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good back-story, and good acting

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Visconti's first film in colour and his first with a patrician 19th Century backdrop, 'Senso' is a squalid tale of base animal passion with an epic grandeur bestowed upon it that has seen it raised to the pantheon of Great Screen Romances by courtesy of Visconti having robed it in the trappings of the momentous historical backdrop of the Risorgimento of 1866, Venetian locations, plush interiors, immaculate costumes and Bruckner's Seventh Symphony (which wasn't actually composed until fifteen years later).The plot actually has marked similarities to Joseph Losey's 'The Sleeping Tiger', made concurrently in drab monochrome in postwar austerity Britain; in which refined Alexis Smith (married to decent but dull Alexander Knox) completely loses her head over delinquent Dirk Bogarde. Ten years earlier, Visconti himself made a much more unadorned treatment of greed and destructive passion with 'Ossessione' (1942) an adaptation of James M. Cain's sweaty tale of blue-collar adultery and murder, 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'.Maria Callas had been Visconti's first choice for the part of Countess Livia Serpieri - a society wife who becomes infatuated with good-looking creep Lieutenant Franz Mahler (played in a gleaming white uniform by an obviously dubbed Farley Granger) - but had too many theatre commitments (even at the projected three months that the film was expected to take to shoot, which eventually took nine months to complete). Ingrid Bergman was too wrapped up in the career of her husband Roberto Rossellini at the time to take up the offer; and the role eventually went to Alida Valli. Still stunning, but already perceptibly older and more leathery than during her late forties Hollywood sojourn, in the arms of Lt. Mahler Valli discovers an erotic fulfilment entirely new to her; but to Franz she's just another notch on his bedpost who he can sponge off.Marcella Mariani (who died in a plane crash aged 19, just six weeks after 'Senso's premiere) is rather sweet and vulnerable as the young prostitute Clara who is spitefully exploited by Franz to further rub Livia's nose in his rejection of her. Rina Morelli has an eye-catching cameo flitting about Livia's villa in Aldeno as her maid, who seems to be actively enjoying the thrill of her mistress's affair. But the most blackly comic element in the film is the way that as momentous historical events escalate around them, she and her idealistic cousin Roberto Ussoni (played by Massimo Girotti) are shown to be completely oblivious to what is making the other tick. Under the impression that Franz is waiting for her at an address to which she has been followed by her stuffy husband (Heinz Moog) she melodramatically declares with her back to the door that Yes She Has a Lover!, only to discover the place occupied by Roberto and his revolutionaries eagerly making plans; as oblivious of the turmoil raging inside Livia as she is by now indifferent to their cause. She commits treason by sheltering Franz from the Italians, and then gets even deeper in corruption by helping him to avoid combat by giving money meant for The Cause to him. (One of a number of loose ends in the plot is that we never find out what happens when the absence is discovered of the 200,000 florins she filches from the fund that is supposed to be helping to finance the revolution).As her grip on sanity loosens, Livia's wardrobe (the work of Marcel Escoffier & Piero Tosi) becomes more and more buttoned down and severe, the black dress she wears in her final scenes making her resemble some large, ferocious bird of prey. The distinguished Italian cameraman G.R.Aldo was killed in a car crash during the filming of this, his first colour production; and the opening scene in Venice's Fenice Theatre is the work of his successor Robert Krasker, who himself walked out on the production after falling out with Visconti, leaving the film to be completed by Giuseppe Rotunno. Whoever shot the amazing close-ups of Valli - her eyes wildly darting from side to side as she becomes more and more unhinged - merits particular kudos. During the final confrontation in the hotel you're expecting her to produce a gun and shoot Franz; but she achieves the same end by more deliciously vindictive means, and he ends up in front of a firing squad assembled at remarkably short notice while she careens into the night to a very uncertain fate.Having ended with a bang, the final credits still have one more surprise to serve up when the first two names we see after Visconti's turn out to be those of the future directors (on this occasion humble assistants), Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli.'Senso' was shot in English, and there are a couple of excerpts on YouTube from the truncated 94 minute English-language version, 'The Wanton Countess' which enable you to hear Granger in his own voice speaking dialogue written by no less than Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles (thus confirming suspicions that we are witnessing a Venetian variation on 'A Streetcar Named Desire'). By the 1970s Visconti could finally make a film truer to his own inclinations in 'Death in Venice' (1971), with Dirk Bogarde - once the object of infatuation himself in 'The Sleeping Tiger', but now the one smitten - in a production again dressed up to the nines, handsomely set in period, again using beautiful Venetian locations and this time almost entirely dispensing with dialogue in favour of Mahler, his favourite composer; whose name he had co-opted for the young officer in 'Senso' (who had been called Remigio Ruz in Camillo Boito's original novella).

