Cinematic Soapbox, Essay Example

The figure of Luchino Visconti is controversial both in the public appreciation and by itself, yet it surely the one that cannot be neglected for its prominence. Visconti was trying to combine seemingly contradicting aspects: his aristocratic background, Marxist beliefs, and genuine artistic talent. While the contradiction between aristocratism and Marxism is obvious, I find it important to mention why I believe that Marxism contradicts artistic talent. Marxism, like many other systems of beliefs, is quite rigid and poses a number of strict requirements to its adherents and their way of thinking. However, the essence of being an artist is personal freedom and intolerance to any external control, especially in the sphere of freedom of thinking. A sad illustration to this contradiction is presented by the fates of a number of Soviet writers, painters, film and theatre directors, etc. Ardent acceptance of Marxism and attempts to work and create in Marxist framework often resulted in a tragedy – inability to stay loyal to Marxist principles and meet all the ideological requirements and at the same time to remain faithful to the artistic mission felt acutely by gifted people. An example is the figure of an outstanding Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovskiy who turned his powerful creativity serve into a tool of Marxist propaganda. Only a small minority of Mayakovskiy’s verses is truly lyrical and personal, and this is where his poetic talent is most obvious. He must have come to understand that he could have spent his power on less temporary things than Marxist ideas. Moreover, Soviet Union – the state which lived under the banners of Marxism – soon revealed its oppressive nature, with thousands of the representatives of the intellectual elite arrested, killed or made to leave the country. So bitter was Mayakovskiy’s frustration that it finally led him to committing a suicide.

Visconti’s situation was different at least for the reason that socialism was not a ruling regime in Italy and he could the appeal of Marxist ideas without seeing all the “side effects” of their realization. Moreover, being communistic meant for him being rebellious and drawing attention to the misery in which “the working class” had to live and fighting for their rights.

But to paint a comprehensive picture we had better came back to Luchino Visonti’s background. He belonged to a prominent Italian aristocratic family descending from Milan dukes of the early Renaissance. Luchino inherited a substantial fortune, large part of which he used to finance his creative projects and feel more independent from the producers. The family had a tradition of paying great attention to art and contributing to it in different ways. His involvement in the stage arts was inspired by his family which offered him experience as an amateur scene designer. Overall, he received the brilliant cosmopolitan education appropriate for his high social status. His education was completed by several years of reading, traveling and training race horses. He had all the perspectives of becoming a refined Italian aristocratic artist who would soar far above the mundane life.

What was surely not an element of aristocratic family tradition was Visconti’s militant political leftism. Visconti dedicated a large part of his creativity to the burning social issues associated with social unfairness. He depicted the lives of humble people to draw attention to their misery. If he addressed historical events, this was in order to analyze them from the point of view of Marxism. Does it mean, however, that Visconti abandoned his aristocratic heritage and avoided its influence? No, but this influence was obvious in the form of his works rather than in the content. His way of expression is described as mainly baroque, i.e. highly emphatic, allegoric and often seeking novel artistic techniques.

Having identified the tendencies dominating Visconti’s work, we shall proceed with an analysis of key social and political messages conveyed by his films.

Ossessione of 1943 was the first Luchino Visconti’s feature films and arguably the first Italian neorealistic films. The film was a screen version of the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. The film was only showed a few times in Rome and Northern Italy to be banned by the Fascist government and even destroyed (luckily Visconty kept a duplicate negative). The reaction of the government and the church was immediate and most categorical. However, the film was relatively politically innocent. It told a story of an Italian workman who had to wander and stayed at a small village where he fell in love with a young wife restaurant owner. Together with the woman the workman decided to kill her husband. But it did not mean they could leave happily thereafter because they were hounded by their shared guilt. What seemed outrageous in the film was a frank treatment of sensual passion. The film dealt with human nature as it is and was not the peaceful and neutral work expected by the government.

La Terra Trema of 1948 is much more expressive of Visconti’s political views. The story is set in a fishermen’s village in Sicily and describes the life of the poor and hard-working.  To remain more realistic, Visconti worked with actual Sicilian fishermen instead of employing professional actors and filmed all the dialogues in the local dialect because “in Sicily Italian is not the language of the poor”, thus taking the risk of losing a number of viewers who would not understand the language. The film focused on the relationships between the fishermen and the fishermerchants interpreted in Marxist terms. The central story is that of a family of fishermen who tried to market the fish they caught immediately, independent from the merchants and failed under the pressure of their cruel monopoly. For Visconti, this was an example of the wrong course of the exploited at becoming “self-employed petty bourgeois entrepreneurs” rather than organizing a collective movement to destroy exploitation system and throw down capitalist middlemen who made profit out of hard work and suffering of other people (Poggi, 1960).

Analyzing the social and political content of Bellissimo, we should talk about the satirical element revealed in depicting the movie world and the society in which Maddalena, the protagonist, lives. It should be mentioned, however, that satirical is not the main substance of the film which gives a deep psychological portrait of Maddalena and her personal crisis. Still, Maddalena belongs to the Roman working class which Visconti depicts without much sympathy. The characters dream of “petty bourgeois” blessings like the glamour of the movie world, dinners at restaurants, owning houses etc. and often turn out to be shallow and aggressive.

Senso of 1954 describes the events dating back to the Third War of Italian Independence. The key figure is a Venetian countess who loses herself completely in love for an Austrian officer. Blinded by her passion, she betrays her moral principles and patriotic ideas, deceives her husband and gives all her money to her lover in an attempt to save him from having to go into the war. Finally, the officer deceives her and she takes her revenge by telling the Austrian General about his treason and thus killing him. However, by that time her betrayal of herself and her country has ruined her completely and driven her mad.

White Nights is the screen version of a story by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevskiy – unsurprisingly, he was deeply concerned with the social issues of the nineteenth century Russia. The main characters are young people who are tragically lonely even in the huge city of Saint-Petersburg.

Rocco and His Brothers released in 1960 continues the theme of cruel city life destroying families and personalities and tells the story of an Italian family who leave the village where they lived for Milan. The family then fight to adjust to the impersonality of the city. Like in many Visconti’s films, passion that makes people forget themselves and become violent is also in the focus here.

The Leopard was originally intended by Visconti to show the harmful conservatism of the Piedmontese ruling class and its Sicilian allies. But the psychological and artistic aspects outweighed and the film came to tell a piercing story of an aging man rather than emphasize the social issues.

Works Cited

Buttigieg, Joseph. The Legacy of Antonio Gramsci.

Korte, Walter, Marxism and Formalism in the Films of Luchino Visconti, Cinema Journal (Evanston, Illinois), Fall 1971

Poggi, Gianfranco, Luchino Visconti and the Italian Cinema,  Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Spring 1960.