Visconti, Luchino

Visconti, Luchino (lkē`nō vēskôn`tē), 1906–76, Italian film director and writer, b. Milan as Luchino Visconti de Modrone. One of Italy's most acclaimed directors, Visconti has been called the father of neorealism for his early films Ossessione (1942) and La terra trema (1948). His increasingly lavish productions created a heightened sense of melodrama. His late films explore the nature of decadence. Among his other films are Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1964), The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), Ludwig (1973), and The Innocent (1979).

---

Visconti, Luchino

 orig. Don Luchino Visconti, count di Modrone

(born Nov. 2, 1906, Milan—died March 17, 1976, Rome) Italian film and theatre director. Born into the nobility, he became an assistant to Jean Renoir in 1935. He directed his first film, Ossessione (1942), in a style foreshadowing the Neorealism of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. His later films include the documentary-style drama La terra trema (1948), Senso (1954), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1963, Golden Palm), The Damned (1969), and Death in Venice (1971). As a stage director, he introduced to Italy works by Jean Cocteau, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams, and he staged operas starring Maria Callas that combined realism and spectacle.

---

Visconti, Luchino 

Born Nov. 2, 1906, in Milan. Italian theater and film director. Screenwriter. Born into an aristocratic family.

Visconti began to work in films in 1936. Rejoined a group of antifascist young film critics and wrote for film periodicals of an antifascist tendency (Bianco i nero and others). Visconti’s first work as a director was the film Ossessione (1942), based on motifs from the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by the American writer J. Cain. During World War II, Visconti took part in the resistance movement.

Visconti was one of the founders of neorealism. His most significant films are La Terra trema (1948), Bellissima (1951), Senso (1954), Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1962, based on the novel by G. T. di Lampedusa), and The Damned (1970).

Since 1945, Visconti has also worked as a theater director. He has staged productions of A. Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1950) and View from the Bridge (1958) and Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1952) and Uncle Vanya (1956), in addition to Verdi’s operas La Traviata and Il Trovatore. Several of Visconti’s motion pictures have received prizes at international film festivals. Visconti’s creative work is marked by a progressive tendency, a sociohistorical approach to his material, a profound inner link with the traditions of Italian and world literature, and the importance of the subject matter.

WORKS

“Zemlia drozhit.” In the collection Stsenarii ital’ianskogo kino. Moscow, 1958.
Rokko i ego brat’ia. Moscow, 1962. (Translated from Italian.)

REFERENCES

Shitova, V. Lukino Viskonti. Moscow, 1965.
Nowell-Smith, G. Luchino Visconti. London, 1967.