Granger's golden flesh tones are practically Tiepolo.
BL: I can't wait to see a print of this film.
FL: Absolutely. I'm really glad we got to talk about this instead of that Rohmer digital nonsense. Senso is a film about how love turns to spit.