You’d be hard pressed to afford the bath towels that generously wrap around a tantalizingly nude Helmut Berger as he steps out of Burt Lancaster’s curtainless shower in Luchino Visconti’s penultimate film. Couldn’t afford Helmut, either, which all but sums up the plot of this bewitching oddity, a sort of DEATH IN VENICE-Lite with the repressed Aschenbach character remade as Lancaster’s retired scientist/art collector; Berger as grown Tadzio, objet d’art of sexual opportunity; and the endless interiors of Lancaster’s Rome home standing in for Venice. (No canals, but there is a water overflow upstairs.) Visually stunning, almost shockingly so, it was shot entirely in studio by Pasqualino De Santis. The film, life affirming and more than a bit gaga, follows a small clan of the ‘beautiful people,’ hideously rich & so appallingly entitled there’s something funny in their excess, who ‘move in’ on Lancaster’s recluse, taking over & redoing the musty apartment above him in an attempt to retain Helmut . . . and his ‘services.’ And the man seems to be ‘serving’ everyone! Silvana Mangano’s married Marchesa (the lady with the checkbook and the chic pallor); flighty daughter Claudi Marsani; and her architect fiancé Stefano Patrizi. (Anyone for a threesome?) Berger may also be taking in a bit of ‘rough trade’ though the plot (such as it is) would have us believe he gets beat up by dissed drug dealers. More plot barely touched on involves Berger informing on Mangano’s (fascist?) industrial powerhouse of a husband. Visconti making these things so vague, the film’s tragic ending all but evaporates from memory, leaving, instead, positive feelings from Lancaster finding something in life beyond books & exquisite paintings. A moral we might believe if only the decor & backgrounds weren’t so all consuming they become main characters! And it’s this push-me/pull-you struggle over æsthetics & philosophy that help make this sui generis film such a compelling, puzzle-completing work in the Visconti canon.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Filmed and released in three or four ‘original’ languages, the film had a disastrous opening in its English-Language version at The New York Film Fest where laughs at Marxist Italian Communism and acres of stiff, formal dialogue caused a festival of ‘bad’ laughs. The film plays infinitely better in Italian (though you lose Lancaster’s own voice) with English subtitles and only three of four whoppers.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Visconti’s DEATH IN VENICE/’71. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/death-in-venice-1971.html
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