"Sanso" looks nice. It has a nice, sweeping look to it and if the color print received a bit of conservation (cleaning up the print a bit and sharpening it as well), it would be a gorgeous movie. But, it's also a great example of a film which suffers because the main characters are complete moral degenerates and are therefore difficult to relate to or care for during the course of the movie.This film is set around the time of the Italian independence movement in the late 1860s and into the early 1870s. The Italians, long dominated and ruled by outsiders, are uniting under Garibaldi and are trying to gain self-rule. In the midst of this is a terribly confusing Countess (Alida Valli). On one hand, she supports the independence movement through her cousin and his efforts. Yet, completely inexplicably, she falls for an Austrian officer--who is her sworn enemy. It seems that despite being on opposite sides, they have a common love...him. So, in essence, her ideals mean nothing and she's willing to throw away her opulent life with the Count and her country for some Germanic stud. In fact, at one point, she makes herself a traitor by giving the lover money which was gathered to support the Italian army...and all for love (or at least what this whore thinks is love).While many reviewers seemed to like this film, I couldn't get past the characters. While there was no obvious reason for the lovers to be together, they were. And, because they were both selfish and nasty, you really don't care what happens to them. After all, she's an adulteress, thief and a traitor. He's a coward, cheats on his new lover and is a deserter. Sounds like a relationship made in heaven, right?!The bottom line is that no matter how good the film looks and how well it's acted, it's just about some boorish jerks--and that makes it a film I could have just as soon skipped.

In this film, Visconti not only brought a lavish attention to historical detail, but he also put forward the ideologically challenging idea that human erotic passions (in particular, Alida Valli's grand passion) could take center stage and even upstage the unfolding of Il Risorgimento, the series of wars that Italians celebrate as laying the foundation for the creation of the Italian State. The scenes showing a demoralized Italian (read: "piemontese") army, in retreat (Custoza, 1866) in the face of yet another Austrian counter-offensive, were too much for the censors: as a vindication of Italian honor, they insisted that the film include the execution of Mahler. But Visconti was clearly in the camp of those who rejected military events, victorious or otherwise, as the cornerstone of Italian national identity. Forget the Veneto, and make love instead, seemed to be the hidden message.

Some months back I rented Tinto Brass' Senso 45 aka Dark Angel, in which a Venetian countess embarks on an adulterous affair with a German soldier during the dying months of World War II.I was intrigued to learn it was a saucy remake of a 1954 film, Senso. This film follows much the same plot, except 1) There is no full blown sex orgy in which a conga line is led by a woman in stockings and suspenders and Nazi uniform carrying a large golden dildo and 2) It's not set during the same era but during the time of the Italian unification; 1866, Garibaldi and all that. So the Italians are fighting to oust the Austrian empire from the northern states and secure independence.The countess has a cousin fighting for the Italian cause, so her adultery is a double betrayal.Watchable stuff and interesting to compare with the Brass effort, which although a load of cobblers did have some lovely cinematography and shots of Venice in it. This earlier film is a good companion piece to Visconti's The Leopard.