53rd San Francisco International Film Festival 22 April - 6 May 2010
FILMS/
SENSO
World Cinema
Italy, 1954, 118 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Thu, Apr 29 / 6:30 / PFA / SENS29P
Sun, May 02 / 12:30 / Castro / SENS02C
CREDITS
- dir
-
Luchino Visconti
- scr
-
Luchino Visconti, Suso Cecchi d’Amico
- cam
-
Aldo Graziati, Robert Krasker
- editor
-
Mario Serandrei
- mus
-
Anton Bruckner, Giuseppe Verdi
- cast
-
Alida Valli, Farley Granger, Heinz Moog, Rina Morelli, Christian Marquand
- source
-
Cineteca di Bologna, Andrea Meneghelli. EMAIL: andrea.meneghelli@comune.bologna.it.
Luchino Visconti’s 1954 film about the affair between an Italian countess (Alida Valli) with partisan sympathies and an Austrian officer from the occupying army (Farley Granger), set during Garibaldi’s war of independence in the 1860s, is one of the most extraordinary historical films ever made. Rarely have the dramas of history and romantic passion been so skillfully and compellingly intertwined. It also marks one of the medium’s most creative uses of color. Visconti and his cinematographers Aldo Graziati (who tragically died during the shoot) and Robert Krasker fashioned a palette that was both delicate and vivid, rich in its historical associations and its evocations of landscape painting of the period. For that reason alone, Senso has been extremely difficult to restore, and the shrinkage and overall damage to its original three-strip Technicolor camera negatives have only increased the level of difficulty. Now, with the advent of digital techniques the Cineteca di Bologna and L’Immagine Ritrovata have joined forces to restore this magnificent film to its original grandeur.
[byline here]
Senso’s U.S. premiere was a highlight of the San Francisco International Film Festival’s inaugural year in 1957.
—Kent Jones
Restored by StudioCanal, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia/Cineteca Nazionale and the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata with funding provided by GUCCI, The Film Foundation and Comitato Italia 150. Still courtesy of StudioCanal and Cineteca di Bologna; photo of Luchino Visconti courtesy of Cineteca di Bologna. Presented by The Film Foundation and GUCCI, with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute, San Francisco.
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